Anyone who has ever been kidnapped or has relatives or friends who have been kidnaped before will relate with the book in focus this week.
The book: “Abduction Chronicles,” gives us precisely what an abducted person feels during a kidnap experience.
Thus Abduction Chronicles (Immenso Media, 2018), is a recollection of the kidnap experience and ordeal of Folarin Philip Banigbe in the nest of his abductors.
In the book, Banigbe, an engineer, publisher, feature writer, blogger and pastor recounts his near-death experience in the den of kidnappers who invaded his Port Harcourt, Rivers State home in the middle of the night, robbed him of personal belongings, took his wife’s jewelleries and abducted him. The author tells us how the abductors took him – blindfolded – to an unknown island in the heart of Niger-Delta where he endured the most dehumanising moments of his life in the company of dare-devil, desperate kidnappers whose main focus was money.
The book: “Abduction Chronicles,” presents in 24 chapters and a total of 260 pages, the author’s five-day sojourn in the middle of nowhere and the author’s musings on the state of the nation.
In telling this unpalatable tale, Folarin Philip Banigbe gives the reader his impressions on the highly efficient, yet illegal kidnapping industry and how big it has turned out to be in a society permissive of evil. So in this work, life stood still for the author. He was dragged around bare-foot, he felt pain all over, he was blindfolded for over two days, and all he could feel was a sense of emptiness and worthlessness. “I had no sense of sight. I had no idea where we were going or how close we were to the place. I had no idea what they were running from or what they were running to. I felt like a thing, not a person. I felt insignificant.” (p32).
In the book, Folarin Banigbe reflects on the sorry state of security in the nation. In one section of the book, he made a case against the security set-up, especially the police, about how they usually advise people in this situation to just pay the ransom demanded by kidnappers- and then move on.
Through his interaction with the kidnappers, Banigbe digs into the mind of the kidnappers and other criminals in the country who usually find excuses to justify anything – including murder and abduction. In one of the author’s conversations with the kidnappers, they told him that they were doing the business of kidnapping because nobody was helping them, particularly the rich. They told him, “But no be our fault own, the rich people wey dey this country no dey help the poor. But we dey suffer now. Rich people no dey help us.” Thus, the kidnappers, and by extension, perpetrators of crimes in the land see their trade as hustle, which is meant to make ends meet.
According to the author, it is scary how the men of the underworld have now compartmentalised their motive and trade. They see themselves as hungry and poor, and see others as “rich or maybe comfortable” So the abductors’ narrative is that of “them versus us” and by this they mean the government people, the rich versus the poor and neglected.
This is perhaps the model that has given rise to how society has come to be classified into three classes of people: The usurpers, the victims and the victimised. Of these categories, the author writes (Pp227- 228) that there are three broad categories of people in Nigeria today: the usurpers (who are the rulers, the politicians, and the people in power); the victims (who feel that they should have been amongst the usurpers, so when they are outside the corridors of power, they start to claim that they are victims. Then the last category consists of the victimised. These are “pretty much the rest of us who are at the receiving end of the misrule and the usurpation of the usurper group.”
While still in captivity in the hands of kidnappers and in the middle of nowhere, the author took time out to reflect on the modus operandi of these guys. He appreciated their efficiency and compared it to those who do honest, legitimate jobs, but are lax in their jobs. He also lamented the laxity which characterises the workings of Nigeria’s security or law enforcement agencies. He particularly wondered how the security architecture could not respond promptly to distress calls or spring to action to rescue his family even despite the fact that the robbers cum Kidnappers fired a shot during the operation. He writes about reaching the conclusion (p221) that “there is no security for the average Nigerian living in this country.” In this book, the author gives us vivid narration of how the police failed his family and even attempted to extort them. These details are exposed in the 20th chapter: “The Police is Your Friend, as in The Police is Everybody’s Friend!”
At a point in this book, the author states that he received divine revelation to accept this ordeal as a mission to evangelise and deliver his abductors, especially Capo, their leader – a message from God and to tell him that he had been chosen by God. Thus, even while negotiating his ransom with the leader of the kidnappers Folarin set to work on his abductors. He engaged Capo and his goons on various issues, trying to understand them and why they are into such business.
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Ultimately, the book, Abduction Chronicles, is a text which digs into the multi-million naira kidnapping industry and how the socio-economic situation of the country has aided criminality. It also provides strong nuggets of encouragement and the author’s postulations about the people’s attitude to life and work. The author’s keen memory has allowed us the opportunity of peeping into his experience which he has vividly narrated in this book. It is a book for all.
. Olatunbosun is a broadcast journalist, fact checker and book reviewer at Splash FM 105.5, Ibadan. He can be reached via [email protected].