04 May 2016•Update: 20 May 2016
LAGOS, Nigeria
Nigerian senate has recommended the death penalty for anyone involved in kidnapping, which is a rising phenomenon in the country's southern region where victims have included senators and schoolchildren.
The recommendation was made as lawmakers Wednesday unanimously adopted a report of the Senate Joint Committee on police affairs, national security and intelligence.
In his remarks, Senator Ben Murray-Bruce said: “Kidnapping is a very serious problem with grave implications in several areas of the economy.”
The committee has the mandate to make recommendations on how to deal with unabated cases of abductions and hostage-taking, some of which resulted in deaths.
It recommended that a law prescribing death penalty for abduction be enacted as a national response for the phenomenon. It was unanimously adopted.
Senators took turns to describe their experiences as they shared how their own relatives got kidnapped and demands were made for ransom.
Senator Adamu Aliero of the ruling All Progressive Congress recounted the ordeals of abductees and what their families go through during such experience. “Anyone convicted of kidnapping should be sentenced to death,” Aliero said.
The adoption of the committees’ report came a day after police rescued a former Senator Iyabo Anisulowo, who had been abducted last Wednesday in southwestern Ogun State. Her abductor had demanded two million naira ($10,152) in return for her freedom.
Incumbent Deputy Senate President Ike Ekweremadu recalled how he was abducted on September 10, 2000, and kept for two days before he was released.
Nigeria’s most prominent abduction was the April 14, 2014, ferrying away of some 276 schoolchildren by Boko Haram militants. Only 57 of those girls have so far been accounted for, with 219 still believed to be held in captivity.
