Senator Godswill Akpabio, the Senate Minority Leader on Wednesday attributed the commercialization of Kidnapping in the country to Abia State.
The Senator made this known at the Senate Plenary while contributing to the debate on Joint Committee Report on Police Affairs, National Security and Intelligence where he highlighted how the state gave rise to the illicit and life threatening trade.
According to news agency, Daily Post, The senator said that the kidnapping of foreign nationals and expatriates in the Niger Delta region some years ago meant to protest the havoc wreaked on their lands and done to the environment by multinational oil companies led to the commercialization of kidnapping.
He said: “In Abia state then, they will build a bungalow with gallows underneath, and when someone was kidnapped, they will keep the victim there until ransom was paid even with Police guarding the compound,”
The Senator while calling for capital punishment for arrested persons said the three years imprisonment tterm sentence was not enough to dissuade such individuals from the act.
“Currently, the maximum penalty is three years imprisonment for kidnappers, and this cannot deter them while I want to call for stringent penalty to punish them,”
Akpabio added.