The Nigeria Police and other security agencies appear to be in a quandary over strategies to combat the increasing level of crime and its diverse nature in Abuja, the nation’s capital and environs as criminals have unbelievably become more daring and impervious to arrests and prosecution.
One of the latest victims of the booming criminal enterprise of kidnapping in Abuja was a reporter with the Channels Television, Friday Okeregbe, who was kidnapped on Friday, March 22 on the way to his home in Lugbe, a suburb of the Federal Capital Territory. The abductors had demanded ransom of N50 million and held the reporter in captivity for almost one week within the FCT until he was released on Thursday, March 28. It was not certain if the family and friends of the reporter paid any ransom to the kidnappers before he was freed.
Cases of kidnapping in the FCT seem to have overwhelmed the police and other security agencies despite the huge efforts they are said to be making. But crime comes in diverse forms in Abuja ranging from pickpockets, car-theft, which is another aspect of criminality that appears to have defied the security agencies. There is also the growing “one chance” criminal tactic of luring unsuspecting commuters into a private or commercial vehicle and dispossessing them of their valuables at gunpoint or under the threat of other lethal weapons as well as armed robbery.
One of BusinessDay’s reporters had such nasty experience on February 6 on his way home after attending an event at about 9:50 pm. He boarded a Toyota Camry car popularly called “muscle”. The unsuspecting reporter was taken to a lonely part of town by four machetes-wielding hoodlums, robbed of his valuable items and thereafter pushed out of the car.
When the matter was reported to the Central Police Station at the Federal Secretariat, the following day, the police officer, who pleaded anonymity, disclosed that those set of criminals had been operating within the same vicinity for over a week as many other victims had reported same incident. The police officer, looking overwhelmed, admitted that some of these criminals collaborate with some policemen to perpetrate the crime and that is why it is proving increasingly difficult to tame the scourge.
He said: “The police are almost handicapped in these cases because we have discovered that some officers allowed themselves to be part of this crime and that is why there appears to be so much impunity in these criminal acts.” He however, noted that the police despite their difficulties are doing enough to check the menace. Incidentally, this same BusinessDay reporter had on December 9, 2017, lost his car to thieves and almost two years after he is yet to recover his car even after reporting to the police.
When contacted, the spokesman of the FCT Police Command, Anjuguri Manza, couldn’t respond as he was said to be in a meeting.
Another BusinessDay staffer also lost his car to thieves at a parking lot at Area 10 in early March, yet no trace of the car, such that it has become daily ritual for the police to feed the public with the tale of the number of cars snatched in a day without as much efforts to recover them. Other staffers resident in the FCT have had one harrowing experience or the other in the hands of these desperate criminals.
Some of the victims have not been lucky as the criminals have in many instances snuffed lives out of them. BDSU NDAY gathered that one commercial motorcycle operator, whose name was given as Ali was brutally murdered in Karu, Abuja in February. He was said to have struggled with the hoodlums who attempted to snatch his motorcycle and they hacked him to death with machetes, leaving his 5 children and a heavily pregnant wife to mourn.
Another ugly streak of criminality is the latest fashion of ritual killings, especially the new dimension of stealing sanitary pads and ladies’ underwear for ritual purposes. This diabolical phenomenon may not have started in Abuja, but the nation’s capital is becoming the hub of this mysterious occurrence.
The terrible incident of internet fraud has also enveloped the nation’s capital as the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) on daily basis posts a success story of arrests, prosecution and imprisonment of the internet fraudsters popularly called yahoo boys. However, the yahoo boys have increased in number in recent times.
The impunity with which the criminals operate suggests a more fundamental crisis in the nation’s security architecture and a more intense pressure in the economic circumstances of the nation.
Experts have posited that there is a correlation between the adverse economy and the growing crime rate in the country.
Speaking to BDSUNDAY in an interview on Friday, Senior Security expert, Ben Okezie, who also narrated his sad experience in the hands of hoodlums near the National Stadium, Abuja, said: “The harsh economy has rendered many people jobless. The government in power did not do anything in terms of creating jobs except giving free money, and free money is not there always.”
He attributed the inability of the police to deal with security issues to poor “funding, poor motivation and poor welfare package for the police officers.”
He lamented that Abuja is porous, adding that due to corruption, the CCTV facilities that are supposed to be all over the city have either failed to function or were never installed. Okezie however, expressed the optimism that the current Acting Inspector General of Police, Mohammed Adamu, is correcting some of the anomalies in the police, especially his resolve to fish out the bad eggs in the police.
Another expert, who wished to remain anonymous, also attributed the upsurge in crime to the poor economy, especially in the last four years.
“In the last four years for instance, the downturn in the economy had led to 20.9 million people losing their jobs according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), especially among the youth.
“The hardship is biting harder as costs of basic commodities including accommodation have skyrocketed. Inflation at over 11percent has eaten so deeply into the disposable income of the people, leaving them with little or no savings.
“The scary 3.4percent annual population growth rate within an economy, which GDP growth rate struggles at 1.9 percent per annum is sure to trigger high level desperation, which is what the nation faces today,” he said.
According to him, “Without a deliberate policy to revamp the economy and create jobs for the teeming youth, nothing will stop these desperate youths who are determined to perpetrate crime to survive. The government must change its strategy.”
