In the last four weeks, social media turned to announcement boards for circulating alerts about abducted children in Nigeria, especially in Lagos.
If recent reports which have been circulated this way are anything to go by, child abduction seems to have become the favourite crime of criminal masterminds in Nigeria’s commercial nerve centre.
Had these reports been about armed robberies and car-jackings, which Lagos residents are all too familiar with, few eyebrows would have been raised. But it seems child abduction is the new money-spinning venture for criminals.
Five abductions in one month
The case of the family of Mr. and Mrs. Leke Orekoya will continue to ring in the memory of residents of the state. The abduction of their three children aged 6, 4 and 11 months in April 2015, has become a reference point for a heinous crime that is fast gaining ground in the city, despite efforts by the Nigeria Police in tracking down some of the perpetrators.
In the same month the Orekoya boys were abducted and recovered after the payment of an undisclosed amount of money, at least four other children have been kidnapped in the state, with some released or discovered in neighbouring states.
On Sunday, April 20, 2015, just a few days after the return of the Orekoya boys, three-year-old Oluwabunmi Ajelero, was abducted from a church at Surulere, Ojuelegba Road, Surulere.
The abductor who rode off in a motorbike would later contact the family to demand N300,000 ransom for her release. Oluwabunmi was rescued by the police in Ogun State three days later in another church at Abeokuta before any ransom could be paid.
In the same month, a five-year-old boy, Abraham Adeyemi, who told the police he was taken from his neighbourhood in Lagos, was found loitering in front of the Foursquare Gospel Church, Imedu Nla, Mowe, in Obafemi-Owode Local Government Area in Ogun State.
He said he was taken by some people who promised to take him to Mr. Biggs, a fast food outlet. The boy did not know the names of his parents and neither did he know the name of his street.
But the Public Relations Officer of the Ogun State Police Command, Mr. Muyiwa Adejobi, told Saturday PUNCH that the parents of the boy came for him after reading his story in newspapers.
“The parents told us the boy disappeared during a church service. They came the following day we found the boy, and we have since handed him over to them,” Adejobi said.
Another boy, who could only identify himself as Success, was found along the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway and taken to the Ibafo Police Division by sympathisers.
The police said when they boy’s family eventually came for him after reading about him online, they said he was abducted from home. It was not clear under which circumstances he was released.
The abduction of 12-year-old David Olupitan from his parents’ home at AmuwoOdofin Housing Estate, Mile 2, Lagos also added mystery to the cases of abduction which the state has witnessed in recent weeks.
David told our correspondent he had no memory of his abductors after he walked home about 20 kilometres from Mushin, Lagos where he found himself. He could not recall how he got there.
My advice for parents – Father of kidnap victims
However, the arrest of the kidnapper, who posed as a nanny to kidnap the Orekoya children, 35-year-old FunmilayoAdeyemi, was an eye opener on an organised crime that many did not know may have become rampant in the state.
In December 2014, a woman who posed as a maid abducted the two-year-old and 15-month-old children of Mrs. Onajite Esharegharan in Magodo area of Lagos. The children were only returned after N2.5m ransom was reportedly paid.
It was only when Adeyemi was arrested that she confirmed that she was also the ‘Juliet’ responsible for the abduction of the Esharegharan children.
Both the Orekoyas and the Esharegharans contracted Adeyemi as a nanny through an online sales portal, Olx.
For the Esharegharans, the kidnap of their children changed a lot.
Our correspondent spoke with the father of the abducted children, Mr. Elvis Esharegharan, who said a lot has changed since he recovered his children from their abductors.
He said, “The primary advice I can give to parents is to be more prayerful because you can never be too careful. The maid issue is a necessary evil.
“The background check into the maid also needs to be more thorough and must be extended to the agencies. It is not about knowing the agents anymore.
“What I realised in my own case is that even if you do a background check on the maid and you don’t do a check on the agent that is getting you the maid, if something goes wrong, you may not know where to track such person to.
“Government needs to come in and formally institutionalise this particular service because if such services are registered and documented somewhere, it would give people more confidence.
“If there are agencies that give out maids as it happens in other climes, then you are sure that the agencies have something at stake. So the people they would be bringing would have gone through particular process. Any corporate couple, of a necessity, needs a maid.”
Asked how the experience has changed the way he secures his children, Esharegharan said for instance, he observes his children with an “eagle eye”.
“When I get back from work, any noticeable bruise on any of them is instantly investigated. I no longer view little things as that, which might have been overlooked in the past, as ordinary,” he said.
One policeman to 467 Nigerians
In recent years, abduction has become a ‘business’ in Nigeria, especially in the south-eastern and south-southern part of the country,with the potential of churning out millions of naira for the kidnappers who demand huge sums of money from families of victims.
However, experts believe this may be connected to the fact that Nigeria with a population of about 173.6 million people, according to a 2013 estimate by World Bank, is secured by only about 370,000 policemen at a ratio of one policeman to 467 Nigerians.
According to the Nigerian Police page on Wikipedia, there are plans to strengthen that number by 280,000 new recruits to make it 650,000. Even at that, the situation would still be grim as the ratio would be one policeman to 267 Nigerians.
Lagos lawyer and activist, Mr. Malachy Ugwummadu, broke this issue down into two parts.
He said it is cannot be possible for the Nigeria Police to effectively fight crime when the policemen to population ratio is excessively wide. The lawyer also added that it may not be totally correct that the increase in abductions would be ascribed only to the paucity of policemen on the streets since other categories of crime suffer from the same problem.
Ugwummadu said, “It almost sounds like an alibi to say that the recent increase in cases of abduction has to do solely with the few number of policemen fighting crime in Nigeria.
“On the other hand, the United Nations has a provision specifying the ideal ratio of policemen to population (1:450), if the population size far outweighs the number of policemen it becomes practically impossible to fight crime.”
Executive Director, Fountain Guards, Mr. Richard Amuwa, who is a child security expert, said even though he does not support the idea of parents of victims paying ransom, there is no way they could avoid paying it.
Amuwa said the problem of child abduction also has to do with the fact that there are inadequate security agents in the country.
He explained that abductions might persist so far as 170 million Nigerians continue to be secured by just 370,000 policemen.
Amuwa explained, “If you don’t trust the security agencies in the country, how can you avoid paying ransom to the kidnappers if you value the life of your loved ones?
“The security agent who is going to rescue your children, Is he well armed? Apart from that, is he happy doing it?
“We have to address the root causes of these kidnapping before going to the issue of ransom. A lot of parents do not educate their children on security.
“For instance, the Orekoya case and that of the boy that was found along the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, who did not know his parent’s name or where he came from. How many parents teach their children about yelling when a stranger takes them on the street? Do parents tell their children what to say when they yell for help?
“We should start educating our children about security from the age of three. Of course we understand that child kidnapping is a result of unemployment and economic hardship.”
National Coordinator, Network on Police Reforms in Nigeria, Mr. Okechukwu Nwanguma, also believe that the personnel strength of the police force is a major reason for the current security situation.
He attributed the current shortfall in the force to the neglect the police suffered under Nigerian’s military era.
Nwanguma said, “The personnel strength of the Nigeria police at the moment certainly has something to do with the incapacity of the force to effectively deal with crime and other internal security challenges.
“Too make up for the shortfall,in 2000, the then President Olusegun Obasanjo,ordered a massive recruitment drive at the rate of 4,000 personnel per year for five years up to 2004.
“However, a moratorium was placed on further recruitment after two years due to the corruption and irregularities that marred the recruitment process. Ever since, there has been no further effort to enhance the personnel strength of the police.”
But other experts believe that the way cases of abductions are handled encourage the criminals to continue.
Social commentator and child welfare advocate, Mr. Omololu Akinwande, said that the government and families of kidnap victims contribute to the reason the crime of child abduction continue to fester in the country.
Akinwande, who is the Executive Secretary of the Children’s Anti-Corruption Initiative Nigeria, said child abduction has become a trade.
He stated, “Government and parents of the children abducted have made the crime attractive. When a child is abducted, the whole process is shielded in so much secrecy that nobody ever says they pay ransom.
“This actually protects the kidnappers and gives them the confidence to do more. Unfortunately, there is no specific laws addressing child abduction in the country.
“Nigeria does not have data on the number of abducted children over the years because we don’t take the issue of children seriously. Things are upside down in the country and we can only hope this would change in the next dispensation.”
Akinwande blamed parents for not doing enough to secure their children as well, adding that economic pursuit has taken the attention of many parents from the welfare of their children.
No accurate data on abductions
Unlike in developed countries where there are accurate data on the number of missing and abducted children, no agency in Nigeria has an up-to-date information on how many children are kidnapped in the country on yearly basis which is why is hard to determine how serious the crime has become in a city like Lagos.
For instance, according to the United States’ National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children (citing U.S. Department of Justice reports), nearly 800,000 children are reported missing each year.
According to the Guild of Security Controllers Newsletter 2001; Pax Christi’s ‘Kidnapping is a Booming Business’ 2008 and Risk Map Report 2015 – Kidnap and Extortion Overview, in 1999, Nigeria ranked eighth on global index for kidnapping hotspots. By 2014, the country has jumped to number five, highlighting the increasing number of cases recorded over the years.
Even though Lagos seems to have got the lion share of the child abductions that has occurred in recent weeks, there have also been some reported cases of abduction in other parts of the country.
For instance, on Friday, April 24, 2015 five-year-old Yannie Oforduru, was kidnapped by unknown persons at her home in Owerri, Imo State early in the morning.
Her mother told our correspondent over the phone that she was returned to them a week after.
“Yannie was returned to us unharmed exactly a week after. She is fine but she is still in the hospital,” Mrs. Oforduru said.
The Lagos State Police Public Relations Officer, Mr. Kenneth Nwosu, had told our correspondent that the recent kidnappings did not mean that it had now become a ‘business’ in the state. He said neither is the crime on the increase as the police have been making headway in successfully solving cases of abductions that are reported.
But the recent upsurge in the abduction of children for ransom has become a source of concern for residents of the states, whose apprehension border on the fact that even children are no longer safe in their own homes.
Commenting on one of the cases of the abductions, an online reader, Adetutu Babatunde-Edward, said, “The way they kidnap these days is serious, I don’t even allow my son to play in our compound anymore, I don’t want to feel sorry for myself so I play safe.”
The general feeling is echoed in a comment by one anonymous reader, who said, “Oh my God, what is happening? Are our kids no longer safe even in our homes?”
Another comment by an online reader, identified as Adure, said, “The question is, how many more families are vulnerable, and how much money will families continue to pay to kidnappers? Something urgent needs to be done.”
In 2010, the House of Representatives deliberated on a bill prescribing the life imprisonment for the crime of kidnapping in the country.
Agencies such as the Nigeria Immigration Service, Nigeria Institute of Arbitration, the Nigeria Legal Aid Council, National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons and the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps all threw their weight behind the bill, but added that kidnappers who carry out such acts with violence should be given the death penalty.
The bill entitled, ‘An Act to prohibit hostage taking, prescribe punishment for its contravention and other matters relating thereto.’
Five years later, the bill continues to lie amidst heaps of others yet to be signed into law.
But in the last five years, seven states have made the crime of kidnapping a capital offence. They are; Abia, Akwa, Ibom, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu, and Imo states in 2009 and Edo State in 2013.
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