By Ochereome Nnanna
THERE is a renewed rage of insecurity in the land. You can understand why. The elections are around the corner. It is usually at this time in the political season that abductions, assassinations and sundry breaches of law and order come out of the woodwork like chicken pox rashes.

Over the past weekend, two of Nigeria ’s top traditional rulers – the Emir of Kano, Alhaji Ado Bayero and the Alaafin of Oyo, Alhaji Lamidi Adeyemi III – were embroiled in separate security scares.

The emir escaped assassination allegedly plotted by a marabout, Alhaji Abubakar Batakaye, who according to reports, sent a 19-year-old boy, Usman Abubakar, to eliminate him at a mosque during the Friday prayers last weekend.

On the other hand, Alaafin Adeyemi alleged that Governor Adebayo Alao-Akala of Oyo State, in cahoots with an unnamed prominent businessman and a top police officer, hatched the plot to kill him, but that the evil deed could not proceed because the police officer grew cold feet and came to report the plan to him. He made these allegations in a letter to President Goodluck Jonathan.

However, Akala’s media aide, Dotun Oyelade, has described the allegation as unfounded.

From the Eastern flank came the frightening story of how the Chairman of the Lagos State chapter of the Nigerian Union of Journalists, Mr Wahab Oba, and four other officers of the union were abducted just as they entered Abia State from Akwa Ibom where they attended the National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting of the Union.

Shortly after they were snatched the abductors demanded a N250 million ransom. In those “good old days”, kidnappers first of all sized up their targets to ascertain whether they had “kidnap value” before moving in. These days, it is no longer clear if this “due diligence” is carried out. Otherwise, how on earth would anyone in their right senses imagine that a Nigerian journalist can cough out N500,000, let alone N50 million!

Since this story broke, I have been asking myself, assuming that I had the misfortune of negotiating with these heartless criminals for the release of my colleagues, where can I even start? Whoever heard of such a thing as a “wealthy journalist”? This job of ours gives you a name.

If you have a good platform and God gave you special talents it will also give you visibility. You could even become a celebrity. You have little or no choice but to dress decently and maybe, even ride a modest car.

There are many journalists who have put in dozens of years in the service but are unable to break the surface and keep their heads above the poverty level due to the peculiar nature of the job and the Nigerian environment.

This is a clarion call for something urgent to be done about the wildfire called kidnapping, which started by targeting expatriates (especially Euro-Americans) and later on, oil workers and political office holders and their relations. We should have been sufficiently alarmed when criminals in Edo State started snatching medical doctors and their relations in and around Benin City.

Doctors are professionals, just like journalists. Only very few of them can really be described as “wealthy”. Their profession is a prestigious one, but many doctors are unable to pay their bills beyond the barest essentials of life. Yet they were considered by criminals as game enough to kidnap.

By far the most surprising incidence of lawlessness that took place over the past week was the invasion of Abuja by a large group of young men who called themselves “ex-militants” of the Niger Delta. Media reports had it that they rode in a convoy of 66 buses from Bayelsa State and ended up at Gwagwalada, about 50 kilometres from the centre of the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja.

This particular incident illustrates in vivid detail how the security system in Nigeria is simply not working.

Consider this. The distance from Bayelsa State to Abuja must be well over 700 kilometres . There are still a lot of troops of the Joint Military Task Force (JTF) policing the roads in the former theatre of militancy – Rivers, Delta and Bayelsa states. In addition, almost every kilometre of all major roads in the entire South East and South-South has a group of armed-to-the-teeth mobile policemen and soldiers on duty.

To get to Abuja from Bayelsa you have to pass at least three other states – Delta, Edo and Kogi. The mere fact that 66 busloads of virile young people are on the move should rouse the curiosity of security agents. The question now is: Why were these boys allowed the right of passage until they arrived at the Abuja city gates?

These roadblock police and military men usually stop and extort innocent travellers but the Abuja invaders succeeded in getting so far.

We read that the authorities have ordered an investigation into this incident. The probe should not only focus on the “ex-militants” and their leaders. More importantly, it should also examine the roles played by our security agencies (or rather, roles they failed to play) in this worrisome security breach.

All these incidents are evidence of the fact that Nigerians are not safe. The system is just an open field for lawbreakers to roam as they will. Because kidnapping is “lucrative” and was allowed to flower in the system, every other idle youth is either into it or considering trying it.

In the same vein, posing as an “ex-militant” has become good business for those posing as “ex-generals” or “commanders”, while the “other ranks” who find themselves in camp will get a good pay-off. It is amazing that the people who packaged the post-amnesty programmes did not anticipate the abuses such as these that were sure to come in its wake.

Nigeria needs governance.