The six students kidnapped at Lagos State Model College, Igbonla, Epe, Lagos State, have been in captivity for about three weeks, raising concerns about their fate. The efforts to rescue the students have been on for that length of time, with nothing but hope and promises for their traumatised families and the nation to hold onto. The Lagos State government, which owns the school, has a responsibility to engage with the parents of the kidnapped schoolchildren and do all that it can to rescue them and reunite them with their families.
To be fair, it is not as if nothing has happened on the rescue front as policemen on the day of the kidnap engaged the daredevil assailants, trailed them and arrested three of them in Edo State. But, for the health of our society, and especially for the parents and the victims of this kidnap, a lot more needs to be done to quickly bring this very unfortunate incident to a closure.
One reason that has been adduced for government’s refusal to negotiate with the kidnappers is to discourage the growing scourge of kidnapping for ransom. While that may have its merit, to refuse to communicate with the students’ parents and reassure them of government’s determination to rescue their children, smacks of near abdication of responsibility. What is the purpose of government, after all, if it is not to provide for the welfare and security of the citizens?
That is why the government needs to demonstrate its deep concern for the condition of the children and their parents. This is not the time for any high-sounding theories from the state government. It is the time for the senior government officials to roll up their sleeves and chart the children’s way out of the abductors’ den.
The location of the school close to the creeks has made it an easy target for kidnappers who have mastered the terrain and are able to time their dastardly operations almost to perfection. A number of the kidnap cases in Lagos and neighbouring states have been facilitated by quick access to the creeks. This is one area that should task government’s faculties with a view to finding a lasting solution to the ease with which these kidnaps take place. It is a direct affront to the image of a megacity that recent successive governments of the state have been projecting.
As a first step, government should consider tinkering with its security architecture, especially as it involves schools. It is the future of the state and the country at large that these kidnappers are hitting at, even if we pretend not to know it yet. There is no way this level of organised crime can be going on without the connivance of people in the security apparatus. Government must quickly and decisively turn its attention to such concerns with a view to identifying such breaches and correcting them. It could, for instance, consider relocating its own schools and, in fact, all schools in the state, from the areas bordering the creeks. The government can also consider distributing the students in vulnerable schools beside the creeks to inland schools that are less prone to attacks from kidnappers in the creeks.
This could be a more lasting solution to the present kidnap malaise than building watchtowers like the Epe school has reportedly done. The fact that the kidnappers struck just after policemen on guard tuned down their level of alertness, believing that they had dealt with the threat, tells us that we cannot be vigilant enough.
There is too much immediate incentive for these criminals to gain from their nefarious activities for them to be dissuaded by mere threats of arrests and deaths. It would take the concerted and best efforts of government, working with all other concerned stakeholders in the society, to arrest the slide into anarchy which the incessant kidnapping of students in the state represents.