Nigeria Memoirs – 4 Audacious Lawlessness
Is Nigeria a dangerous country to live in? Yes, but how much dangerous, depends upon the perspective and hosts of different reasons. Much like India, it is saddled with a plethora of issues that have given rise to terrorism and lawlessness. And, like ours, they too have their abundant share of militancy and terrorism. It’s in both Islamic majority North and oil rich South. Boko Haram’s stated aim to establish Caliphate and full control of large areas in 3 states pushed the Federal Govt to impose emergency a few years back. I will not go into these but recount a few such incidents which have happened to me or people around me. Let’s have a peek into the magnitude of their larger-than-life problem.
MASS FEMALE KIDNAPPINGS
Sensibilities of the cocoon protected people world over were shaken up in Apr 2014 with the news of kidnapping of 276 SCHOOL GIRLS (16-18 years old) from a government secondary school in Chibok (Borno State) in a single sweep by Boko Haram. A few girls escaped captivity over the next 7 years on their own, while a few were later released with their new borne. Nine years later, 96 girls still remain in captivity. The Supreme Commander Shekau spelled out their ideology when he said – Slavery is allowed in my religion, and I shall capture people and make them slaves. The girls should not have been in school and instead should have been married since girls as young as nine are suitable for marriage. And also, that he would sell the girls on the slave market. Reminds much of our Ghoris and Ghaznis and also our next-door neighbour Taliban. An estimate compiled in 2015 brought out that at least 2,000 women and girls had been abducted by the group since 2014. If you take into account till date, the shocking aspect, is that these figures pale and are only a small percentage of the females that have been kidnapped. Over 600 schools had to be closed down.
TRAIN KIDNAPPING
Deliberate sabotage actions for derailing and bombings though not a common occurrence but keeps happening once a while world over. Kidnapping of passengers from railway stations in Nigeria occurs occasionally. But hijacking of an entire train for mass kidnapping is unheard of. Erstwhile Bollywood movies delved in looting trains but hijacking the train and carrying away hundreds of hostages is indeed record breaking. Travel by high-speed train from capital Abuja to Kaduna, a 2+ hour distance of approx 200 Km was started in 2016 with Chinese help. It became a safer option as the kidnappings and robbery on this vital road route that connects the capital to the Northern areas including the important business town of Kaduna escalated. 362 passengers were on board. More than 160 on the train were selected and taken hostage in Mar 2022 while about 10 were killed and numerous injured. Over the next few months most of the victims were released on payment of huge sums going upto Naira 100 million ($225 K) in some cases. Let’s look at the clever math… looting all of them with average 100,000 Naira would have got them just 36 Million, while taking hostage 160 of them and releasing them on average ransom of 5-10 million each gets them around a Billion. A very profitable business. The last batch of hostages were released in Oct, 7 months later. The train travel was restored after 9 long months. This was indeed the height of banditry. The audacious distressing feat was carried out within 100 km from the capital, and the bandits held onto the hostages for more than 6 months till the ransoms were paid out.
HIGHWAY AMBUSH
In Nigeria, the usual modus operandi by bandits would be to select areas of road stretch around the bends which are not visible from long distances. Once 10 to 20 vehicles are trapped in a distance of 50 m in the bend, the cordon is closed. The armed bandits would fire indiscriminately to cower down the trapped passengers and also to stop vehicular movements from either side entering the cordon. All pax are asked to come out of the vehicle, lie prone on the road face down with their contents of their pockets emptied next to them. Face down is to prevent any facial recognition of the bandits and is strictly ensured through the indiscriminate use of machete. About 1-2 bandits per vehicle move in, rip open the bags for cash with knives, collect the emptied pockets contents including mobiles and vanish in their vehicles or forests nearby. All this is completed in 15-20 minutes. I recall an incident when my colleague on a visit from India got stuck in this ordeal, with his face down built up enough courage and requested the bandit if he could get back his credit cards in the wallet, conveyed all respectfully with face down. The bandit cleaned the cash out of the wallet and threw the wallet back with a crafty, cruel, throwback single word – HAPPY.
GO-SLOW AMBUSH
There is a typical phenomenon called GO SLOW in Lagos, the business capital of Nigeria. The city is very much akin to our commercial and financial capital Mumbai with a deep-sea port. Traffic congestion is a very unique character of Lagos. This Go-Slow, a traffic grid lock, is a common occurrence caused not just because the road is chock-a-block with vehicles but also because the local boys would dig up part of the road thus slowing down the traffic to a crawling pace. The only advantage of the Go Slow was that we could make all our household purchases from vendors who sell all the FMCG items including fresh groceries along the moving cars. You could haggle and negotiate all along this slow caterpillar movement. The disadvantages were very many. Loss of travel time was enormous leading to inefficiencies in productivity. Another one was if you wanted to clear your bladder any time soon, then you were absolutely out of luck. The next one was more significant.
If your car door locks were not locked, you could expect a clean out operation by the AREA BOYS. Area boys is the term used in Nigeria for organized gangs on the road side. They are more prevalent in Lagos. Police is quite ineffective in these circumstances because one, they are too corrupt, 2nd they cannot reach the spot in the dense traffic and 3rd even if they did, these boys would just vanish in the milieu. (For more on Area Boys, refer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Area_boys). They would brazenly open the door, enter the vehicle and collect the loot on gun/ knife point over the next 20 meters. Nearby vehicles would see the robbery in action but none would dare to help.
Another simple way was when one expert area boy would roll under your car and cut the fuel pipe. This was very easy to do in Peugeot especially the 504 series. The vehicle would run out of fuel in next 60 – 75 meters and these boys could play merry hell, unmindful of traffic going past, all this in cahoots with the police.
Home breaking was very common. We were fortunate that inspite of our presence in Nigeria for more than 2 decades, we have not had any, except one, home armed robbery. Probably because we were out on a charity mission and our welfare programs had reached out to most of districts (LGA) with beneficiaries in most of the villages. We would receive advance warnings, protected getaways, incidental protection at most places. Nonetheless, I had promulgated standing instructions vide which all expats were expected to always keep standby 25/50 currency notes of $20/10 denomination and 2 bundles of 200 Naira notes, to be handed over without much thought when encountered by an armed robber. Non availability of minimal cash could convey that we are not willing to part and could lead to fatalities. This amount was reimbursable in case of any unfortunate eventuality.
None, repeat none, were expected to act as “Rambo” …
Rather the advice was… Billy don’t be a hero, Don’t be a fool with your life.
By Colonel Akhil Gupta
