The dilemma of being a hostage in the kidnappers’ den (I)
By Alkasim Harisu Alkasim
If you are eating like a horse, learn to eat like a bird because once in the abductors’ den, you will never gain enough to eat. Your thighs, hips, and cheeks will slenderise. Recently, nothing devastates me like the story of three abductees. Still, I was wondering how in this world a person would choose to win his living either by robbing, kidnapping, etc. and feel okay notwithstanding. This huge misfortune leaves me wallowing in confusion.
The story opens with a taxi driver, a mother, and her daughter chartered to convey them to some place in Kaduna. The woman was also in the company of a young man, her close relative. The woman is a do-gooder because her trip was bound for a place populating the poor. She was travelling there to distribute goods and other gifts to the needy. But, alas! The goody-goody gesture of this fortysomething mother suffered the sabotage and heartlessness of a cruelty-ridden lad who also doubles as a relative. He has made his bed and must lie in it because he must reap what he has sowed when the authority arrests him.
The incident communicates a misfortunate and the truth we are no longer safe even in the fellowship of friendly people, our blood included. Society abounds with criminals starving and drowning in the urge to make megabucks. We are just between Scylla and Charybdis. Our desire to live beyond our means transforms our societies into hell. And all hell breaks loose when people choose to not live within their means. We want to cut ties with poverty by living a prostitute life. This is the path many youths have picked and chosen for themselves.
One of the kidnap kingpins, to whom money means nothing, told the kidnapped driver that should he get a house to buy in the G.R.A, he would buy it no matter how expensive, provided the government would let him walk alone. That an abductor had such an intention demonstrates what a menace kidnap is. The kidnapper obviously envies the life his kidnappees will continue to enjoy once he releases them. This afforded him the idea of thieving out of the kidnapping den at the slightest opportunity. To hell with such a life of people abductors.
The kidnappers are exceptionally talented at weaponsmithing. They manufacture local double barrels that can gun down five people at a time should they vertically line up. When asked about the number of the kidnappers at the den, the driver-cum-abductee said, after swearing, that they amounted to a thousand. I am still reeling from the zinger of hearing this harrowing story.
Rest assured, the desire to make beaucoup bucks overnight is the Newton apple pushing these low-IQ people into kidnapping. The kidnappers’ den is not a home away from home. But instead, a Jahannam on earth. The lust for money triggers kidnapping to catch fire in the North. Bitten by poverty, many youths choose to become repeat-offending abductors.
If their prey misbehaves, the abductors eat him for breakfast. Nobody can dream of getting a breakfastcupful of tea or milk in the morning, never mind chips or fried yam. When their hostages are hungry, these wrongdoers give them a small mango to lick and a bottle of water to share among the five or even more. There is always not enough to eat. When everybody is silent, nobody should break the silence. Otherwise, the kidnappers will break his balls.
Certainly, kidnapping makes a song and dance about our wobbling social structure. What a prettily dilemmatic situation that destroys our social fabric! This menace is never a job in which one can make a name. The government should make an example of them to the teeming public when it arrests them. The police should feel their collar and take them to court for proper sentencing. Frankly, from the perspective of readiness and sufficiency, we are still in dire need of security agents. But, of course, we need enough sense to pound sand into the rathole.
According to a victim, a few security personnel would underwhelm the outpouring number of the kidnappers because they are enough to choke a horse. The situation is enough to make the angels weep. Thus, the government should provide its people with enough security to avoid throwing them to the wolves. The kidnappers are armed to the teeth while the hostages are naked as the day one entered the world. These baddies have got screaming guns fit to wake the dead.
The driver said there was a time when the kidnapppers narrowly escaped soldiers’ arrest, which compelled them to change den by forcing their victims to walk to a distant place on foot. In the kidnappers’ den, no one can stand on their two feet because horror looms. The den presents a panorama of difficulties. The kidnappers deny the hostages water as if they were drought-tolerant trees. The faculty of these people must not be intact due to their bestiality and inhumanity. The driver, who shares no blood with the woman and her daughter, established a kindred spirit with them. The trio began to bear the undertreatment they were suffering.
The kidnappers cannot eat, wear, or sleep where they want. They are only trousering, potting and sacking money they cannot enjoy. They do their utmost to herd the kidnapped by being all eyes and ears with them. They do not give ear to anything unless it is relevant to their job. The kidnappers’ lair is where the sexy ladies cannot hussy up, nor can they keep themself to themself. It is where everybody contemplates escaping, and one can quickly get gunned down if they fail to fall to command.
It is also where the hostage is to eat out of the palm of his master’s hand. A place where no one should drive the kidnappers up the wall. A place where downpouring of torture is a common occurrence. A place where everybody is constantly at a loss for words. Maltreatment and suffering are the only hood of this hell on earth. These abductors rape female hostages in a very unacceptable way, even to women selling sex.
The driver said that he had absolutely lost hope in living when they were relocated to another hideout as the security agents nearly ambushed them. More so, in the early days of their kidnapping, the kidnappers swore to kill him and the daughter of the Hajiya on account of I.D cards they saw them carrying. The abductors mistook the cards for police I.D cards. The driver and the girl insisted that they were not police officers and that his card was a driving licence card and the girl’s was a school’s. They did not leave them alone until they asked one abductee to clarify the situation for them. Still, they partially agreed with the cards.
To be continued.
