In the absence of deterrence

(Link on Daily Trust)

Despite the public outrage provoked by the kidnapping and subsequent murder of a little girl in Kano recently, other would-be child kidnappers are certainly lurking out there determined to follow through on their plots in the absence of appropriate deterrence.

Meanwhile, correctional facilities across the country are literally overflowed with duly condemned murderers benefitting from the governors' inexcusable reluctance to sign their execution warrants. There are equally many easily convictable murderers benefitting from bureaucratic, legal and judicial foot-dragging that has stalled proceedings on their cases. Besides, as usual, many of them would end up somehow released on “technical”, “humanitarian” or other purported grounds. Some are even recognized as “repentant” to end up being effectively rewarded under various costly but hardly productive rehabilitation initiatives.

Yet, even though the link between the absence of appropriate deterrence and the growing prevalence of capital crimes against individuals and communities, is unmistakable, it remains largely ignored. 

Kidnapping and murder incidents have become so prevalent that only incidents with particularly outrageous circumstances or those involving advantaged persons attract public outrage, which, in turn, prompts a semblance of momentary concern on the part of those in power who express “shock” and “commitment” to preventing a recurrence. 

People live, or rather languish, in perpetual fear; and have resigned themselves to fate praying silently that a would-be kidnapper lurking out there doesn’t develop an interest in them or their relatives. In most cases, relatives of kidnapped persons pay the ransom quietly to get their kidnapped loved ones back, for they rightly lack confidence in the supposed commitment and capacity of the authorities to rescue them. After all, the instances where the authorities successfully rescued kidnapped persons without paying ransom are, if any, extremely few.   

On their part, the ransomed are left with permanent trauma from their ordeals most of which are too traumatic and indeed too humiliating to be shared with anybody. Many, for instance, were serially and constantly raped by their kidnappers. Most of the few who share their ordeals publicly are either too naïve to realise its associated social implications or are simply too devastated to bother. A foreign-based Nigerian woman (probably US-based) who was kidnapped along with members of her family while on a visit to Nigeria, was too devastated to keep her ordeal to herself and her close relatives. After going back to her base following their release after paying the ransom, she went on a viral video in an agonizing tone to share her rape ordeal at the hands of their kidnappers in Nigeria.

Children are particularly vulnerable to kidnapping and all sorts of abuse at the hands of non-strangers due to child neglect particularly prevalent in the Hausa-Fulani communities, which explains the relative ease with which their children are abused, exploited and kidnapped for ransom or rituals. 

The sight of unaccompanied, unattended, malnourished, barely clothed, and unkempt kids some as young as four and even younger roaming the streets and alleyways in a typical Hausa-Fulani community, is particularly distressing. Even many supposedly caring parents inadvertently expose their underage kids to avoidable harm by sending them to school or on an errand unaccompanied. 

Also, the culture of blindly trusting kids with anybody simply because he is a relative, neighbour or acquaintance explain the high rate of sexual molestation and other forms of child abuse against kids in those communities. Reported and unreported cases of child abuse involving cousins, uncles, domestic workers, neighbourhood shop owners, and other supposedly trusted acquaintances are quite prevalent in those communities. The real picture may not be easily clear as most cases end up suppressed by the very guardians or relatives of the victims on the pretext of protecting the victims from the social implications, especially stigma.

Though tackling crimes, especially capital crimes, necessarily entails a compressive approach that addresses all relevant things accordingly, appropriate deterrence remains the most effective mechanism to deter would-be criminals. 

Appropriate deterrence against capital crimes is dispensed only when capital punishment is executed against convicted and condemned criminals. To achieve that maximally, wherever capital punishment is applied, it’s either carried out publicly or covered widely in the media. In some countries, when a capital crime provokes widespread public outrage like the recent one in Kano, the trial would be given priority in terms of scheduling of proceedings to conclude it as soon as possible. Also, the execution wouldn’t take long. And to maximise the deterrence effect, some other condemned criminals waiting for their execution would be executed along with the criminal involved in the outrageous crime.

It’s an unexplainable irony that capital punishment is effectively suspended in a country like Nigeria despite being one of the worst crime-ridden countries in the world. This irony per se is enough to explain why the country is not taken seriously on the global stage.