Senate seeks capital punishment for kidnappers

With the increasing number of kidnapping and hostage taking in the country, the Senate, yesterday, sought to enact a law that would mandate capital punishment for kidnappers in the country.

Adopting the report of the Joint Committee on Police Affairs, National Security and Intelligence, titled: ‘’The unfortunate recurrence of kidnapping and hostage-taking in Nigeria, National wake up call,” sponsored by the Chairman of the Committee, Senator Abu Ibrahim (Katsina South), the committee recommended that the funding of the security agencies should be taken as a priority project bearing in mind that the practice of envelop budget for security agencies have proved ineffective.

The committee recommended that the National Assembly should enact a law that will prescribe capital punishment for kidnappers while effort should be geared towards creating employment opportunities for our teeming unemployed youths.

It also recommended that security agencies should embark on training and retraining of their personnel for effective capacity building, while urging state governments to enact laws to enable security agencies prosecute kidnappers and other crime related offences in their jurisdiction.

The committee urged the Inspector-General of Police (IGP) and Director-General of the Department of State Services (DSS) to vigorously pursue a synergy in intelligence sharing among security agencies.

Presenting the report to the Senate, Senator Abu Ibrahim said the joint committee held an interactive session with the relevant heads of the security agencies in finding a lasting solution to the menace of kidnappings and hostage taking in the country.

Ibrahim added that the committee findings revealed that security agencies are seriously tackling the menace of kidnapping and hostage-taking, stressing that kidnapping started in the Niger Delta area where oil workers mainly foreigners were targeted and nothing serious was done to stop it.

According to him, the modus operandi of the kidnappers is well known to the security agencies, noting that the relations of the victims are always ready to pay ransom, which tend to encourage the criminals.

Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, noted that most of the kidnappers are normal human beings who are basically looking for money to feed themselves and they are afraid of the security agencies, stressing that many of the parents who were victims of the kidnappers pay unnecessarily ransom to get their victims out from the kidnappers den.