Oyo kidnapping, rumours, and conspiracy theories

That the news of the police rescue of Mrs Olaide John-Paul (the sister of former Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu) and her 12-year-old twin sons, Peter and Paul, was not well-received in all quarters is almost understandable. What should have been a celebration of an efficient rescue at a time we are undergoing some of the worst insecurity crises in our recent history turned into conspiracy theorising. Each time I see snide comments about how the whole thing was staged, I want to ask: why would Adelabu, or anyone in the government, employ such a costly gimmick? A frustrated presidential aide even blasted the critics who found the rapid rescue fishy. Well, there is a probability that, if the aide himself were not a government official (aka a paid apologist), he would probably smell a rat in the whole affair.

This is because when powerful forces obfuscate on weighty issues where they should offer clarity, people naturally fill the gaps in knowledge with wild tales. The consequence is that truth and falsehoods mix, and there will be no clean or credible extrication of the two. The Oyo State Government failed to adequately communicate with the public, and the result casts a shadow on police efforts. I cannot tell whether they leave the public in the dark out of arrogance or simply because accountability is alien to Nigerian leaders. Either way, they are not helping. Take, for instance, the ongoing abduction saga of the teachers and pupils kidnapped in Ogbomosho four weeks ago. First, it was Debo Ogundoyin, the speaker of the House of Assembly, who hinted that the terrorists were asking for “weapons, money, and concessions of future laws” as part of their ransom. The vagueness of his explanation left room for conspiracists to fill the gaps with tales of bandit-terrorists asking for money, vehicles, Sharia law, and the release of their incarcerated colleagues. Only for these terrorists to put one of their victims, Mrs Rachael Alamu, to debunk the stories saying they all they want is for the incarcerated to be released. The terrorists may be revising their demands based on social media uproar, who knows? It is also possible that some go-betweens are padding up the list of requests to get a cut out of what has become a sensational case, and the terrorists wanted to undercut them. That is why they did the unprecedented thing of using their victim to speak directly to the public. It would have been much cleaner if the state government had briefed the public on the terrorists’ demands instead of releasing information in snippets, thereby leaving room for rumours. By now, the names and faces of the people the kidnappers want freed should be public information. Let the world know, and someone out there might even come forward with credible information to help the police in their investigation.

In the case of Mrs John-Paul, the unusual speed with which the police conducted a rescue could not help but fuel suspicion. In Nigeria, where people are routinely kidnapped, it is almost rare to see kidnap victims rescued by the police within a mere matter of days. Who knew the police could be that efficient? In a few instances of relatives and close associates who have had someone around them kidnapped, the story is always that they ended up paying ransom because the police’s lethargic response would have gotten the victim killed. But in this one rare instance, where one of the series of kidnapping incidents that Nigerians have been assailed with finally touched a high-ranking government official, they were rescued so promptly. The schadenfreude of seeing the rich cry had not even settled when it ended.

The people who dismiss the story as “fake” might not necessarily believe the kidnapping and rescue were made up, but they are demonstrating a resentment against the uncommon efficiency and disparity between how the police respond to the common man vs how they do when money and political power are involved. We can make all sorts of comparisons about the circumstances of the kidnapping, but it will not assuage the antipathy people feel when they see government officials treated like they have two heads.

That said, the state police public relations unit did a good job providing a detailed account of the kidnapping and rescue. They rightfully informed the public about the conspirators, their criminal history, and other necessary details about the kidnapping. That is how to treat a matter of public interest, something Oyo state should have done with the Ogbomosho kidnapping saga. As if that failure to update the public was not bad enough, the next thing Oyo state did was to demolish the house where Mrs John-Paul and her children were held! Why the haste to tear down the house? To a conspiracy theorist, that alone speaks volumes. If you are not trying to destroy evidence of your complicity or hide something, why should bulldozing the house be your first line of action? They could have at least treated the house as a crime scene and sealed it for a while.

Now, there is something that needs to be said about Nigerian governors and their tendency to pull down houses over criminal allegations even when a competent court has not established the alleged offender’s guilt. In Edo State, Governor Monday Okpebholo has had buildings associated with kidnapping pulled down. Several residential properties—including the home of a suspected kidnapper’s father in Benin City following the arrest of a suspect with human body parts—were flattened. All it takes now is to finger a building as harbouring criminals, and it will be pulled down. The story is the same in Anambra and Enugu states, where buildings are demolished on suspicion of criminal activity. There were several instances of demolishing hotels and residential buildings suspected of harbouring criminals, even while investigations were ongoing.