For
popular nollywood actor Pete Edochie, it was his status as
Chairman of the Re-branding Campaign and the possession of a priced
MON that made him a choice pickup for the boys. Edochie topped
the chart as ‘Top Hostage’ for last week and unlike most other cases
of hostage taking, he came out with a feedback. A clear message from
the boys. They couldn’t have chosen a better messenger for the
assignment. And in his characteristic way, Edochie shortly after his
release, called the press and delivered the message, Hot!
The
media had reported Edochie’s kidnap, the demand of 60million and later
10million as ransom, but were rather too silent on what was finally
paid for him to get out. Well, as we all know-though the security guys
would rather have us believe otherwise- no body goes in there and
comes out without dropping something, at least in appreciation
of the entertainment the kind of which Edochie alluded to. And for a
big fish like Edochie who ironically heads the Governments effort at
burnishing away with a wave of wand the bad image we have acquired for
ourselves after many years of failed leadership, one can guess that
quite fair amounts must have changed hands.
While
Edochie’s kidnap made news headlines, so many other similar events
went unnoticed and unreported. What started as isolated cases of
malfeasance by Niger Delta militants has now grown to become a full
blown trade and has assumed such heights especially in Eastern Nigeria
that is now both alarming and I dare say, interesting.
Time was
when it was just foreigners who enjoyed hostage threats in the
country. The threat had later flowed down to the relations of
political office holders and the rich. Today everybody including yours
sincerely who daily does battle with the same realities of our failure
as a nation just like the Boys has a hostage threat hanging
down the neck. It doesn’t matter who you are or what you do, everyone
has got a hostage value.
The boys
seem well learned in the art of pricing. When you are picked, your
worth is ascertained and a price tag put to you. Typical of Nigeria
where no agreements is reached except by negotiated compromise, they
hike the price just a tad, so that after the usual market place
bargain a price just about your real worth is settled for at the end
of the day.
Your
worth as a hostage is measured by the car you drive or that which a
relative of your drives, the house a relative of yours lives in, Your
close relationship with someone who is suspected to be of high hostage
value, the information that you live and work in Abuja (or any other
city) or you have relatives who do, an information that you just came
in from abroad, as well as less seemingly worthwhile reasons as the
size of your tummy, the swagger in your step when you walk, the
impression that you are rich or smell of riches of any form.
“Riches”
now doesn’t have to be millions. A friend and her family recently
traveled to their village for the New Yam festival and annual August
Meeting ritual. Her little brother of fourteen was picked up by
persons who were nothing more than village urchins and a ransom of a
hundered thousands was demanded. Eventually they settled for Forty
thousand naira.
Now what
beats me is that save for the case of the visiting female Rotarian who
was kidnapped in Kaduna by persons who obviously were amateurs in the
game, our security network which funnily is an amphibious collection
of so many different bodies funded annually by the federal budget, has
irretrievably failed to smash any of the gangs doing this and free a
hostage. Did you just say shame on us?
Well,
back to the experience of the reigning top ex-hostage Pete Edochie.
The message the boys asked him to deliver ironically had the
same content as much of what Mrs. Clinton told us some weeks back that
got the PDP really ranting. It had the same content as you will find
in the writings of all the popular angry Nigerian columnists
from Soyinka, to Okey Ndibe and Pius Adesanmi and everybody
in-between. It was the same message in all the articles you will find
in Nigerian online forums and individual blog sites. It was the same
thing we’ve all be shouting about; that these people have gotten
so good at stealing that even the very cloths on our bodies doesn’t
seem safe anymore.
Pete had
undertaken to offer the Government (which he ironically currently
serves) some words of advise. I remember very much the word “stipend”.
He asked that that word be added to our national recurrent expenditure
list on behalf of unemployed youths just like politicians already
enjoy. If Edochie was suggesting that cash be doled out monthly, then
I wouldn’t quite agree with him simply because, we would only be
providing yet another avenue for people to sink their filthy hands
into the public till.
These
stipends should come instead in the way of a resolution to the ASUU
(and other union) strikes, the better funding of education, the
provision of constant power to drive the Small and medium industries,
the training of youths to enable them to be self employed, the genuine
fight against corruption, the establishment of hospitals that are not
mortuaries, the fighting of the extreme poverty, an end to the
stealing…
Well,
until these stipends are thought important enough to receive the
attention of our leaders, we can’t help but continue to walk about as
hostages each with a distinct Hostage value. On my part, I have been
trying to work out what my value could be just in case the boys
undertook the misadventure of picking me up one of these days. You
might wish to take some time off and do the same.