I WAS abducted from my Port Harcourt residence by armed men on Sunday August 30…and released nearly two weeks later on Friday September 11.
It was a horrific experience overall. The loss of freedom was hard to bear. The primitive hut in which I was incarcerated was extremely uncomfortable and full of mosquitos and sand flies. A large rat emerged from Lord knows where when darkness fell. I was regularly threatened; and I frequently feared for my life.
I was assured that I would be murdered or maimed if my family and friends did not deliver a juicy ransom payment…and if security personnel attempted to rescue me. I was also told that I would get caught in crossfire if a rival gang of kidnappers tried to “steal” me.
Rival gang of kidnappers
And there were times when some of my jailors angrily lashed out and accused me of being a fully-fledged member of a greedy and uncaring Establishment that steals public funds and cheats the masses.
But it has to be said that I was also treated kindly sometimes.
Within any group, there will be different personality types; and some of my young captors – there were eight of them – were nicer than others; and, to be fair, even the worst of them possessed humane streaks and senses of humour.
They didn’t hesitate to purchase blood pressure medication for me when I told them that I was hypertensive, bought me (without any prompting) warm clothes so I wouldn’t feel cold during the chilly creek nights, gave me a Bible to read, teased me for being an “Oyinbo Woman” and laughed when I told them that if they killed me, I would come back as a ghost and haunt them…and that I was so troublesome on occasion that some of my friends would pay them to keep me.
They regularly offered me food, drink and cigarettes. Some of them addressed me respectfully or affectionately as “Madame” or “Mummy” and apologised for kidnapping me and said that they had only turned to crime because they couldn’t get jobs. And we had quite a few cordial and stimulating conversations about their dreams, my overseas travels, elections, cooking and many other topics.
They complained about being betrayed by various Niger Deltan militant leaders and various mainstream politicians. They said they were waging a war against “Big Men” who had used and dumped them…and “chopped” their money.
Stockholm Syndrome, or capture-bonding, is a psychological phenomenon in which hostages develop positive feelings toward their captors, sometimes to the point of defending and identifying with them.
Given that I have always been a Niger Deltan advocate and activist of sorts who has long worried about neglected Niger Deltan youths, I wasn’t surprised when I started to emphatise with “The Boys”, as they liked to describe themselves.
So though I went through phases of bitterly resenting them for hurting me and turning me into a helpless and humiliated hostage, I also went through phases of feeling sorry for them and regarding them as victims of a dysfunctional society.
Functional society
I persuaded myself to believe that most of them were basically benign and essentially harmless. I persuaded myself to believe that I might have become a gun-toting kidnapper/robber myself if I had been born male and impoverished.
I persuaded myself to believe that most of them would be transformed into law-abiding citizens if they were given a chance to improve themselves and earn reasonable sums legally. And I begged them to abandon their dangerous and sadistic occupation and find alternative ways of earning their daily crusts. I also found myself wishing that I would one day be in a position to help them.
Now that I have been liberated from a proximity that made me emotionally bond with my captors but was – when all is said and done – enforced, traumatic and frightening, I have a considerably less sentimental attitude towards them.
I still understand why they became outlaws and I am grateful to them for returning my phones and my passport and for not shooting me; but some kidnappings go wrong and end tragically; and I cannot approve of the choices they’ve made or the misery they inflict on abductees and their families.
The Boys told me that there were about 30 different kidnapping gangs in Port Harcourt and I am very upset about the fact that I now feel so unsafe in my home town, that I hastily left it last week and I am not likely to return.
Kidnapping has become an epidemic in Rivers State and the Niger Delta in general and is becoming increasingly common in other parts of the country (former presidential candidate, Chief Olu Falae, was recently grabbed in Ondo and later released).
Federal authorities
One can only urge the security agencies, state governments and Federal authorities to up their game and stamp out this evil trade by eradicating poverty and adopting a more robust stance towards crime prevention.
Let me also seize this opportunity to thank, from the bottom of my heart, the many Nigerian and foreign individuals and organisations that expressed concern when I disappeared, demanded or facilitated my release and kindly lavished love, concern and practical support on me when I emerged from my ordeal:
*Uncle Sam Amuka, the Publisher of Vanguard newspapers;
*The Rivers State Commissioner of Police, Musa Kimo;
*Rotimi Chibuike Amaechi, the former Governor of Rivers State;
*Chief Nyesom Wike, the current Rivers State Governor, and Kenneth Kobani, the Secretary to the Rivers State Government;
*APC Women in Rivers State and APC official spokesperson, Chris Finebone;
*Ogoni journalists associations and Ledum Mitee, the former head of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People, MOSOP;
*PEN International, which is based in London, has 149 centres worldwide and promotes freedom of expression for professional writers.
Plus SEVERAL others who do not wish to be publicly acknowledged.
VANGUARD
END
For as long as we have and perpetually seek to maintain a dysfunctional society, crime and criminals will abide and continue to thrive with us. Though no reason should be advanced in defense of acts of criminality, yet we must candidly look at the immediate and remote causes of what prompt and urge individuals as well as institutions into unwholesome acts of criminality and crime against fellow citizens and the State at large.
The sorry, nay gory stories of kidnapping, abduction and seeking and/or giving ransoms must be curbed, tamed and wiped out altogether. These call for holistic approaches which must address the covert and obvious reasons for these acts of brutality which are engulfing our society and feasting precariously on all.
Thus, a multi-prong approach must be evolved and implemented across board. Suffice to note that poverty seems to be the unfortunate and underlying factor usually advanced as fueling crimes in many societies. For me, I do not really concur with this proposition. Poverty, no matter the shade it comes from ought not be alibi for engaging in crime. This I say because I have been in dire (poverty-stricken) situations where for months, I could not boast of having five (5) naira in my pocket or bank accounts, yet I did not resort to any social and/or economic vice unlike many of the ‘the Boys’ are wont to do due largely to their being greedy and lazy. If all poor people on planet earth are to take to crime to assuage their impoverished conditions, then the whole world is doomed for unimaginable chaos and utter crisis of irredeemable proportion.
Creating functional environments and sustaining egalitarian society that encourage dignity of labour, productivity, competition and fairness in terms of EQUITABLE (and not necessarily equal) distribution of the commonwealth will and should be good starts and better ends to addressing and redressing the menace and malaise of crime and criminality being perpetuated under the shade of kidnapping, abduction and armed robbery.
Such functional society and harmonious environment will to larger extent spur and indeed drive our somewhat restive and sometimes slothful youths to come up with practical ideas and indeed engage in worthwhile ventures and profitable adventures at both moderate platforms of business enterprise and expansive levels of socio-economic activities. The opportunities and resources to forestall and curb the maladies and throes of restiveness and criminality greatly abound in this land. Harnessing these resources and leveraging on these opportunities should be encouraged and worked upon by ALL – family, schools, churches, communities, media and governments.
Having functional society will at least help our people to look inwards and thereby aid our people to appropriately maximize the opportunities and resources around them. It is when people truly look inside of themselves, that they can therefrom see the vast potentials and abilities within them which can serve as springboards to taking advantage of the opportunities and resources abounding around their visible environments and virtual space as offered by such functional society. Anything short of these (looking inward and harnessing the opportunities without) will either make the people take to flight and/or fight – fleeing to another ‘lands of and for opportunity and abundance’ and/or fighting their own people within their own ‘poverty-ridden and pain-infested land’.
Our society should not be directly linked to and/or discreetly pointed at as promoting and/or encouraging crime and criminality. The covert inaction and/or calculated action of State actors – political class, social elites, corporate executives, and eminent ecclesiastic plus prominent traditional figureheads as found within the body polity – must not endanger the collective well-being of the people as well as impede the overall wellness of the nation. Never must the deeds and utterances of State managers, particularly those within the corridors and bedrooms of power lure and/or force the people into that precarious situations where some sects and sections of the citizenry and populace leverage on the inactions of the ‘high and mighty’ in a dysfunctional society to make recourse to untoward attitudes and thus unleash untold acts of cruelty on others as ways of fighting back the ‘unjust’ system and ‘unfair’ structures within the land.
A functional society is that one that aptly reinforces the timeless wisdom penned through the hands of Russell H. Conwell in a book titled: Acre of Diamonds. It is on this classic piece I gleaned a life-transforming disposition to my conditions and my immediate environment. My stance has always been and will continue to be: Rather be a king in hell than slave in heaven. Meaning, I will rather stay in my seemingly underdeveloped and/or economically emerging country, work and earn decent wages here, live and enjoy life here, and indeed be treated as first-class indigene here in my homeland than jet (check) out in search of an illusory ‘greener pasture’ abroad, get a menial and/or high-profiled, ‘high paying’ job – as occasioned by the dynamics of the Forex – but ultimately end up being treated and threatened as second-class citizen, if not lower rated human being in a foreign land whilst getting homesick every second of the day staying overseas.
Our society must encourage our people to live here and thrive here. Ours must be a land that helps all to be helpers and be helped. Ours must make real and alive that Yoruba parlance that says: “Ohun tan nwa lo si Sokoto (State), wa ni abe Sokoto (Trouser) wa” which implies that what we often seek in faraway land may (and in most cases, are) right (t)here where we are presently positioned and directly situated. It is when and where we work towards having and sustaining such functional society that cases of kidnapping, abduction and other forms of criminality can give way to peace, prosperity and every other thing that makes for harmonious living. This to me is part of the many solutions and suggestions to preventing and curtailing the reoccurring incidences of kidnapping and abduction as being witnessed in the land.
They can’t hide for long; nemesis will surely catch up with them someday. Lack of job is not an excuse to take to a life of crime. These guys just don’t want to humble themselves and do menial jobs to survive. They do not want to crawl and then walk before they fly.
legends of Robin Hood, William Tell, D’Artagnan and the 3musketeers, Rupert of Hentzau/Prisoner of Zenda playing itself out as mark of war to get rid of in-equity in our society. our society basically illitetrate and physically garbed and present in 21st century, but our psyche resides in 13th century,
a rise from about 48million people in 1960 to about 170million now and basic illiterates and social/ethical misfits/tribal jingoists in rulership spells doom and the alerts are on.
kidnappers, millitants, tribal militias, normadic marauders, pen robbers, clueless/floundering governance—we are in for a hard time in this unguided transition from extended family and attendant safeguards to nuclear family system in a dysfunctional economy. national re-orientation / re-ordering of priorities urgently required
Dear Donu,
I am relieved as well as many others that you have regained your freedom.
Unfortunately if you don’t deal with the symptoms the diesel will take its toll.
The impunity with which leadership has unleashed on citizenry over the last 40 odd years is bearing full fruit.
We must not up out game but change if it doesn’t end up consuming us all.
How much ransom was paid before the release or nothing was paid? Do we now believe that kidnappers became born again and had change of heart to release her without dropping something. Story is not straight & incomplete