The absence of proactiveness and commitment by the country’s security formations – to detect, prevent and prosecute criminal elements are often criticized as reasons why crimes thrive in the country. Also, the citizenry lacks effective community policing strategy in abating crime surges and failure to bring the criminal elements to justice. The country’s news network is inundated with protracted armed robbery, kidnapping for ransom, ritual killings, banditry, youth restiveness and other social vices.
Currently, the country also seems unable to checkmate or halt the high spate of insurgency consistently posed by the Boko Harm hoodlums and the unending vicious attacks of the Fulani herdsmen against crops farmers. These have increased to killings and maiming of humans, property losses, arsons and economic saboteurs.
The escalating crimes and less of damage control would have been ameliorated if the various security bodies and the public have a closely guarded synergy of security intelligent gathering methods, especially where information and experiences by the victims of the crimes and the culprits, are not fully utilized.
A particular case in view is that of Ifidon Irueghe, a lawyer and environmental activist, who was a kidnapped victim, whose testimonies were discarded, whereas they would have facilitated undercover investigation, arrest of the culprits, as deterrence to others who continually engage in the sordid crimes. Irueghe’s horrifying experiences were then shared with the concerned security agencies and the general public, especially through his narrations, which were widely portrayed in the various print and electronic media. With the crimes still unabated, it is however, doubtful if the constituted authorities took to such public exposition and advise, as cognitive steps to checkmating the criminalities, as a pivot to solving similar rampant cases, countrywide.
In April, 2018, Irueghe, also a community leader in his native town of Ozalla, in Owan West Local Government Area (LGA) of the state, was kidnapped in a bush between Iruekpen and Ozalla, on the blockade by a herd of cattle led by the Fulanis, in the same area that is notorious for armed robbery and kidnapping. Whilst numerous other victims keep mute to exposing the culprits, obviously because of comeback attacks, it was only himself, Chief Mike Ozekhomen, a human rights lawyer and activist and Ona Eikhomun, a security expert, who relayed their bitter experiences in the public media, obviously with the intention to arrest the ugly trend.
But, since Irueghe had done what he thought was necessary to expose and deter the criminal activities, as a pilot to saving his fellow countrymen from the same ordeals, he and his family have not had respite. Apart from the strange letters of threats of imminent attacks allegedly sent to the local communities by the ‘kidnapping syndicate’, had had gotten more. Consequently, his life and that of his family members have been continually threatened, thus leading him and his family to abandon his home.
“My life and that of my children, wife, dependents and other family members had been continually threatened, so much so that I have to abandon my home, since 2018. My professional practice had suffered a great deal. It upsets my children’s education and the ability of my family to relate with the kin they had always known. We have taken refuge outside my community. I and my family members can’t afford to risk the same deadly experience I went through in the den of those wicked kidnappers. Sometimes, I had to go and live in Kenyan, because I was afraid for my life”.
Although, Irueghe had severally observed that those who kidnapped him for the harrowing days, were of Fulani origins and deserters from the Boko Haram insurgency, serial revelations from some of the criminals, who had been caught by the police, suggest that there are local accomplishes to the heinous crimes. It is also complicated in the manner several security agents are alleged to be in the league with kidnappers and robbery gangs. And victims and informants hardly trust the local police with information leading to their arrests, because of the fear of the police divulging the source of information and backlash attacks.
Tony Erha, a journalist and activist, writes from Benin City, Edo State.
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