The abduction of 20 prospective members of the National Youth Service Corps, NYSC, in Imo State has brought into sharper focus the growing danger facing young Nigerians travelling to or from orientation camps and places of primary assignment.

The Imo incident came barely weeks after another mass abduction involving NYSC members in Kogi State. On August 26, 16 corps members returning from the NYSC orientation camp in Bayelsa State to Abuja after completing their orientation were abducted along the Aloma-Egane axis in Ofu Local Government Area of Kogi State. All 16 were later rescued after a coordinated operation involving the Armed Forces, police, DSS and local vigilantes.

The two incidents have renewed concerns over the safety of corps members whose national service often requires them to undertake long journeys through unfamiliar parts of the country and, in some cases, known kidnapping corridors.

They also form part of a wider pattern recorded over the past year.

According to findings by Sunday Vanguard, not less than 40 corps members and prospective corps members have been reported abducted in separate incidents, including the January abduction of prospective corps member, Binuyo Lateefah, in Kogi State while travelling to Taraba; the April abduction of prospective corps member, Gift David Samiya, on the Akwanga-Jos road while travelling to Maiduguri; the April abduction of LASU graduate, Ogunlana Adetola Sodiq, while travelling to an orientation camp in Osun State, and the May abduction of serving corps member, Eunice Ameh, in Abuja.

Lateefah was reportedly held for 10 days after her abduction on January 22, while her abductors demanded N30 million. Ameh, an Abuja-based lawyer and corps member, was abducted in Maitama on May 6 and released four days later after money was reportedly paid, although the amount was not disclosed.

In the Kogi case, one of the rescued corps members, David Ayodele, later recounted that the abductors beat and kicked their captives and threatened to keep them in the forest for a month and kill them.

The Imo victims also spent a week in captivity before their rescue. Police said security operatives had earlier located the kidnappers’ camp through drone surveillance but delayed moving in after intelligence indicated that the area had been mined with improvised explosive devices.

The Imo State Commissioner of Police, Audu Bosso, has since said he was not aware that ransom was paid for the release of the corps members, saying the kidnappers eventually succumbed to pressure from security forces operating in the forest.

Predictability of deployment 

For security governance expert, Prof. Al Chukwuma Okoli, the vulnerability of corps members is linked to the predictability of their deployment and movement.

He said: “The vulnerability arises from predictable posting to high-risk rural areas that are grossly under-policed. Corps members travel on hazardous highways bereft of real-time security.

“Posting corps members to volatile areas without contingency plans to secure their movements through convoy tracking and risk-map deployment poses a challenge.”

He argued that the Federal Government, NYSC and security agencies should jointly develop a system for protecting corps members from the point of departure to their destination.

 “Government and NYSC authority need to work closely with security agencies to jointly fund safe transit protocols, secure corps members’ lodges, and ensure that there is a rapid-response mechanism to rescue victims when an attack occurs.”

Okoli also linked the difficulty in rescuing victims and bringing kidnappers to justice to the absence of effective state security presence in some of the areas where the attacks occur.

“Such kidnappings occur in areas with limited coercive state presence and inadequate security, making rapid rescue response challenging”, he said adding that prosecution had also suffered from “weak inter-agency collaboration in case treatment.”

Weakness of intelligence systems

For Alfred Ononugbo, a forensic investigator and criminal intelligence specialist, the wider problem is rooted in the weakness of Nigeria’s intelligence and policing systems.

According to him, “the crime of kidnapping has lingered due to the absence of credible intelligence, national crime database and ineffective policing.”

Ononugbo said the absence of reliable crime data makes it difficult for security agencies to understand patterns of kidnapping across states and communities and deploy appropriate responses.

“No reliable data to provide peculiar crime behaviours with states and communities within the country in order to develop necessary security responses to such crime patterns”, he said noting that criminals tend to identify victims who are vulnerable and capable of generating quick ransom payments.

“The intending corp members may have been victims of opportunistic attack or informants considering that they may have given away their identities as a uniformed group on transit. The criminals often target the most vulnerable and beneficial victims to generate quick revenues and escape from the consequences of their crimes.”

He said stops made during long journeys could also provide opportunities for criminals to gather information about the passengers.

“They may have attracted attention at locations where they stop during the trip and this made it possible for the information to be passed to the kidnappers.”

He recommended a more deliberate security arrangement for corps members travelling in groups. “Considering the challenge of attacks by criminals, an armed security escorts for the young graduates should have been appropriate for such movement.

Fundamentally evidence-driven

Ononugbo also criticised the country’s capacity to investigate and prosecute kidnapping cases, saying criminal prosecution is fundamentally evidence-driven. “With science and technology, forensic evidences provides accurate evidence harvesting, handling and presentations in courts to help prosecutors and the courts.”

But he said the police face serious difficulties in conducting actionable investigations, citing inadequate training, weak exposure to modern intelligence techniques and deficiencies in evidence gathering. “Modern technology and digital solutions must be inculcated in the training of our policemen and women.”

He further identified alleged collusion and compromise as another obstacle to fighting kidnapping. “Collusion and compromise is another setback to minimising kidnapping crimes as some of the financial evidence are often tempered with by unprofessional and poorly disciplined personnel”, he alleged.

Ononugbo called for improved training, better remuneration and greater use of technology, while urging government to involve traditional institutions and town development associations in community policing.

“We must improve on training, capacity building and the use of modern technology in combating kidnapping and other forms of crimes”, he added.

National concern 

For Okechukwu Nwanguma, Executive Director of the Rule of Law and Accountability Advocacy Centre, RULAAC, the recurring abduction of corps members should concern the country because national service is compulsory.

He pointed out that the obligation placed on young graduates by the NYSC scheme creates a corresponding responsibility for the government to protect them.

 “The recurring kidnapping of National Youth Service Corps members should concern every Nigerian because these are young citizens undertaking a compulsory national assignment. If the State requires young graduates to travel across the country in the service of national integration, then there is a corresponding duty to take reasonable measures to protect them from foreseeable harm”, Nwanguma stated.

Deployment pattern

He explained that corps members face the wider security problems affecting Nigerian highways, but their deployment pattern creates additional exposure, stressing that the recent Imo incident demonstrated the problem.

 “They frequently travel long distances to unfamiliar parts of the country, sometimes using ordinary commercial transport and passing through roads with known histories of kidnapping and armed attacks.

“The problem therefore goes beyond advising corps members to ‘be security conscious.’ Government needs a systematic risk assessment of routes used by prospective and serving corps members.”

He called on NYSC to work with the police, DSS and other security agencies to identify kidnapping hotspots and establish safer travel arrangements during mobilisation and demobilisation.

“Where a route presents a demonstrably high security risk, government should consider coordinated transportation from designated departure points, security-supported movement during peak mobilisation periods, or alternative deployment arrangements.”

According to him, graduates should not be forced into a choice between obeying their NYSC call-up instructions and exposing themselves to known security threats.

“Young Nigerians should not be compelled to choose between obeying an NYSC call-up instruction and exposing themselves to a foreseeable risk of kidnapping.”

Nwanguma also called for a joint security protocol involving the Federal Government, NYSC, state governments and security agencies. Such a protocol, he said, should cover prevention, emergency response, communication with families, rescue operations and post-rescue care.

“NYSC should maintain a constantly updated security map of deployment and travel routes and communicate specific warnings to corps members before they travel.

“Reporting dates should also take account of travel distances so that prospective corps members are not pressured into unsafe travel schedules.”

The RULAAC director said security agencies needed stronger intelligence coverage and patrols along identified kidnapping corridors, while state governments should improve roads and support intelligence gathering in vulnerable communities.

The Imo incident, he said, illustrated why prevention and intelligence gathering should receive as much attention as rescue operations.  “That underscores why prevention and intelligence must receive as much attention as rescue operations after people have already been abducted.”

Nwanguma also warned that the consequences of kidnapping do not end when victims regain their freedom. “There should also be proper psychosocial and medical support for rescued victims. Kidnapping can leave serious psychological consequences even after physical freedom has been regained.”

On prosecution, he described accountability as one of the weakest parts of Nigeria’s response to kidnapping.

“Public attention understandably concentrates on securing the victims’ release, but there is often much less information afterwards about identifying, arresting and successfully prosecuting the perpetrators”, he said.

According to him, the difficulty of operating in forests and remote communities, movement across state boundaries, the use of disposable telephones and the need to prioritise hostages’ lives can complicate investigations.

But he also pointed to institutional weaknesses.

“Weak intelligence coordination, poor preservation of evidence, difficulties securing witnesses, inadequate forensic capacity and delays in investigation and prosecution can undermine accountability”, he said.

According to him, there is an important difference between rescuing a hostage and dismantling a kidnapping network.

Hos words: “Recovering a kidnapped person is an immediate humanitarian success, but dismantling the criminal network requires identifying the kidnappers, their informants, financiers, ransom collectors, arms suppliers and other collaborators, and then assembling evidence capable of sustaining prosecution.”

He urged the government to publish anonymised data showing kidnapping cases investigated, suspects arrested, prosecutions and convictions. “This would allow Nigerians to assess whether criminal networks are actually being dismantled rather than simply displaced.”

For the experts, the answer lies in moving security planning beyond the orientation camps to the roads corps members must use to reach them and return home.As Nwanguma put it, the central issue is the responsibility of the state to protect those it requires to serve.

“The objective should not merely be to rescue corps members after they have been abducted. It should be to make their abduction far less likely in the first place and to ensure that those who attack them face credible investigation, prosecution and punishment”, he stated. (Vanguard)