Nigerians express dismay over escalating crime rate

OBINNA EZUGWU  |

On Sunday August 6, Nigerians woke up to another kind of crime. A masked gunman invaded St. Philips Catholic Church, Ozubulu Anambra and shot dead at least 12 worshipers and injured many others, some of whom remain in critical condition in what turned out to be a drug war between two sons of the town.
The incident was shocking as it was sacrilegious, but it doesn’t appear entirely strange in a country where attacks by suspected herdsmen have led to the death of hundreds in Benue, Southern Kaduna, Enugu and elsewhere, and villages burnt down. Yet, the dreaded Boko Haram terrorists operating in the North Eastern part of the country which has killed over 15,000 individuals since 2012 is still proving a deadly force with renewed attacks.
A few days ago, fire induced smokes went up in the skies at the Ijaiye area of Lagos, along Lagos-Abeokuta Expressway. A lynch mob had dragged two suspected ritual killers from the police and set them ablaze. Two others had been arrested and taken away by the army. The suspects were arrested in a manhole, a canal located beside the expressway at the popular Obadeyi bus-stop, Ijaiye after a female road sweeper who heard the desperate cry of their victim screaming for help exposed their hideout.
But unfortunately, before residents could enter the canal, the woman had been killed, leaving her little child who was eventually rescued. Soldiers who ventured into the canal were said to have found several body parts of those who had been killed, including many ritual items. The question to the many cases of missing persons around Ijaiye, Ahmadiyya and Abule-Egba areas was answered. The ritualists tracked unsuspecting passersby early in the early morning hours and late at night, dragged them into the manhole and the rest is history.
It was a horrible scenario that one could only have imagined in a horror movie, but cases like this abound in today’s Nigeria. It is a country where citizens now live in palpable fear: ritual killers today, armed robbers tomorrow, and next tomorrow, kidnappers will take their turn. The police seem largely overwhelmed, and helpless citizens are taking laws into their own hands with attendant lynching sometimes, of innocent people.
Yet in a bizarre twist, another den, an underground tunnel was uncovered on Thursday last week at Ile-Zik, also along Lagos-Abeokuta Expressway leading to the arrest of five suspected ritualists.
Crime generally is on the increase. A recent report by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said that Abuja and Lagos state reported a total of 58,566 crime cases in 2016, and the entire country accounted for 125,790 cases.
There have been more reported cases of crimes such as kidnapping and rituals this year, and Nigerians say it will likely get worse because of growing economic hardship in the country.

St. Philips Catholic Church, Ozubulu Anambra

“Crimes flourish where hunger and economic hardship become the order of the day,” said Dr Dan Ekere of the Department of Psychology, University of Lagos. “There is a relationship with economic hardship and crime.
“In 2014, a bag of rice rose to N8,000. It was alarming. But the same bag rose to over N20,000 last year, and as we speak it is in the neighbourhood of N17,000 and N18,000 upon all the claims of local production. The bottom line is that people are having it very tough to feed their families.
“Perhaps you are a salary earner, what you were earning in 2015 is what you are still earning, take the same amount goes to the market what it was able to buy in 2015, it cannot buy half it today. So, more people might be tempted to resort to crime.”
From the NBS report, the FCT reported 13,181 crime cases while Lagos State reported 45, 385 crime cases, making them the second highest and highest respectively. Residents of the both cities say things have gotten much worse and ares a cause for worry.
“I am extremely bothered about the way crime is increasing in this country,” noted Olivia Samuel, an Abuja based public servant.
“Just yesterday around Wuse Market, I saw two guys that were robbed and after the incident they ran to a nearby police stand but from the body language of the officers, it was obvious they didn’t care.
“Our security system has fallen so deep that the police are even handicapped in the face of crimes and criminality. The crime rate in Abuja is really on the high side. A friend of mine was also robbed at Airport Road, Lugbe,” she narrated.
Over the past few months, the notorious Badoo ritual cult group based primarily in the Ikorodu area of Lagos has been unleashing mayhem on the populace. Smashed skulls and mutilated bodies are the common traits of their attack, and when they strike, usually at night, entire families are wiped out. But such attacks have not been restricted to Ikorodu. Only a few weeks ago, the cult group killed two lovers; a woman and a man at Ojodu-Abiodun, Ifo Local Government Area of Ogun State, smashing their heads with stones.
These desperate residents have since resorted to self help, lynching suspected members of the cult group, but not without the attendant consequences of mistaken identity.
Nigerians are still recovering from the shocking murder of up and coming comedian, Paul Chinedu alias Mc Think Twice alongside two of his friends by a vigilante group in Ikorodu who accused him of being a member of the cult after they were apprehended late at night while going to tow a vehicle.
Chinedu who was said to have had a flat tire while returning from a show, had sought help from the other two victims and they were driving in an SUV to the place the car broke down when they were stopped, lynched and set ablaze.
Away from Ikorodu and Lagos, the sleepy town of Aagba in Osun State made national headlines months ago when a den of ritualists run by one Ishiaka Akande, a self acclaimed herbalist was discovered following a raid prompted by the discovery of fresh human parts from an Islamic cleric, Rasidi Ajibade in Osogbo. Ajibade had confessed to have gotten the human parts from Akande.
A week afterwards, another ritual home, a four-room bungalow containing three human heads and some other human parts was discovered in Gbongan town, Ayedaade, Osun. Cases like the above abound, yet it has not been only about rituals. Nigeria does seem like a country being overtaken by crimes.
The dust generated by the arrest of 36-year-old Nnewi, Anambra State born billionaire kidnapper, Chukwudidumeme Onuamadike, alias Evans had yet to settle when another set of kidnappers who had been unleashing terror on motorists along the Abuja-Kaduna Expressway were apprehended. The suspects included Gang leader Adamu Mamman aka Master, of Amana village Kaduna; Ali Rabo aka Blacky of Liman Ibada village Kaduna; Umar Antijo and three others.
Last month, the Ondo and Lagos State governments eventually secured release of six Senior secondary school students of Lagos Model College, Igbonla, Epe, who were kidnapped on May 25, 2017. The students: Pelumi Philips, Farouq Yusuf, Isiaq Rahmon, Adebayo George, Judah Agbausi and Peter Jonah were rescued from Aboto creek, Ilaje Local Government Area of Ondo State.
Before them were eight students and two staff of the Nigeria Turkish International School, Isheri, Ogun State, who were abducted on January 13, 2017, but later released upon payment of ransom. Kidnapping of students had since become fashionable, and schools in Ikorodu and Epe areas of Lagos have been easy targets.
“To me, Nigeria is fast sliding down to that state of nature where life was solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short,” regretted Mr. Idris Taiwo, an Ogun State resident.
“Things are getting out of hand, you have growing crimes on the one hand, you have rising ethnic tensions in the other, but it doesn’t seem as if the so called leaders are bothered.”
In a country with staggering unemployment, rising cost of living and mass poverty, it is easy to link these events to the twin factors of poverty and unemployment, and projections show things may likely get worse.
“The high rate of criminality in our country today can be firmly among other things, attributed to the poor state of the economy, lack of employments and corruption,” said Ugwuanyi Ugochukwu Paulinus, a pharmacist based in Sokoto State.
“The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, nothing seems to be working well with the youths. I’m very much bothered and everybody including our leaders should be bothered. Many things have to be fixed in this country in order to curb this menace.”
Nigeria’s official unemployment rate rose to 14.2 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2016, from 13.9 per cent recorded in the preceding quarter of the year under review according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), suggesting that about 29 million people are jobless. But unofficial figures would seem a lot higher.
“The level of unemployment is the major cause of the soar in crime rate,” said Samuel.
“But poverty is not an excuse to commit atrocities. I will like the police system to be restructured and their personnel trained on all the new tactics these criminals employ to rob people of their hard earned money and possessions. The people should be also equipped on how to protect themselves. Also street lights should be mounted at the right locations and the nonfunctional ones should be repeated”
The future looks quite scary. A recent UN report projects Nigeria’s population to overtake that of the United States which currently stands at 325 million people by year 2050. This implies that by that year Nigeria’s population would be over 325 million. But at approximately 180 million, the evidence of overstretch is prevalence with the escalating crime rate. Added to this coming nightmare is the fact that crude oil, which remains the country’s major revenue earner would have been almost out of use with alternative energy sources coming on board. It is being projected that by 2040, electric cars would have sufficiently replaced petrol and diesel cars.
Nigeria needs rapid industrialization, but that’s almost impossible with the rapidly falling standard of education in the country.
“I think consistent failure of bad government has brought us face to face with certain realities” said Stephen Alex a young graduate of Mass Communication in Abuja. “And we are in for bigger things. It’s really scary.”
Barr. Anthony Chidi Ezugwu, a legal practitioner also based in the capital territory insists that except the country’s structural defects are tinkered with, things may never get better, and crime would continue to grow.
“The truth remains that Nigeria as presently structured may never experience peace if it fails to attend to yearning issues of political restructuring of our federal system,” he said.
“The summary is that Nigerians are hungry and unhappy. All agitations are geared towards better living standard. So the moment the needs of an average Nigerian on the street is met, crime will reduce.”