Enugu Police Arraign 90 Suspected Kidnappers In 10 Months

More than 90 suspected kidnappers have so far been charged to court by the Enugu State Police Command within the last 10 months, even as no fewer than 41 other suspects are now being investigated by officer and men of the command.

Disclosing this recently while presenting a paper entitled “Security Challenges of Kidnappings in our Polity” at a workshop organised in Enugu for members of security agencies in respect of the forthcoming Local Government elections in the state the officer in-charge of Anti-Kidnap Squad of the command, Mr Stephen Osaghae (SP), said that the command had put in place strategy that would ensure tolerable crime rate during the election period.

Using the forum to call for the involvement of warders in the fight against kidnapping and other crimes, Mr Osaghae noted that “many of the criminals we have arrested in recent times informed us how they got the details that we were looking for them”.

Mr Osaghae remarked that prisons house most of the criminals in any community, noting that no criminal act outside that are not known to the inmates. Mr Osaghae reasoned that “The warders must be co-opted in the fight against kidnapping and other crimes”, adding that this would go a long way in bringing the present high rate of crime to the barest minimum in the society. Regretting that violent crimes are setting records across the nation and criminals getting daring on daily basis, Mr Osaghae went on to say: “Drastic measures must be collectively taken to contain and subdue these evolving trends with the potential to destroy the peace and public order, our cherished value”.

The senior police officer said: “We must all come out and stop this phenomenon without excuses for them, to keep the society as a sane organisation as oppose to the rule of the jungle. The criminals are getting daring by the day and the general society is now frightened as they threaten our existence”, he further lamented.

He recalled with regrets that armed robbery has became more attractive option to criminals after the Nigerian Civil War, adding that rather than confront it frontally the then military regime promulgated harsh laws and established a special court to deal with it.

According to him, criminals were promptly dealt with within months, and somewhere along the line, criminal cases started taking years in treating, as armed robbery took upward swing.

The only obstacle in the way of criminals became the police.

And so criminals went into skill in weapon handling to deal with the police and stubborn victims. Militancy, armed robbery began to assume frightening dimension with the coming of the Niger Delta militants, kidnapping for monetary ransom was introduced into our society. Since 2003, they have become more and more syndicated, deadlier and frightening”, he declared.

He charged the judiciary to be involved in the fight against the rapid upsurge of dangerous crimes now threatening the society and turning it into a jungle, suggesting that here should be a synergy between the judiciary, the police and other security agencies in prompt dealing with cases of kidnapping and other crimes.