Dismantling the siege kidnappers lay to Edo State, By Tony Erha

The remedies against the incessant kidnapping and its related crimes taking place in Edo State, Nigeria, as suggested by Ifidon Irueghe, could give the state the needed relief, especially now that there are torrents of ‘Save Our Soul’ messages being lodged before the Police and other concerned authourities by road users. This is at the background that most interior roads and federal expressways and the civil spaces of the heartbeat state are increasingly becoming dens of the hoodlums.

Irueghe, a lawyer and environmentalist, was held captive by a gang of kidnappers that tortured him for five days long, in the vast rainforest jungle, in which they dragged him, whilst bargaining for a huge ransom.

Alas, in the very evening of 1st April, 2018, which marked ‘April Fool’ and the Christians Easter Sunday of redemption from sins, Irueghe’s car screeched to a shaky stop, on the road-stretch between Ozalla and Iruekpen towns, closed to the Iruekpen/Ehor axis of the crime-infested Benin/Auchi expressway, before a herd of cattle, which eased the operation of the kidnappers, who whisked him into the bush, amidst a rain of gunshots. Irueghe had his star to thank as the criminals did not waste his life and those of two other occupants of his car, who escaped the scene without bullet shot wounds.

But before this incident and closed to the same hotspot, four policemen and two other road users, had also been shot and killed, when Mike Ozekhome, a notable lawyer/rights activist and Ona Aikhomu, a foremost Nigerian security expert, had encountered them, respectively. In the same axis, many police officers, including a serving local government chairman are amongst the numerous victims that were mauled down, while many more had been maimed, robbed and raped. Huge ransoms are paid by those who could afford it as those who can’t are shot, hanged to the trees, buried alive and tied to the stake, to die.

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Obviously because of the fears of reprisal kidnapping threatened by the scoundrels, the victims chose to keep mute from relating their sordid experiences to the public, which may assist in arresting the marauders. Of course, this is also suggestive of the wariness or distrust usually expressed by some persons that there are backlashes to information volunteering about the criminals, as some law enforcement agents are said to accomplish to the same criminals.

Whereas many a victim have been so unhelpful, not the same thing with Irueghe, an intrepid and a pro-public personality, who openly condemned not only his sordid experience but the incarcerations and un-foretold agony which all the victims go through, in addition to documenting his experiences and proffering lasting solutions to the menace. And for unfolding the criminalities and proffering lasting solutions, he and the surrounding local communities, who confronted the criminals, had been sent threat messages. But, that the criminalities had escalated instead of abating, long after the public expositions by Ifidon and others, is rather indicative that the advice were not heeded and acted on by those concerned.

Irueghe’s open revelations were that the leader of the over twenty-man team, that was one of the many units of the well-organized kidnapping, armed robbery and ransom-taking main syndicate, that ran a ring of the state and several others in the geopolitical zone, was a vicious kingpin of the Boko Haram insurgency. The leader, who claimed to have killed over 100 souls in his kidnapping and robbery escapades, apart from the most killings he had done with the dreaded Boko Haram, was a non-Nigerian of the Buzu-Kanuri origin from the Niger Republic. Further revelations that the cattle herdsmen from the Niger Republic, Chad, Mali and Sudan etc. were mostly responsible for the crimes (than the original Nigerian herders) sounded interesting.

The operational methods of the gangs, who were said to have a better mastering of the jungles than the locals, was also vital, as the very gang, like the others operated with sophisticated weapons such as AK 47, Pump Action, cut-to-size Riffles, Russian Bazookas, explosive devices and other lethal weapons.

But for the state governor, Mr. Godwin Obaseki, who tries to douse the public’s tension, with assurances that the populace were safe, as he continually express his government’s desire to arrest the ugly trend, heeding to and acting on the advice of Irueghe and others, would be all needed to ride Edo of the terror gangs.

▪︎Tony Erha, a Crime Reporter and activist writes from Benin City, Edo State.