Dr. Okonjo-Iweala is the Finance Minister and "Coordinating Minister for the Economy". Last year, her mother, Professor Kamene Okonjo, was kidnapped and later released.
I am vvery happy that it all ended well and safely for her mother, but the Finance Minister seemed to have chosen to use the incident to play politics, telling a press conference her mother's abduction was linked to the controversial fuel subsidy issue.
Let me stress that I am not heartless. I know exactly how she must have felt when she was told her mother was in the hands of the kidnappers, and exactly how she must have felt to embrace her mother again when it was all over. In such situations you might do or say things that you wouldn't do or say in other circumstances.
But Dr. Okonjo-Iweala occupies what is purported to be the most powerful position in the Jonathan Administration cabinet. In theory, she wields (or is meant to wield) more influence than the any of the Vice-President, the External Affairs Minister or the Defence Minister. She is presented to the public as though she were President Jonathan's "prime minister" and guiding force of his government. Of course, the true nature of Nigerian politics is such that other priorities and principals are likely more influential on the President's decision-making than anything Dr. Okonjo-Iweala says or does ....
.... but you start to wonder if the Nigerian Federal Government is giving the long-running epidemic of kidnapping the seriousness, focus, attention and resources it deserves.
With the greatest of respect, the kidnapping of Dr. Okonjo-Iweala's mother had nothing to do with politics or the fuel subsidy issue. It was just another kidnapping in a thriving criminal enterprise. Her mother's situation was only unique in the sense that kidnappings only make the national news when a prominent citizen is taken. Aside from having a daughter who is the Finance Minister, the Okonjo Family are Ogwashi-Ukwu royalty; one newspaper properly addressed Professor Kamene Okonjo as "Her Royal Highness".
Before I go on to talk about the scourge of kidnapping, let me take a moment to put it in perspective, since this blog post may be read by foreigners who don't have firsthand experience of Nigeria. Before the Nigeria'99 World Youth Cup, and years later in advance of the 2010 World Cup hosted by South Africa, one noticed segments of the foreign media creating the impression that as soon as you walked out of your aeroplane into Nigeria or South Africa you would be accosted by violent criminals.
I do want to discuss our public security problems, and I do consider this issue to be at or near the top of the priority list for reform, restructuring and transformation, but I do not want to add to the type of misinformation that preceded Nigeria'99. There are at least 100 million people living in Nigeria, most of whom are not directly affected by crime of any kind of a daily basis. In all the time I lived in Nigeria, I was never affected by crime. My first personal experience of crime came after I moved to the USA for tertiary education.
Having said that, all Nigerians would agree that the rate of kidnapping in the Federal Republic is far too high, and that the kidnappers are very bold in their actions because they know the odds of facing any kind of judicial sanction are far too slim.
Dr. Okonjo-Iweala's mother is not the first high-profile victim, nor is she the first family-member of a high-profile person to be kidnapped. Indeed, not too long after her release came news Nkiru Sylanus had been kidnapped. Ms. Sylvanus is a not-famous Nigerian film actress who now serves as a Special Assistant on
Public Affairs to Imo State Governor Rochas Okorocha. The criminals who
kidnapped Dr. Okonjo-Iweala's mother had demanded ₦200 million; those
who took Ms. Sylvanus wanted ₦100 million.
Ms. Sylvanus was released after her family paid ₦8 million. The Nigerian Police Force subsequently issued a public statement saying her family had paid the ransom though they (the police) had told the family not too. After Ms. Sylvanus' release, the police arrested and paraded suspects in her kidnapping and other kidnapping cases.
The articles I've read on Professor Kamen Okonjo's release do not mention whether a ransom was paid or not, but shortly before her release, the army (i.e. not the police) arrested 63 people for questioning regarding the kidnapping.
I don't mean to sound cynical, but our police (and politicians) have little or no credibility in public security issues. One
particular boldfaced lie told not too long ago about an extra-judicial execution in Maiduguri will probably go down in our history as the most infamous lie ever told by Nigerian Police brass. The safest position to take is to say I do not know if there was or wasn't just cause to arrest any of the suspects arrested on suspicion of involvement with these two kidnappings. Maybe there was. Maybe there wasn't. Maybe someone, anyone had to be arrested for reasons of public appearances, and maybe someone was.
Before accusing me of cynicism, consider these two examples, the first a Vanguard article discussing the case of a pregnant woman who was arrested and held for 6 months, the second a BBC report on a lucky man who was detained without charges for 7 years, during which time he was shot in the leg and tortured, having been arrested on suspicion of being an armed robber -- his parents were told a year into his detention that he was dead.
The people described in the cases above are lucky, both to be alive (what with the issue of extra-judicial executions), but also because someone in the media bothered to tell their stories. As Nigerian citizens, we go about our daily lives with little thought for the 70% of all Nigerian prison inmates who have been stuck in prison "awaiting trial" for years or decades. Some have not been charged with anything. Some who are arrested as "suspects", mysteriously die during or following "interrogation". Some are only in prison because they are related to someone the police is looking for (by the way, if someone is a hardened criminal, the person most likely doesn't care enough about anyone, to accept starvation and prison-borne diseases in exchange for a family member's freedom).
I don't deal in optimism, pessimism, cynicism or any other "ism". I don't even subscribe to any of the political or ideological "isms". My thing is to look at problems that have been around for a very long time without anything being done to either fix/correct or even just ameliorate.
While the police were parading their suspects in the Nkiru Sylvanus case, gunmen were busy at work kidnapping a member of the Gombe State House of Assembly. The linked-to article describes it as the first reported kidnapping in Gombe, but, as I keep pointing out on this blog, these type of events only make it into the news media (and attract the attention of governmental institutions) when it affects someone important, or when the event plays in to one of the broader political narratives constantly being woven by those with the loudest voices in our society (e.g. when an event can be used to reinforce inter-ethnic, inter-regional and and inter-cultural suspicion and distrust). Luckily and happily, the Gombe State lawmaker was released on the 2nd of January in the New Year ....
.... but surely the scope of the problem is clear? Indeed, the article discussing the arrest of suspects in the Nkiru Sylvanus case also mentioned the since-resolved abduction of the four-year-old daughter of the Publicity Secretary of the Imo State branch of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP)!
I have often pointed out that the nature of Fourth Republic politics obliges politicians to hire private armies of thugs in order to advance their political ambitions. In-between elections, these armed men tend to find ways to make money for themselves through smuggling, brigandage, "militancy" to extort pay-offs and contracts, kidnapping, armed robbery, and assorted other violent criminal enterprises. I am not saying that every person involved in these type of crimes moonlights as a political enforcer during election periods. I am saying the inverse -- that all of the election-year political enforcers moonlight as criminals between elections.
The respected, but now troubled, Nigerian news magazine Newswatch did a story years ago, questioning allegations that Obioma Nwankwo alias Osisikankwu, the infamous kingpin of kidnapping and armed robbery who declared war on Abia State, had began his criminal career as an enforcer manipulating elections on behalf of People's Progressive Alliance then-gubernatorial candidate (and current Governor) Theodore Orji.
It is difficult to know for sure if the allegations reported by Newswatch are factual, however, I have always maintained that the only good thing that came of the 2003-2006 Anambra State political crisis precipitated by Chris Ubah is it gave Nigerians a very clear and unvarnished view of the realities of Nigerian politics. Politics is no different in the Niger-Delta, the Southwestern states, Kwara State and in the Northwest, the East-Middle-Belt or the Northeast.
It creates a situation, a paradox, where all three tiers of Nigeria's governments are obliged to contradict themselves, to negate their own actions when it comes to issues of law enforcement and public security. On the one hand, they do certain things that are technically designed to improve public security, but on the other hand they do other things that aggressively and deliberately render their law enforcement efforts ineffectual to the degree of being essentially nonexistent.
There have been reported incidents over the years of Nigerian soldiers arriving at the headquarters of a smuggling operation to find the smugglers had been tipped off to their arrival and had disappeared. And there was the very, very embarrassing incident of an impounded smugglers' ship escaping from Nigerian Navy custody without challenge (two Admirals were later shown to have aided the criminal escape).
For these reasons, citizens tend to suspect law enforcement agencies, security agencies and politicians know a lot more about these organized criminal groups than they admit. The fact that they operate so freely brings up suspicions of political involvement, which are, ironically, then exploited by the three tiers of government to deflect attention from their ineffectual efforts to control and limit crime. President Jonathan has made vague allegations about insurgency collaborators in his government, and Finance Minister Okonjo-Iweala has raised the spectre of the fuel subsidy "cabal" being involved in the kidnapping industry.
The same sort of vague "gist" you get from street conversations.
Or blogs.
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