Abia State government has commenced negotiation with six dreaded kidnapping groups in the State to embrace the amnesty project they instituted to nip the menace of kidnapping in the bud.
The Secretary to the government of Abia State, Mazi Donatus Okorie who disclosed this also said that they are making effort to identify a camp for the rehabilitation of the kidnappers. He stated this in a round-table conference on Moving Abia Forward, organized by the Human Rights Justice and Peace Foundation on Friday, September 3, at Empire Hotel, Umuahia.
Mazi Okorie who represented the Abia State governor, T.A.Orji as the special Guest of Honour, said that the State government is waiting for the Federal government to include Abia kidnappers in the re-integration exercise established for the ex-militants in the Niger Delta region.
However, the forum faulted the amnesty plan for the kidnappers saying that it is not effective way of checking kidnapping and that amnesty should be given to known persons, that the persons in the groups would be known before government will think of granting amnesty to the identified people.
They described kidnapping as criminality of an audacious style, and that they are mere criminals and armed robbers who eat like queens and kings. The group pointed out that criminality abounds where justice system is weak.
The forum further discussed the sources, causes and effects of kidnapping in Abia State and affirmed that it was incubated and hatched by the people of the Niger Delta within the South-South geo-political region.
“They may have taken a cue from a United nations TV documentary that was produced in England in 2007, which sees the Niger Delta area as covering more than 70,000 squared kilometers, one of the largest wetlands on earth and holding some of the world’s richest oil deposits.”
Unlike the Niger Delta where kidnapping was strictly political and economic, kidnapping in Abia is socio-economic; the discussants stated that it has no political undertone, although politicians have traded blames and accusations.
The forum identified causes of armed banditry, urban terrorism, and kidnapping which are currently plaguing Abia state; saying that people are driven by circumstances to do what they otherwise would not do, while some people commit acts in an effort to bring about what they perceived as solution to hardship and injustice.
They recommended the establishment of legally structured Police to be established in the Local Government to curb the menace of kidnapping.
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