By Adekunle Adekoya
Recently, the Governor of Niger State, apparently at the end of his tether, vowed never to negotiate with bandits or pay ransom for kidnap victims, saying instead residents must be prepared to defend themselves against attacks. Governor Bago said this when he visited the people of Rijau and Magama Local Government Areas of the state, whose communities were recently attacked by bandits in Kontagora.
His words: “The state has reached a point where the people must stand up and defend themselves because ransom will only turn kidnapping into a thriving business.
“I will not negotiate with bandits. I will not pay ransom. The moment we start paying, they will open shop on our heads and continue kidnapping people. The situation has reached a state of war that requires collective resistance. We are surrounded by enemies, but we will not give up. The Constitution gives us the right to defend our lives and property, and we will do just that. There is no going back.”
Just as well. The Niger State governor has spoken, and I only wished the President himself had spoken in this manner a long time ago. It is high time we rose as a collective to battle the evils that insecurity from bandit attacks, kidnappers, cultists and other felons have foisted on us, instead of the present chicken-hearted appeasement approach, which has seen some state governments negotiating with bandits and kidnap gangs.
There is no denying the fact that insecurity has peaked to a point that it is now a clear and present danger to the very existence of our country. The longer we wait, the longer our leaders vacillate on appropriate action to take to stamp out this evil, the nearer we are getting to the day of disintegration as a country.
It would seem that our leaders have stubbornly refused to draw from the lessons of history and the experience of other countries. It may be necessary to refresh memories. One of the major terrorist incidents that dominated the news worldwide was what later became known as the Entebbe Raid.
In 1976, an Air France airliner was en route Paris from Israel. At a stopover in Athens, Greece, the airliner was hijacked on June 27 by members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, PFLP, in collaboration with a radical, leftist faction of the West German Red Army Faction and flown to Entebbe, Uganda, where they were joined by more collaborators. At Entebbe, the hijackers freed those of the 258 passengers who did not appear to be Israeli or Jewish and held the rest hostage, as bargaining chips for the release of 53 militants imprisoned in Israel, Kenya, West Germany, and elsewhere.
The Israeli cabinet, under the leadership of Yitzhak Rabin as Prime Minister, deliberated on the next course of action, and in such meetings, the doves were for conceding to the terrorists’ demands, while the hawks were for decisive rescue action. The hawks had their way, and in response, Israel on July 3 dispatched four Hercules C-130H cargo planes carrying 100–200 soldiers, escorted by Phantom jet fighters. At Entebbe in Uganda, the Israeli force rescued the hostages within an hour after landing. All seven of the terrorists were killed, and 11 MiG fighters supplied to Uganda by the Soviet Union were destroyed; the Israelis lost one soldier and three hostages during the operation.
Major Dan Shomron of the IDF commanded the Israeli raid on Entebbe, with one military casualty, Lt. Col. Yonatan Netanyahu, who then was the older brother of incumbent Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Of course, the Entebbe raid was backed by impeccable intelligence supplied by Mossad, the Israeli secret intelligence service.
Needless to say, the success of the rescue effort at Entebbe boosted Israeli morale and belief in the capacity of their political leadership and its military to protect the citizenry.
This is one case that our political leadership and military can draw from. Negotiating with bandits, from where I sit, is the equivalent of a husband prostrating to plead with a wayward wife after he caught her in the act with another man. We have all seen the outlines of the successful business enterprise that kidnapping has become, given the reluctance or outright abdication of duty by security agencies to rout this evil from our land. Or else, how do kidnappers collect ransom money and launder it successfully?
*Adekoya is a commentator on public issues
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