THE Assistant Inspector General of Police (AIG), Zone 2, Abdulmajeed Ali, on Monday indicated to the media that the federal government could prescribe capital punishment for pipeline vandals if things continued to look scary in the waterways and creeks. The vandals are not militants, he says, but robbers, hoodlums and kidnappers in disguise. He was not definitive about the proposal, nor did he indicate how soon that proposal could be tabled. He also did not disclose the identity of those sponsoring that drastic proposal. Given the scale of the problem of pipeline vandalism, especially in the light of the military operations in the Arepo, Ebute-Ibafo and Ikorodu axis of Ogun and Lagos States, it is not surprising that such measures are being contemplated in certain government circles. After all, in some one-party democracies such as China, economic sabotage attracts capital punishment.
There is no doubt the scale of pipeline sabotage in many parts of the country is simply staggering and, like treasury looting, deserves the harshest treatment to extirpate it. There is also no doubt that the slothful handling of the problem had encouraged vandals to turn pipeline sabotage into an industry. And given the economic downturn being experienced in the country, it is absolutely intolerable for a few to be allowed to expropriate the resources of the majority. It is therefore sensible for those saddled with law enforcement, and indeed all long-suffering Nigerians, to desire the harshest punishment for pipeline vandalism.
But once capital punishment has been prescribed for pipeline vandalism, there is no higher punishment left to seek. In fact, contrary to the logic that underpins it, that penalty lures the society into complacency, believing that that heaviest of punishments is enough deterrence. Tragically, it is often not. Indeed, it reflects poor, unscientific thinking, and slow and lazy law enforcement . Some states have instituted capital punishment for kidnapping, but that crime has become even more widespread, vicious and entrenched. Capital punishment has been in place for decades for armed robbery, but it has not had a dent on the crime, not even with proven extrajudicial killing of suspects, some of them framed. These crimes are doubtless horrendous, and the society is rightly desperate to want to bring them to heel. But it is time to study these crimes and, rather than the ad hoc and emotive approach to controlling them, design appropriate and more effective controls and punishment.
Campaigning for capital punishment for pipeline vandalism is a knee-jerk reaction to a crime that should not have been allowed to morph into a deadly and desperate crime in the first instance. Wearied citizens and harassed security agencies celebrate dramatic battles against crimes like the ongoing campaigns against pipeline vandals in the Southwest, Boko Haram in the Northeast, and militants in the Niger Delta. But these crimes, especially the huge monsters they have become, reflect the poverty of thinking in high places and the impotence, if not collusion, of the government in fighting them. There will always be crime: if not armed robbery, then kidnapping, and if not kidnapping, then pipeline sabotage. What these crimes call for is not simply to look for the harshest deterrence but to engage a scientific approach to combating them, beginning from a scientific study of the crimes to understanding their nature and causes, and to designing remedial measures and punishment in order to achieve a lasting impact on them. For once death penalty fails to provide the deterrence the government expects, the temptation to throw hands in the air in despair and resignation is strong and irresistible.
It is time to embrace the right, but perhaps hard, approach. There are many crimes the death penalty has not resolved. Adding pipeline vandalism to it is a barren and escapist exercise that demonstrate the poverty of thinking that suffuses Nigeria. The country should more sensibly think its way out of the crimes that buffet it. Death penalty has never been a useful and potent deterrence. It won’t acquire that desired image with pipeline vandalism.
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Criminals should never be supported and the death penalty is a punishment
makes sense even if there are people who would believe.
Unfortunately it is necessary to determine this with the introduction of the death penalty
2014 on the African Union the crime decreased in cases of
Murder, rape and corruption within the Government of police
the military and the civilian population, only routes
Organized crime drug and corporate sabotage you will
Death penalty not abolish what is working in other areas
also in these areas of operation.
Sure is there always people who set up with any of that.
try to Beukatieren what is right. For the citizens and people
Nation Africa. Sabotage is and remains an irreversible requiring
Crime. And I think if it has convicted the first 20 to death will be decreasing this crime, too.
Sure you can say it will be not finished but mind who already
If these or other cockroaches are sentenced to death.
If the death penalty is not abolished what never happened
are people they gain that come to the question
However whether they place and instead come to or just before a court
should. According to the and permissive wish, we live in a democracy where should be also no place for criminals.