An appointment with kidnappers

I AM losing patience with Niger Delta kidnappers. And I have decided to fix an appointment with them. This is the plan. When next I visit the Niger Delta region, I will give advance notice of my arrival date, my location and a clear description of myself to the kidnappers, militants and all groups of people who specialise in kidnapping as an occupation.

Equipped with advance knowledge of my personal details and my movements, the kidnappers don't have to sweat to abduct me or to dodge their nemesis - the Joint Task Force on the Niger Delta. Once I am in the region, I will announce my availability and place of residence. But there will be two conditions. One: the kidnappers shouldn't fight over which group should have custody over my person. It's going to be clandestine business based strictly on first-come, first-take. Two: the kidnappers must not carry weapons. Real men don't carry weapons of destruction. It's unnecessary to do so.

I know how everyone feels about this audacious arrangement. It's like toying with a tiger's tail or an unthinkable adventure that is guaranteed to go horribly wrong. It may or may not go awry. It is a genuine effort to get face-to-face with adults who behave like juveniles.

This adventure is driven partly by a personal desire to find out how much I am worth in the estimation of kidnappers, hijackers and militants. If you want a free, on-the-spot appraisal of your worth (in local or foreign currency), just arrange an appointment with dare-devil kidnappers who have set up shops along the streets in the Niger Delta region. They are easy to identify. Once they complete the evaluation task, they will drop you off free at a convenient location to be determined by your relatives or employers.

For the period you will be a guest of the kidnappers, you will be guaranteed free food, including morning and evening tea (Lipton, Bournvita or Nescafe included in the menu, whichever suits your taste). Make no mistake about it. Niger Delta kidnappers are rich. And they eat like kings too. Don't mistake their rag-tag uniform as a statement about their social status. Their uniform is for operational purposes only. Once they retire to their residence in the swamps, they put on their best clothes and spray the most expensive perfume you can imagine.

The kidnappers who parade the Niger Delta are selfish men. They are more interested in their personal welfare rather than the wellbeing of those they purport to be fighting for. But they are engaged in a booming business, so much so that family chauffeurs are now conspiring to have the children of their employers kidnapped. The drivers who are employed to take children to school have figured things out for themselves. And they have calculated correctly. There is more money in masterminding the successful abduction of the children of your employers than in receiving monthly "peanuts" as wages.

Kidnappers who comb the streets and jungles of the Niger Delta in search of defenceless children to abduct are lily-livered men. By their activities, they undermine rather than advance the cause of the Niger Delta people. For all their macho image and gun-totting, attention-grabbing behaviour, the kidnappers are not real men. Real men don't kidnap school children. Real men don't do kids' stuff. Real men don't grab children from their schoolyard and run into the bush.

Real men don't shoot at children who resist abduction. Real men don't drag children from their school bus and demand money from their parents. Real men don't kidnap a three-month-old child or a three-year-old girl and dash into the forest. Real men stand up and fight injustice, not in the contemptible way Niger Delta gunmen use abduction of children as a means of personal enrichment.

Sadly, the Niger Delta is now perceived as a centre for the training of kidnappers. Many unemployed youths are lining up to enrol in the college where kidnappers are trained and armed. And they may have a logical case. What's the point carrying university degree certificates that can't get you even a cleaning job in Nigeria when you know that a few nights of underground internship training in kidnapping can earn you millions of naira in your first month of operation? This is the reality that the nation is confronted with.

The tragedy of the Niger Delta is that criminal groups have coalesced around the problems in the region and they are now making fast money from their own people's misfortunes. Adversity is truly the mother of invention. Those who are agitating genuinely for federal attention in the Niger Delta must rise against kidnappers in order to refocus the nation's attention to the real issues. Kidnappers are doing more harm than good to the impoverished people in the region.

Someone once raised a banal argument that the kidnappers in the Niger Delta are justified in their abduction strategies because (wait for it), in the struggle for the enhancement of the conditions of the people in that region, every weapon must be deemed lawful. Kidnapping children can never be justified as a lawful means of drawing government attention to the economic, social and environmental poverty of the Niger Delta. As little Hanniel Nwachukwu, who was in the convoy of children who took their protests (against kidnapping) to the doorsteps of the Rivers State governor on Sunday this week wondered: "What did a three-month-old baby do to be kidnapped?"

After a few nasty experiences, kidnappers are beginning to realise that abducting children can be a huge task and an unprecedented burden. The first time the kidnappers took a three-year-old girl hostage more than a year ago, the entire nation was outraged. But the girl was unruffled. She knew her abductors won't harm her. Armed with the personal will to survive, she decided to teach her abductors a lesson.

All attempts by the miscreants to entice the little girl with biscuits and lollipops so she could reveal privileged information about herself and her family were met with stony silence. The girl would not talk to or answer questions from her abductors. Worst of all, she declined to eat. A combination of silence and hunger strike from a three-year-old girl overwhelmed the kidnappers. The only reasonable option was for the abductors to return the kid to her distraught mother. It goes to show that, even with children, kidnappers can't always have things their way.

The Niger Delta conflict is a moral and economic struggle. The battle is not likely to end soon. The Federal Government's decade-long lukewarm attitude to the harmful effects of oil exploration, coupled with the criminal neglect of the region by successive governments, has resulted in the emergence of all manner of activists. Roving bands of militants have taken over social life in the region. They determine where people can go to, when people can go those places and how people can reach their destinations. The ultimate outcome is instability fuelled by the collapse of law and order.

The government has woken up so late to the bad situation that it is now shopping desperately at home and abroad for credible persons to mediate in the conflict. The government and the militants have reached a stalemate. And we are all victims of this festering conflict. It's a situation that portends imminent disaster.

Everyone should be concerned about the extreme activities of criminal groups masquerading as care-takers of the interests of the people of Niger Delta. They have successfully appropriated public opinion in the region. No one talks about anything anymore other than how they can maintain their daily routines and still escape abduction by kidnappers.

In the past nine years, I have written articles critical of the Federal Government's abdication of its duty of care for the people in the Niger Delta, including people in other parts of the country. Niger Delta people need special federal attention. But the kidnappers are going about the campaign in a grisly way.