Bandits and brutes

 Horror!!! That is the word to describe the recent kidnap incident in Oyo State and its fallouts. Terrorists stormed three schools in Oriire council area of the state penultimate Friday, 16th May, and abducted more than 30 pupils and some teachers. It was a coordinated assault by gun-wielding criminals on Community High School, Ahoro-Esiele; Baptist Nursery and Primary School, Yawota and LA Primary School, all in Oriire local government  area near Ogbomoso. Efforts by security operatives were underway as at the weekend to rescue the abducted persons. 

The incident marked morbid benchmarks in Nigeria’s security experience. It was the first mass school kidnap in the Southwest geopolitical zone, against the backdrop of such incidents in northern areas that government has been battling with. It happened in broad daylight, at about 9a.m., not in the solitary hours of night as was typical of school attacks in the North. (Students and teachers were jacked from classrooms, hence it was of no issue whether affected schools had students residency or not.) It was perhaps the first in extreme vulnerability of targeted victim demographic, with abductees including a two-year-old, a three-year-old and many four-year-old. Bandits in the past targeted secondary schools, rarely primary schools; on this occasion, they went for a nursery school among their soft targets.

The Oyo school attacks stand out in bestiality of the assailants. Besides an assistant headmaster named Adesiyan Adegboye, and a commercial motorcyclist who happened upon the scene, who were killed in the course of the assaults, a kidnapped school teacher, Michael Oyedokun, was beheaded in captivity by the bandits. A video footage believed to have been recorded and sent out by the bandits last Monday showed Oyedokun, a mathematics teacher at Community High School, tied up and forced to speak to camera before he was murdered in cold blood. Reports said the abductors also booby-trapped their escape path with explosive devices that claimed casualties among security agents who pursued after them.

Many aspects of this saga are intensely distressing. The mental harm inflicted on the toddler-abductees as they watched vicious violence happen around them is only to be imagined, and the scar it would leave on their future years a chilling conjecture. By the way, under what conditions are those little ones held in the forest and what are they fed with, especially with children’s renown for extremely low endurance level? Are they allowed to instinctively cry as children normally do when upset, for instance; and if so, how do the bandits respond to contain them?

Not that it’s been any easier for the more elderly pupil-hostages with age ranging from seven to 14 years, and neither obviously for the abducted teachers. In another video footage that ran viral online following the school attacks, the principal of Community High School, Mrs. Alamu F.R., called on government at the federal and state levels and other stakeholders to intervene for their rescue. In that video, she was batting off irritable insects, apparently mosquitoes, which illustrated just how unsalutary to good health the jungle they were held was.

Let’s not make much issue for now about the larger implication of the attacks for formal education, of which the Southwest zone is a bastion. Following the incident, the Oyo government ordered immediate closure of schools in four council areas as security agents plied efforts to rescue the Oriire abductees. Other schools proactively adopted self-preservation initiative by suspending operations; and where schools weren’t shuttered, parents kept their children back at home for now.

 “We have a society that has lost its soul.”

Most distressing was the graphic footage of Oyedokun’s murder that the bandits published. It was shocking that anyone could have so utterly lost their humanity as to take a fellow human, whose only weapon was knowledge with which he moulded young ones that are Nigeria’s future, to slaughter like a Sallah ram. And they flaunted it! Early last week, the victim’s family had to issue an appeal that the public stop sharing the images of Oyedokun depicting his ordeal. A statement shared via the Instagram page of a social media influencer said the circulation of the footage and images was deeply traumatising for the family. 

“His (Oyedokun’s) children are currently writing their exams and it has been extremely difficult emotionally for them, his elderly loved ones, and all of us – his nieces, nephews, cousins and relatives – especially as these contents keep appearing on social media,” the statement said, citing the need to protect the mental and emotional health of the late teacher’s relations. “We humbly ask that if it is necessary to post about the incident, kindly blur the videos/images or make use of pictures officially released by the family,” the family said, adding: “We sincerely appreciate your understanding, prayers, love and support during this difficult period.” If you see a picture of Oyedokun that the family supplied along with the statement, you would get a sense of the abuse he suffered at the hands of the bandits.

Oyo State Governor Seyi Makinde indicated the willingness of government to engage the terrorists towards getting the abductees released. “Whatever it is they demand, we are ready to listen to them and address the ones that we can address as a state government,” he said to journalists, noting that police personnel and other security agents were coordinating rescue operations and information management.

President Bola Tinubu described the attack as barbaric and expressed sadness over the reported killing of one of the hostages. In a statement by his Special Adviser on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, he sympathised with the Oyo government and families of the victims, adding that the Inspector-General of Police, acting on his directive, was leading a technology-driven rescue mission involving tactical and intelligence operatives.

We have a society that has lost its soul. Besides the bestiality of the terrorists, they reportedly had collaborators from within the attacked communities. The Oyo police command reported the arrest of six suspects linked to the attack, who were said to be assisting with investigations. According to security sources, the suspects served as informants to the bandits, and were tracked through phone conversations they allegedly had with the assailants while guiding them through forest routes. If found complicit, you would wonder for what gain persons located in a community became so unfeeling as to guide mindless killers onto an assault on soft targets within their community – not just giving tip-offs on security advance as used to be the case.

There are other indications of soullessness of the society. There seemed to be not enough alarm over the extreme vulnerability of hostages involved in the Oyo abductions as to warrant reordering national priorities towards their rescue. Everyone, except perhaps the affected families, has carried on with business as usual, such that fear lurked in quarters that this could pass into the shadows and become another statistical record of Nigeria’s duel with insecurity.  

Besides, there’s a place for provoked security alertness on the part of the citizenry that we seem yet far removed from. Meanwhile, there is a strong possibility the criminal enterprise that began as an external incursion may have transmuted into a domesticated industry in different communities. That is to say, a potential bandit-kidnapper nowadays could be someone harbouring in community neighbourhood and not an alien from distant lands. Unconfirmed reports said in the Oyo incident, some assailants were heard speaking in Yoruba, implying they were not all (even if some were) external tribesmen. This is a function of soullessness of society that is beyond government and institutional security agencies to tackle. It rather requires civic security alertness and proactive oversight on communal safety to deal with.   

The 16th May attacks stoked renewed agitation for security realignment in the Southwest to curb terrorists’ incursion into the zone. Among others, Aare Ona Kakanfo of Yorubaland Gani Adams bemoaned the reluctance of governors of states in the zone to enlist socio-cultural groups in fortifying the zone, accusing them of ignoring a proposal he submitted some two years ago. Yoruba Nation Activist Sunday Adeyemo, commonly known as Sunday Igboho, pressed for registration of a security network he aims at expelling criminal elements from forests in Yorubaland, while Oluwo of Iwo, Oba Abdulrasheed Akanbi, called on President Tinubu to empower traditional rulers with security vote and logistics support to combat insecurity across Yorubaland.

It is about time the merit of these sundry propositions were interrogated, and the Federal Government’s forest guards initiative actualised.