Victor Chendekemen Yakubu
10 November 2009
opinion
A bill against kidnappers and hostage takers has presently passed the second reading on the floor of Nigeria's House of Representatives. It is sponsored by Rep. Friday Itulah [PDP, Edo State].
When it is passed, the bill recommends life imprisonment for kidnappers. Part of the bill reads, "On hostage taking, any person who seizes or detains and threatens to kill, to injure, or to continue to detain another person in order to compel a third person or a governmental organization to do or abstain from doing any act as an explicit or implicit condition for the release of the person detained, or attempts or conspires to do so, commits an offence and is liable on conviction to life imprisonment."
Like any official document in the Nigerian officialdom, this bill is vindictive, verbose and defensive of the privileged class who kidnap the resources of this country to Europe, the Americas and the Middle East. I hope this Bill applies to kidnappers of government budgets. I must commend the efforts of Hon. Itulah for sponsoring this Bill. By the time it passes through the House, it will send a signal to the kidnappers that the government is serious about the security and welfare of its citizens. The only defect will be implementation.
Another section of the proposed Bill reads, "As from the commencement of this Act any person who seizes, confines, entices, decoys, abducts, conceals, kidnaps or carries away another person by any means whatsoever with intent to hold or detain, or who holds or detains that person for ransom, reward or to commit extortion or to exact from another any money or valuable things or any person who aids or abets any such act, commits an offense and is liable on conviction to life imprisonment."
When you analyze this part of the bill you will discover that this is exactly what the politicians of Nigeria have done to dear Nigeria. If only the budget meant for roads, hospitals, schools, welfare services and maintenance of law and order is spent the right way, Nigeria would be better for it. Imagine the deaths we record annually on the roads, as a result of potholes and a lack of maintenance. The rot from quack doctors who fleece the unsuspecting poor people with high charges and butcher them on the operating tables.
Nobody gives a hoot about rescuing their dignity with needed welfare services. Almost every journey is embarked upon after prayer and fasting, casting and binding of the devil hiding on the roads. Yet the passengers have not recognized that a combination of reckless driving, bad roads and weather conditions can cause terrible accidents on our roads.
Evil forces are blamed when we have not first of all made the roads user-friendly for travelling. We are in the ember months, only God knows the kind of carnage our roads will record. Any news of road accidents is attributed to the work of witches and wizards who hide to suck human blood as vampires. Yet the politician who connived with the contractor to misappropriate the road budget is never blamed for directly causing their deaths.
That things can never work well in Nigeria, is the kind of stereotyped minds our people have come to inherit for generations on end. My poor mum is amongst many in this group whose psyche has been kidnapped by fear of vampires, witches and wizards on one hand; and the inefficiency of government, politicians and office holders on the other. Instead of attacking the root cause, we blame the symptoms for causing discomfort to our system. The sickness in our Nigerian society is corruption and lack of checks and balances by the three arms of government: The legislature, the executive and the judiciary.
The arbitrary manipulation to unduly cheat, manipulate and embezzle public funds meant for development of Nigeria's society is kidnapping of social development of the poor communities of our land. This cannot be far from the truth. This cannot continue if politicians and their acolytes are patriotic at heart, rethinking why they are put in such privileged positions by God.
Those who physically kidnap fellow Nigerians for ransom are not ghosts from Mars but Nigerians whom the security forces are ill-equipped to trace or arrest. All the noise about arresting criminals is just pure propaganda to create the impression that the police are working. But the non- release of funds to fight criminals like armed robbers, kidnappers, hostage takers and thieving politicians remains the problem.
The only option is to blame the witches and wizards for things that we can change without costing us a life. While I dread the kidnapping of high profile officials of government and poor innocent Nigerians, I equally dread the treatment of the poor masses of this nation held hostage for the past decades by politicians, the high and the mighty. I am affected by the lack of sensitivity of the politicians and different office holders who have made promises to my village and have failed consistently during my lifetime.
With no electricity, ill-equipped schools and absent essential services, you don't expect me to clap for them four decades after my birth. My resolve like that of my fellow villagers and other Nigerians is to watch events and hope that kidnappers and hostage takers make a change whether they are physical or psychological kidnappers. Nothing can be greater news to my heart than to hear that the hyena has changed its spots.
Yakubu, former Director, Media Service Centre, Kaduna, is a priest of the Catholic Diocese of Zaria, working in the Diocese of Phoenix, Arizona, USA.
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