Kidnappers’ invasion of South-West and the conspiracy of silence

Azuka Onwuka

For weeks now, people have been sharing messages on the social
media, warning the public to avoid travelling on certain highways
in the South-West because of the activities of kidnappers, believed
to be herdsmen. Victims have also narrated their ordeals in the
hands of the kidnappers. Some who visited home from abroad and fell
victims even added that they would never return to Nigeria again
because of the horror they faced and the trauma they suffered after
the experience.

The stories were that the kidnappers would intermittently block
the highways, kidnap some travellers and take them into the bush,
abuse them physically and sexually, extort ransoms from their
relatives, and even kill those whose relatives did not quickly pay
any ransom or those who did not pay something substantial.

Because of the unreliability of things shared on the social
media, these stories sometimes felt like fairytales or exaggerated
stories meant to scare people and further an agenda — political,
ethnic, religious and otherwise. Many people with discerning mind
reasoned that since the ethnicity of those accused of this highway
kidnapping is Fulani, some people could be trying to demonise and
stereotype the Fulani ethnic group and get back at President
Muhammadu Buhari, who is also a Fulani. Some people could also want
to fabricate stories of insecurity to create a narrative that the
President was failing in his duties. In addition, most times,
people who live outside Nigeria try to exaggerate the issue of
insecurity in the country based on what they see in foreign news
channels.

Therefore, in spite of all the evidence, many people took the
kidnap stories with a pinch of salt. It sounded far-fetched that
people of Fulani extraction could have the effrontery to camp in
the South-West forests, kidnapping the people and creating enormous
fear in a zone that is hundreds of kilometres away from the
North-East and North-West where the Fulani people are indigenous.
Local criminals could indulge in kidnapping and disappear into
unidentified houses, where they keep their victims until a ransom
is paid, but for kidnappers of Fulani extraction to abduct people
on highways in the South-West and lead them into the forest where
they keep them until a ransom is paid sounds unbelievable. In the
North where Hausa is spoken, it may be easy for a Fulani to go
unnoticed, but anywhere in the South, a Fulani stands out by his
looks and language. Understanding the local terrain is also not
easy for non-indigenes. Using the forest as a hideout and keeping
kidnap victims there are also not the usual modus operandi of
kidnappers.

In May when Prof Olayinka Adegbehingbe, an orthopaedic surgeon
at the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Osun State, was
kidnapped on the Ibadan-Ife Expressway while returning from Lagos,
he revealed that his kidnappers were of Fulani extraction, and that
a ransom of N5.045 million was paid before he was released. His
story and that of others who had become victims while travelling on
the highway in the South-West gave credence to the stories making
the rounds in the social media about the high kidnapping rate on
the region’s highways.

However, over the weekend, two key Yoruba figures published
stories that gave more insight into the kidnap menace in the
region. One was Mr Kehinde Bamigbetan, who left office last month
as the Commissioner for Information and Strategy under the
administration of Mr Akinwunmi Ambode, erstwhile governor of Lagos
State. He narrated how he and his wife left Lagos for Ife in the
afternoon, but on the way, he decided to confirm the stories of
kidnap from his contacts within the Osun State Governor’s Office
and the palace of the Ooni of Ife. The contacts confirmed to him
that those stories were true and that it was not safe to travel on
the Ibadan-Ife Expressway, especially from 5pm to 8pm and from 6am
to 8am. Based on the warning he got, he decided to lodge in a hotel
in Ibadan that evening to continue on the journey the next day. He
said his wife told him that she had never seen him that “sober and
visibly defeated” in the 30 years she had known him.

The second was the Aare Onakakanfo of Yorubaland, Iba Gani
Adams. In an interview with a newspaper, he acknowledged the
existence of the kidnappers of Fulani extraction and spoke of
efforts he had made to reach out to the South-West governors and
traditional rulers to tackle the menace of kidnapping the way his
group went after the Badoo cultists and militants causing problems
in the South-West. He regretted that most of them had not shown
commitment or even responded to his letter. He explained that the
endorsement of the governors and traditional rulers was needed
before the involvement of his group, the Oodua People’s Congress,
so as not to put himself and his group in trouble with the law in
the event of casualties while trying to flush out the kidnappers
from forests.

In January 2018 when Ayo Fayose, who was then the governor of
Ekiti State, took measures to protect his state against further
killings by herdsmen, the people who condemned him the most were
from the South-West. Curiously, those who condemned him placed
party loyalty to the All Progressives Congress and President Buhari
above the safety of the region.

It is not surprising that Adams did not get the support he
needed from the South-West governors and traditional leaders.
Across the country, politicians and public figures are afraid to
publicly take any step to protect their people against any crime
linked with a Fulani because of fear of being seen as enemies of
the Presidency and the security chiefs. Governor Samuel Ortom of
Benue State and his people mourned their killed indigenes
repeatedly. During a visit by a delegation of Benue State leaders
of thought to the Presidential Villa in January 2018, after another
round of killings, the President told them to accommodate their
countrymen “in the name of God.” When Ortom got tired of burying
his people and decided to take action against the herdsmen, he was
portrayed as an enemy of the President, the Inspector-General of
Police, the Minister of Defence, and even his party, the APC. He
had to leave the party for the Peoples Democratic Party. Fayose
faced the same backlash. In Enugu, after his people were massacred
in Nimbo in April 2016 by herdsmen, Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi
visited the President in Abuja rather than being visited by the
President. Pictures showed him smiling and making obeisance while
greeting the President. He was excoriated for that. But Ugwuanyi
was seemingly careful not to give any impression of anger or
sadness, so as not to be cast as an enemy of the President!

As serious as this kidnapping issue is, the Vice President, Prof
Yemi Osinbajo, who is from the South-West, has not paid any special
attention to it. The National Leader of the APC and political
leader of the South-West, Bola Tinubu, has not made it a key issue.
The same thing goes for all the South-West governors. Nobody wants
to raise a strong voice against it, for fear that the person may be
seen as an enemy of the President. Even the vociferous APC
supporters from the South-West who don’t hold any political posts
do not like to talk about it, because they believe that doing so
will depict the President and his administration in a bad
light.

While this conspiracy of silence persists, the people who don’t
have adequate security get kidnapped, tortured, sexually abused,
humiliated, dehumanised, financially fleeced, and sometimes killed
by strangers, right in their own land, just because political
interest has to be placed above the safety and welfare of the
people. It is a sad day.

—Twitter @BrandAzuka

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