When the latest crime of kidnapping came to the fore in Nigeria, many did not see it as a serious criminal act instead those who ought to have thought out a way of nipping it in the bud, slept off for the seed of kidnapping to germinate.

I remember calling on the Obasanjo government to wade into it and see how to stop it. It was when top politicians were recruiting young men to follow their convoy with arms as personal thugs and guards, at this time, the Niger Delta insurgency had not taking off, but no sooner had these politicians won their elective offices, than they laid off these boys since they have no need of their services any longer and their services were being replaced with government security agencies as their official guards.

The enlightened and educated ones among them did not feel betrayed but were fast to re-fashion a new way for their survival which was the struggle for the emancipation of their home land the Niger Delta, and so began the struggle known as the movement for the emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND).

The little firearms they had was insufficient for such a struggle and they saw the foreigners who came to their land to extract oil as interlopers who must be dealt with by abduction for a ransom. As they were intensifying their abduction system, so they were they also moving to the high sea to seize ships and the arms used on board. As their activities began to prosper, other gang leaders emerged with their own gangs and many of the boys were unemployed Ibo youths who hitherto were school outs, and as some of them were already in the robbery , they fathom out that the new crime was more gainful and less hazardous than robbery.

In robbery, there is the slim tendency for a confrontation with security agency than in kidnapping. In robbery, apart from the fact that you have succeeded in carting away money from a bank or a house, you may still not escape or go scot free and your mind can only be at rest when you get to your hide out. While in kidnapping it can be a sail through for the gang from the beginning of the operation to the end. No wonder after the Yar'Adua's presidential amnesty granted to all the militants, many of them who were natives of the old eastern states only signed their names but did not wait for other parts of the programme before trouping back to their states in Anambra, Enugu, Imo, Abia and Eboyin to regroup and commence their operations.

It was the sporadic growth of kidnapping that attracted those in authority, especially when VIPs were kidnapped and ransom collected. When there is a kidnap incident there are the possibilities that someone witnessed it, even in the remotest area of the country. Most kidnap cases are carried out on our roads and not in our homes. There is no road that is virtually deserted in any village or town in Nigeria. One therefore wonders why Nigerians love to keep sealed lips to perpetrated crime like robbery, rape, kidnap and so on. If the truth must be told, there are average populations of over 1.5million law enforcement agencies in Nigerian, all scattered all over the federation. That is when you line them up as the Nigeria Police, Armed Forces-Army, Navy and Air-Force, SSS, Customs, Immigration, NDLEA, EFCC, ICPC, FRSC and Civil Defense Corps etc.

That everyone is pointing accusing fingers at the Nigeria Police Force, shows the extent cooperation has declined among them. It is very unfortunate that majority of their security activities are not coordinated and so, one can solidly say that there is no coordinated strategic approach among these agencies to prevent crime in all facets of the country. One major reason why they join the civilians to blame the police for the crime of kidnap is because each of these law enforcement agencies does what it feels it's supposed to do.

The truth is that where there is no cooperation in a family, and then the center cannot hold. One can clearly observe that others are happy when the police is being wiped by the civil rights and the media, for a misdemeanor that should have been jointly avoided. All have what criminologists would describe as protectionist tendencies and approach to their job and care less about cooperation. No wonder they are all reactive in their approach rather than being proactive, this is why it is difficult for the country to have a centralized evaluation body where collated crime statistics are analyzed for the betterment of all the law enforcement agencies and the nation as a whole. Then law enforcement community is a family and when a part of the body is affected all is automatically affected.

The truth is that every part of the human body does what is not only beneficial but in the interest of the whole. It is that same system of cooperation that should exist among law enforcement agencies in Nigeria because when one is being antagonized, it means all is antagonized.

http://www.npf.gov.ng/news/?newsid=44