A report published by a geo-political intelligence platform SB Morgen (SBM) Intelligence, has revealed that Nigerians spent a whopping N7 Billion as ransom to Kidnappers within Nine years.
According to the details of the report, which covered kidnapp incidents in Nigeria between 2011 and 2020, kidnappers in the country made at least $18.34 Million.
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Data was compiled from the various sources including the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, the Council for Foreign Relations, Nigeria Security Tracker, newspaper reports and in-house researchers for SBM.
The report further revealed that the South-South region of the country suffered most from kidnapping activities with four states being in the top ten most affected states.
Some of the statistics of incidents include; Bayelsa 85, Delta 96, Rivers, 120 and Edo 59.
Other states with high incidences of kidnapping include; Kaduna 177, Borno 82, Kogi 59, Ondo 54, Katsina 52, and Taraba 47.
The report said further that kidnappers regarded their activities as a business and try hard to make their victims pay. It also pointed out that victims who cannot pay up on time will most likely be killed by their captors.
Before 2018, kidnap victims were mostly political exposed People, Business men, Expatriates as well as their relatives and family members.
It blamed the increase in kidnapping attacks on the presence of bandits in the northern states of Katsina and Zamfara that gradually extended into Kaduna and Niger States.
Excerpts from the report read;
The sudden uptick in fatalities per attempt coincides with the increase in attacks by bandits on villages especially in Zamfara and Katsina states, a situation which has gradually extended to Kaduna and Niger states. These bandits have also been involved in kidnapping besides attacking villagers and travellers, or doing both at the same time. As these kidnaps are less targeted at specific persons, the bandits are less deliberate in avoiding the deaths of their victims compared to earlier kidnap attempts which appeared to have specific targets in mind.
“This points to the democratisation of insecurity in the North, specifically with respect to kidnapping, which is a huge reversal from a decade and a half ago where kidnapping attempts were mostly in the Niger Delta, before slowly spreading to the South-East and across the country.
“Overall, Nigeria is becoming less safe each year. Kidnapping has increased in almost all states, but
the sharpest rise have been in Kaduna, Rivers, Katsina, Zamfara and Taraba, while only Bayelsa
in the entire country, saw a fall in the number of incidents compared to the period of 2011 to 2015.”
“Kidnapping has become “safer” for the victims in Akwa Ibom, Anambra, Borno, Delta, Ebonyi, Edo,
Ekiti, Kano, Kwara, Lagos, Nasarawa, Ogun, Ondo, Osun, Plateau, Rivers, Taraba and Yobe as these states saw fewer deaths per kidnap attempt. For all the other states, the prospect of being attached has become a more dangerous proposition”.
The report also blamed rising unemployment as a major factor for the rise in kidnapping in the country. It said the prevailing situation is exploited by politicians in the South who arm youths and use them for thuggery.
The report went ahead to cite examples from several incidents;
“Previous SBM research has shown that the crime rate soars during election periods and politicians key into the mass idleness of young people by using them for political violence. Nigeria has a problem of large swathes of ungoverned spaces, areas of the country that are without government or security presence. This puts residents at the mercy of whichever criminal elements are in the ascendancy.”
“In Delta state for example, criminal elements have capitalised on this problem by attacking communities. One of such incidents was reported in November 2019 when sea pirates raided Opurudiegbene community in Burutu, carting away generators, household appliances and an unspecified amount of cash.”
“Three children were kidnapped following the attack, and there is no record of them being rescued. Kidnap syndicates who operate out of the North rely on big forests as their staging areas. For example, Rigasa and Birnin Gwari are areas in Kaduna with large forests that have been used as hideouts.”
The report concluded that there was an acute need on the part of government to address the problems of unemployment and insecurity even in the face of the Coronavirus pandemic.
It also advocated for adequate equipping and motivation of security forces to counter security challenges in the country while also urging that the rule of law must be allowed to take effect.
With the economy set to enter into another recession as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, the government needs to be deliberate about addressing the country’s myriad problems – including the unemployment and insecurity issues that currently afflict a majority of Nigerians.”
“In addition to deploying hard solutions – including effectively training, equipping and deploying police and military assets into the most affected areas, addressing inter-agency conflict in order to foster cooperation and coordination, and upskilling police across the country; the federal and state governments must also create the soft regulatory framework to enable effective policing.”
“Sensible regulation and economic reform that includes a Marshall like Plan for the North East and North West regions and significant sub-national autonomy that will significantly satisfy the southern regions, particularly the South East and the South South.”
Finally, the rule of law must be strengthened all over the country – the introduction of full electronic court proceedings in Borno, the country’s first is a symbolic step in the right direction. While the rule of law is a fragile patchwork everywhere, hard-hit parts of the country, especially in the north, are so disconnected from the judicial system that many Nigerians are increasingly turning to alternative forms of dispute resolution.
“This is a national emergency that must be seen as such because it strikes at the legitimacy of the country’s longest democractic stretch.”