…the timing is suspicious. Kidnapping spikes during primaries. It spikes during campaigns. It spikes during collation. It spikes after results. In short, kidnapping spikes more reliably than inflation. At this point, one begins to wonder whether the kidnappers are working with the politicians or the politicians are working for the kidnappers. It is difficult to tell who is sponsoring whom. Nigeria has become a place where even the criminals have political wings.
THERE is something about election season in Nigeria that brings out the worst in everybody. Politicians bring out their agbada. Voters bring out their PVCs. And kidnappers, well, they bring out their calculators. It is the only time of the year when the nation’s forests hum like banking halls and ransom negotiators work harder than INEC officials. In fact, if you listen closely, you can almost hear the bandits singing their own Christmas carol: “It is the most profitable time of the year.”
Of course, the government assures us that everything is under control. Which is true, if by control we mean that the kidnappers are controlling the highways, the forests, the schools, and occasionally the politicians themselves. The government’s confidence is touching. It is like watching a man whose house is on fire insisting that the smoke is merely incense and ashes are seeds of a new beginning.
But let us not be unfair. Elections are expensive. Campaigns require money. And in a country where the economy is tighter than a landlord’s face on rent day, one must admire the creativity of certain political actors who have allegedly discovered a new source of campaign financing: kidnapping as revenue stream. After all, why bother with fundraising dinners when you can outsource the job to armed entrepreneurs in the bush? Why stress over donor lists when the forest is full of potential contributors?
We are a nation of innovation. We invented “pure ice water tutu”. We invented okada logistics. We invented the art of campaigning without manifestos. So why should we not invent a political economy where ransom doubles as campaign capital?
Take, for instance, the curious case, widely reported, of the mysterious ransom sized cash stash discovered in the home of a former Special Adviser somewhere in the North. Nigerians, being the suspicious people we are, immediately began to ask unnecessary questions. Is this ransom money? Is this campaign money? Is this both? Honestly, Nigerians worry too much. Money is money. Let us not discriminate. If the cash is clean enough to spend, it is clean enough to ignore.
Then there was the kidnapping of the sister of a former Minister, abducted with her twins shortly after her brother made certain political statements following a party primary. Again, Nigerians began to speculate. Nigerians love speculation the way politicians love decamping. Was it political punishment? Was it intimidation? Was it a message? Who knows? In Nigeria, even kidnappers understand internal party democracy. They may not know the constitution of the Federal Republic, but they can quote party zoning arrangements from memory. Who is even talking about the constitution when the country is not constituted?
But let us be fair. Not every kidnapping is political. Some are purely business. Others are opportunistic. And some are simply the result of a security architecture so overstretched that even the architects have forgotten the blueprint. Our security agencies are so busy escorting politicians to rallies that the rest of us are left to negotiate with fate and phone networks.
Still, the timing is suspicious. Kidnapping spikes during primaries. It spikes during campaigns. It spikes during collation. It spikes after results. In short, kidnapping spikes more reliably than inflation. At this point, one begins to wonder whether the kidnappers are working with the politicians or the politicians are working for the kidnappers. It is difficult to tell who is sponsoring whom. Nigeria has become a place where even the criminals have political wings.
Meanwhile, the ordinary Nigerian is caught in the middle, dodging bullets, potholes, and campaign jingles with equal fear. Parents send their children to school with prayers. Travellers whisper Psalm 91 or Surah Al-Falaq before entering any bus. Communities sleep with one eye open and the other on the nearest bush path. And every night, the forests glow faintly with the light of ransom counting machines.
Yet, every election cycle, the same promises return like bad network. We will end insecurity. We will defeat banditry. We will secure the nation. And every election cycle, the kidnappers respond with their own manifesto: Which nation?
Perhaps the real tragedy is that we have normalised the abnormal. We discuss kidnapping the way we discuss NEPA, with resignation, humour, and a sense of national inevitability. We have become a country where ransom payments trend on social media and where bandits grant interviews more confidently than civil servants. At this rate, do not be surprised if one day a kidnap kingpin appears on television to analyse election results.
But satire aside, the truth is bitter. A nation where kidnapping becomes part of the political economy is a nation in danger. When criminals become stakeholders, when ransom becomes campaign capital, when abduction becomes bargaining chip, democracy itself becomes hostage. And until we confront the unholy marriage between politics, insecurity, and money, we will continue to live in a country where the ballot box and the kidnapper’s den operate on the same business model: collect money first, deliver results later, if at all.
- Dr Adeyemi is an associate professor of Drama at the University of East Anglia, UK.
