OPINION | Before we’re all kidnapped
By Fredrick Nwabufo
The first casualty of capricious election seasons in Nigeria is security. Governance is abandoned, and all efforts and expense are dissipated on party politics. Nigeria’s security insalubrity is deteriorating steeply as the 2023 elections close in. It is all reminiscent of the build-up to the 2015 elections when ubiquitous violence seized the country and the elections had to be postponed. Will it be again as it was before? Will it be plus ca change?
Religious leaders – both Christians and Muslims – have become the latest spectacle of these gangs of death-dealers from the netherworld.
On July 3, Udo Peter and Philemon Oboh, both priests of the Catholic church, were abducted by gunmen in Edo state. The gunmen reportedly kidnapped the Catholic priests on Benin-Auchi expressway. On July 4, the despoilers kidnapped Emmanuel Silas, a Catholic priest, in Kaduna state. Silas was reportedly kidnapped in Zambina, Kauru LGA of the state.
On June 25, the ravagers killed Vitus Borogo, the chaplain of the Catholic Church in Kaduna Polytechnic. Borogo was reportedly killed at the Prison Farm, Kujama, along Kaduna-Kachia road. Weeks before this incident, Joseph Bako, a Catholic priest who was abducted in March from his residence at St John Catholic Church, Kudenda, Kaduna, was found dead.
On June 29, Samuel Kanu, Methodist prelate, was kidnapped in Abia state. The clergyman gave a depressingly harrowing account of his ordeal on the turf of these enemies of humanity. A few other priests have been kidnapped and some killed.
The kidnapping of priests appears methodic and targeted – just like the targeting and abduction of emirs and village heads by these ”bandits”. Perhaps the motive is to instigate and amplify religious tension. Already, there have been suggestions that these assaults on existence fit into a grand sinister plot. But we must realise, at all times, that these criminals are the common enemy of all. They have killed and kidnapped Muslims, Christians, children, young and old.
We must remain united against the devilment of those who want to cleave us apart.
These blights on humanity have sacked communities in Zamfara, Kaduna, Katsina and elsewhere. They have expropriated land and are extracting tolls from citizens. Security agents have not been spared. They have been abducted and some reportedly have paid ransoms to secure their freedom. The plot on security seems totally lost.
A few days ago, a divisional police officer (DPO) who was leading his men to rescue kidnap victims in Nasarawa was himself stolen by these dare-devil freebooters. His abductors demanded five million naira before he would be freed. On June 26, Ochogwu Sunday, a divisional police officer in Birnin-Gwari, Kaduna was kidnapped. Other officers have either been kidnapped or killed. On Wednesday, Aminu Umar, an assistant commissioner of police, was felled by the crimson bullets of bandits in Katsina.
