The request is straightforward, urgent, and becoming an all too frequent refrain on Nigerian social media: “KIDNAPPED AND NEEDS OUR HELP.
Under the text is a photograph of a young Nigerian graduate, Abudu Precious Oladipupo, beaming at the camera. He holds a degree in Linguistics and African Languages from Obafemi Awolowo University.
He was supposed to be at the National Youth Service Corps orientation program in Akwa Ibom state. But now his photograph is circulating on WhatsApp and other social media sites with pleas to assist obtain his release, Daily Independent writes.
Precious is one of the young graduates caught up in the latest kidnapping horror along the Oweri-Onitsha Road in Imo State where gunmen assaulted two commercial buses ferrying potential corps recruits heading from Ibadan to orientation camps in Abia and Akwa Ibom.
And now behind the photographs, account numbers and desperate messages spreading across social media is a disturbing question: how did Nigeria get to this point where young graduates travelling to serve their country can be kidnaped and ordinary Nigerians are then asked to help raise the ransom?
The attack happened on October 1 at about 6:30am in Umunoha, Mbaitoli Local Government Area of Imo State. The buses carried potential corps members and other passengers out of Ibadan.
The police command in Imo State reported first that 10 victims had been rescued and that it was verifying the precise number taken. Later reports from the transport business and families put the number of prospective corps members dragged into the woods at 19, with a claimed ransom demand of N50 million for each victim – a total of N950 million.
The figure has turned an already scary incident of kidnapping into a financial nightmare for the families.
Isiah Akpan, managing director of Uko Akwa Ibom Motors Nigeria Limited, whose company operated the buses said the vehicles had departed Bodija/Samonda Park in Ibadan on Wednesday. Traffic delayed them at Benin and they got to Onitsha before stopping overnight at Oba due to the state of the road. Africans and the Diaspora
They started out again at about 5am Thursday.
ABducted by Gunmen
“We were barely in Imo State when the gunmen came out from the bush,” Akpan said.
“They blocked the two vehicles and took 19 passengers, all members of the Corps, into the bush,” he added.
The drivers reportedly fled and informed security.
But while security agencies launched a hunt for the kidnaped passengers, another crisis was brewing in the homes of the victims.
The abductors contacted using her son’s telephone and demanded N50m for his return, said one parent who spoke on condition of anonymity.
“The N50m is just for my son,” she claimed.
For another family, the terror was made all the more real when the abductors allegedly made a video call on the victim’s telephone, Greatness.
Her mother, Mrs Oladosu, said the family observed her daughter and other corps members sitting on the ground in the bush and crying.
Then came the question that possibly portrays the families’ powerlessness better than any number.
“Where will petty traders get N50m from? “They are just going to serve Nigeria, why this punishment,” she wailed. Africans & the Diaspora
That’s a question that’s gone well beyond the families that have been affected.
The tale has spread from news headlines across Nigeria to WhatsApp statuses, X postings and charity calls.
Friends and family have started spreading pictures of victims and seeking help. They feature a photo by Precious Oladipupo.
The petition attached to his photo characterises him as “a young Nigerian, a graduate, a bright future” and urges members of the public to contribute what they can to return him home.
The campaign has set up an Opay account in the name of Courage Olamide Abudu and is appealing to Nigerians: “Every contribution, no matter how small, can make a difference.”
It is the latest manifestation of a phenomenon Nigerians have become increasingly familiar with: when a citizen is kidnaped, the immediate response is often to call the security agencies, but also to mobilise family members, friends, religious communities, alumni associations, colleagues and strangers on social media to raise money.
The event has also stirred a more personal dread among young Nigerians awaiting national service – that the journey to camp itself could become a security risk.
The National Association of Nigerian Students, NANS Southwest Zone D, said the event was more than an ordinary highway kidnapping and asked for immediate action to rescue the affected graduates.
The student body has also demanded adjustments in NYSC deployment and transportation arrangements. That anxiety is well-founded.
For many of the graduates, the excitement of receiving the NYSC call-up letter usually means getting a travelling bag, packing clothes, getting medical certificates and saying good-bye to parents before heading for camp.
But for the families of the abducted grads that journey ended differently.
One mother, Alimotu Akanke, said her son, Akande Farouq, transferred to Abia State, managed to transmit one phrase to the family WhatsApp group before his telephone went dead: “Kidnappers!”
Those were his last remarks to his family before contact was lost, reports said.
This is a story about how fast a normal journey can turn into a fight for survival.
It also reveals the plight of young graduates who travel large miles by vehicle to report for national duty. The irony is impossible to miss.
The NYSC was formed as a national integration program, bringing together young Nigerians from all sections of the country and posting them out of their home states.
But the path to achieving national integration can subject them to kidnapping.
And when the kidnapping happens, families are left to navigate a second system—the ransom industry.
The episode has not been lost on the security agencies.
The Imo State Police Command stated tactical units and other security agencies were dispatched for search and rescue operations. Two buses were also found, the police said.
The Inspector-General of Police, Olatunji Disu, thereafter sent the Deputy Inspector-General of Police in charge of Operations, Shehu Nadada, and two Commissioners of Police to Imo State to coordinate the rescue attempt.
The Defence Headquarters further said that troops of ‘Operation UDO KA’ in collaboration with other security agencies retrieved victims of the attack while rescue operations continued for those still missing. But for the families, every minute counts.
To Precious’s friends and classmates, the snapshot circulating online is more than just another image in a kidnapping story. It is the face of a young man with whom they had shared lectures, exams, laughs, graduation plans and expectations for life after university.
A TERRIBLE EXPERIENCE
For his generation, NYSC was meant to be the bridge between university and the next phase of maturity.
Rather, kidnapping has become part of that transition.
There is also the bigger question of the logic of ransom.
When kidnappers ask for millions of naira, families are confronted with an impossible calculation. They may not have such money. But the life of a son or daughter is not measured in Naira.
And the result is desperation. Account number being passed around. A photograph is taken. Friends reshare it. Contributions from former classmates.
Churches, mosques, alumni groups, co-workers and total strangers are being encouraged to donate. The victim becomes a nationwide crowdsourcing appeal.
This is the most fundamental form of solidarity to some Nigerians: when the authorities cannot bring someone home promptly, society attempts to help.
Security experts, however, are concerned about the broader issue of whether paying ransoms would become an accepted response to kidnappings. Does it heal the immediate agony of victims, or does it risk empowering an economy in which human beings are turned into financial assets?
That is a question worth serious study, especially where the victims are young Nigerians on their way to an official national program.
The kidnaped graduate is not only a private individual who has been caught up in a criminal conduct.
He or she is a citizen called for national duty. This makes the issue of protection wider than the individual household.
In reaction to the event, Senator Sharafadeen Alli appealed for unconditional release of the abducted corps members.
I appeal to those holding these young Nigerians to release them unconditionally. “They are innocent graduates, sons and daughters of families who now live in unbearable pain, fear and anxiety,” he said.
Now worry is permeating the very communities that send young people into the NYSC program.
The October 1 event has also reawakened fears over earlier attacks involving corps members. Premium Times recalled that the Imo abduction occurred weeks after another highway attack in Kogi State where corps members were among those seized.
The pattern raises a disturbing concern for the authorities: Are potential corps members appropriately safeguarded on their way to orientation camps?
And if not, shouldn’t there be a review of NYSC transportation and deployment arrangements in known kidnapping risk areas?
For the moment the families have little interest in theories. “They want their children returned. They want Precious back. They want Greatness again. They want Farouq returned.
They want every young graduate who left home to go to a NYSC orientation camp to come back home alive.
The social media appeals will go on until there is good news yet the same terrible reality lies beneath every snapshot. These young Nigerians were not going into a war zone. They were going to fight for their country. Latest News
They climbed onto the buses with luggage, paperwork, clothes and dreams. Those hopes ran headlong into Nigeria’s kidnapping business somewhere along the Owerri-Onitsha Road.
Now the country is urged to help bring them home and that may be the most uncomfortable question of all:
If Nigerians have to crowd-fund ransom to rescue young graduates on their way to serve Nigeria, who exactly is protecting the individuals that are being asked to serve?
For the families waiting for answers, the question can wait. Their kids can’t.
PROBLEMS OF SECURITY STRATEGIES
On Saturday, the parents of the prospective NYSC recruits disclosed that their abductors had given them 24 hours to pay a N1bn ransom for their release.
The parents made this known when they visited the Olubadan of Ibadanland, Oba Rashidi Ladoja at his private residence in Bodija, Ibadan, in the company of the state Commissioner of Police, Olugbenga Abimbola, and the Aseyin of Iseyinland, Oba Sefiu Adeyeri.
The abductors are said to be asking for N50m each for the victims, a total of N1bn.
The Makinde/Daura Presidential Campaign Organisation (MDPCO) has decried the abduction of the prospective National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) members travelling from Ibadan to their orientation camps, and has blamed the Federal Government for failing to protect the citizens from the rising insecurity.
The organization, in a statement on Saturday by its Director of Strategic Communications, Richard Ihediwa, described the October 1 incident as a disturbing reminder of the security issues facing Nigerians. Africans and the Diaspora
Reacting to the incident, the MDPCO said that the “lackadaisical attitude” of the President Bola Tinubu administration toward security had emboldened terrorists, bandits and kidnappers.
The situation was all the more disturbing considering the victims were young Nigerians on their way to participate in the mandated national service, it claimed.
“It is deeply saddening and heartbreaking that under the watch of the Tinubu-led administration, parents toil, make enormous sacrifices and struggle through biting economic hardship to train their children through tertiary institutions, only to hand them over to terrorists and bandits,” the organization said.
The current incident, said the campaign organization, is part of a wider pattern of insecurity affecting highways, towns, schools, places of worship and other public spaces across the country.
It also argued that the federal government has not shown the capacity to build an effective, intelligence-based security architecture that could protect civilians.
However, MDPCO praised the sacrifices of the security personnel, saying the men and women in uniform needed support and a stronger coordination from the political leadership.
The organization advised President Tinubu to emulate what it called the security approach of the presidential candidate of the Allied Peoples Movement (APM), Seyi Makinde, in Oyo State.
The campaign organization said Makinde’s approach is based on intelligence gathering, inter-agency collaboration, coordinated operations, preventive measures and swift response.
The abduction has raised questions on the safety of prospective corps members heading to orientation camps.
The incident also comes on the heels of an earlier highway attack in Kogi State where corps members were among those seized before subsequent rescue operations.
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