Commuters plying the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway are currently in fear of being kidnapped, following reports of several abductions on the road.
On Saturday, January 8, 2022, the kidnappers abducted five passengers, while another person, Ibrahim Tiamiyu, was shot in the thigh.
Eight days after, Saturday, January 15, 2022, to be precise, the kidnappers struck again on the highway at Onigari axis and kidnapped three persons at Isara-Remo axis in Ogun State.
The bandits, about 10 in number, were reported to have emerged from a bush along the road dressed in military uniform and started shooting sporadically, aiming guns at vehicles and their occupants.
Some were able to escape, including a Nollywood actress, Bimpe Akintunde and her daughter.
According to Akintunde, she was on her way to Lagos when she ran into bandits at Onigari. She further disclosed that the bandits were shooting directly at the vehicles on the road.
The workers of an undisclosed company who attended a ceremony and were returning home were not too lucky as one of the three vehicles conveying them broke down. It was learnt that while the repair was being carried out on the faulty one, the kidnappers suddenly emerged from a nearby bush and abducted three of the occupants of the vehicles.
The recent dastardly attack by marauding terrorists on the busy Abuja-Kaduna highway; and the gruesome killing of 23 travellers in Sokoto State are heart-rending.
The Abuja-Kaduna highway, a critical route for that matter, linking Abuja, the federal capital city with Kaduna, the political headquarters of Northern Nigeria, has also become a nightmare for travellers plying the road.
Virtually no day passes without an incident of violent attack and abduction of innocent travellers. In the case of the Sokoto incident, the victims were burnt to ashes in the vehicle conveying them, a deliberate terrorist act.
The attack on Kaduna-Abuja highway represented previous deadly onslaughts.
A member of the All Progressives Congress and former governorship aspirant in Zamfara State in 2015 and 2019, Sagir Hamida, was brutally murdered during the operation while his police orderly was abducted.
Sequel to recurring attacks on communities by suspected herdsmen and activities of highway robbers in Ondo State, traditional rulers in Akoko axis of the state recently resolved to tackle the menace through all possible means.
The traditional rulers, who converged on Oka-Akoko, headquarters of Akoko South West Local Government, with a view to proffering solution to the attacks, maintained that the situation was stifling development in the four local governments within the area.
Some women in the area went half-naked to demand an end to the abductions by bandits in Auga-Akoko as well as the attack on 17 travelers on Ifira Akoko-Isua Akoko road by armed robbers among others.
The monarchs maintained that they would not allow criminal elements to continue to have a field day and blossom in their nefarious activities within the area.
Some other notorious routes in Nigeria include the Katsina/Ala – Wukari Road, linking Benue and Taraba states, Birnin Gwari-Kaduna Road; Kaduna-Saminaka-Jos Road, Enugu-Port Harcourt Road, among others.
The constant loss of human lives as a result of these attacks is disheartening, particularly as they come against claims by government security agencies that the war against insurgency is being won.
The Federal Government should be concerned about its failure to secure the lives of Nigerians, which is supposed to be its primary purpose, as enshrined in the 1999 Constitution.
The anguish of Nigerians can only be imagined as they watch helplessly while criminals exterminate them, and law enforcement agencies appear powerless.
Some locals and security experts said the only way to tackle the menace of bandits on the Abuja-Kaduna highway is to have permanent surveillance along the road.
It is our view that it is time for the government to begin to explore an effective way to carry out its constitutional and sacred duty of protecting the lives and property of Nigerians.
Why should terrorists be allowed to have the upper hand while the security forces stand on the fence? In particular, the Federal Government should accept its singular responsibility to safeguard lives, given that all official security paraphernalia is within its control and command.
“The Federal Government should accept its singular responsibility to safeguard lives, given that all official security paraphernalia is within its control and command
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Attacks on private and commercial buses in the night used to be a feature of road transport on notorious highways but has since morphed into blood lust by criminal gangs who get a vehicle to stop by mowing down the driver with a hail of bullets.
Then, they kidnap whoever is left alive helping to turn kidnapping into an industry.
Without mincing words, it is right to conclude that our roads are not safe anymore and the railway is not safe too.
The other day the terrorists stalled a passenger train on the Abuja-Kaduna route in the middle of nowhere. The Abuja-Kaduna highway is an important arterial road that should not be left to terrorists to take over. The unceasing reign of terror on the road is an indictment on the government.
Declining road transport in an economy struggling with sluggish growth in a country with a poorly developed transport system has serious implications on trade and services.
Rising insecurity is showing up in local trade statistics as the sector contracted 2.43 percent in the first three months of 2021, making it the eighth consecutive quarterly contraction since the second quarter of 2019.
The quarterly Gross Domestic Product estimates for the four quarters of 2020, the annual figure for 2020 and the first quarter of 2021 released by the National Bureau of Statistics showed a decline of -23.75 percent in Road Transport GDP in the first quarter of 2021 from the previous quarter.
It, therefore, means that there is the need for synergy among the various tiers of government and security agencies in order to curtail the nefarious activities of highway kidnappers and other criminal elements who unleash terror on innocent citizens.
Such synergy will entail establishing proper communication channels and desks set up to coordinate their activities.
As a people, we must make concerted efforts towards curtailing the activities of highway kidnappers, and one of the ways is for communities where these incidents occur to always raise the alarm so that the relevant government institution will swing into action.
