Ending Kidnapping, What Are We Missing? By Nasir Jajere
- Telecoms.
The kidnappers freely use mobile phones in negotiating ransom. Why are their calls not traced? If the government doesn’t have the capacity for cell phone triangulation, can it not deploy its regulatory powers to request for cell tower triangulation info. from the telecos, once a kidnap case is reported? And where calls are traced, why are the SIMs left active during and after the incident, especially if the belong to the criminals? Also, why is the government not slamming the telecos a N10m per minute penalty on every unregistered SIM card used by kidnappers?
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Cash payments
The kidnappers take ransom in cash. Large sums of money is often delivered to them at agreed locations, often within the same state where the kidnap happened, but we don’t get to trace all that cash? What happens to marked currency, fake currency and geo-tagging of notes delivered to them? What about CBN passes a regulation that limits cash transactions to N100k max.? -
Drones
Nothing explains the degree of our helplessness in dealing with kidnapping than our inability to trace the location of victims of large-scale kidnap, several months after their abduction, even as they are often held in facilities/forests within 50km of their point of abduction?. How long does it take to deploy a drone from when a kidnap case is reported?. -
Deterrence
Why is Evans still out there? Why can’t we treat kidnappers the same way Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore treats drug dealers?. Why keep a kidnapper, rapist, terrorist or armed robber in jail? Is that not a waste of space and resources? Does their repentance ever matter to us? What about killing them the moment they are declared guilty by a court? And why are we not demolishing and revoking land titles of properties used in keeping hostages or housing the criminals?. -
The red flags
When we suspect a potential case of kidnapping, why don’t we bait them to see if they catch it?. When would we learn to act timely, on actionable intel shared by civilians? What about sharing learnings from past kidnap incidents to improve awareness?.
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