[EDITORIAL] Enriching Kidnappers Through Ransom Payment: When Shall It End?

The recent revelation by the Nigeria Baptist Convention (NBC) that it spent the sum of N250million to secure the release of its students who were kidnapped from Bethel Baptist College, Kaduna in 2021 was one distasteful story that once reminded any discerning Nigerian the abysmal level we have fallen as a nation.

It is not as if the amount was the first of its kinds since the kidnap for ransom regime became part of us as the likes of Evans (Chukwudumeme Onwuamadike), had thrived in extorting billions from their wealthy victims few years before nemesis caught up with him but the entrenchment of such as a ‘new normal’ is the worrisome lesson.

The Nigeria Baptist Convention president, Rev. Israel Akanji, who made the revelation last Friday during interview with journalists on the sideline at the 2022 International Workers Conference for the Northeast which held in Gombe did not fail to score the Muhammadu Buhari administration low on issues of security.

Explaining why the Convention chose to renege on its earlier stand of non payment of ransom for any Kidnapped victim, the Clergy said it was reasoned that it would be better to lose money through ransom payment than gamble with the lives of their children held in captivity.

Such reasoning of the management of the NBC is in sync with the position of many families of Kidnapped victims whose lives in the hands of their captors have often been 50-50 chances of securing their freedom or losing their lives in the circumstance once no ransom payment was forthcoming.  It is on record that many victims have lost their lives due to non-payment of ransom or even delay in payment.

Now that it has become an entrenched new normal for individual families, corporate entities, associations etc to resort to payment of ransom for their loved ones, the question that begs for an answer is: when shall this new abnormal culture come to an end? As a nation, have we corporately believed that kidnapping for ransom and other forms of violent crimes are beyond the strength of our security agencies?

Do we now take it that the best approach is for families, relations, friends, associates, employers etc of any kidnapped persons subjected by circumstance to look for money to pay ransom as may be demanded by the kidnappers?  What about those who cannot afford to raise any cash?

With the 2023 general elections fast approaching, we need not over emphasise the fact that we are entering the most dangerous period as more movements across the country for electioneering campaigns would come up. This also means more kidnap attempts on personality with the attendant fears such attempts would create.

While efforts of the security agencies are appreciated in fighting the kidnappers, bandits and terrorists, the Buhari administration need to get to the root of the matter by dealing decisively with all those alleged by the authorities as sponsoring criminality in the country.

It is not enough to declare that government has list of terrorists sponsors when the same government is treating such people with kid glove.