Contending Issues in the Niger Delta Crisis of Nigeria - Journal of ...

Dr. William Ehwarieme
company to relocate from the region and the contract re-awarded to
another company about two years later. It is even more difficult still to
understand why innocent Niger Deltans who are neither wealthy nor
involved in governance or the oil industry should be victims. Thus,
following the kidnap of Elechi Amadi, Professor Wole Soyinka, the
Nobel Laureate expressed concern over the identity and motives of the
kidnappers when he asked whether kidnapping was in furtherance of
the Niger Delta cause or done to discredit the cause.
The popular view, particularly in government circles is that the
phenomenon of kidnapping is attributable to sheer criminality, and,
worried by its tendency to undermine security and stifle legitimate
economic activities, various governments within the region have
moved to check it with Rivers and Imo States prescribing the death
penalty for any culprit. The efficacy of such measures are however
doubtful for at least two reasons. First, the imposition of the death
penalty for armed robbery following an unprecedented upsurge in its
incidence at the end of the Nigerian civil war in the 1970s has neither
eliminated nor led to any significant reduction, rather it has merely
encouraged robberies with increasing violence and fatalities which
goes to show that deep rooted social problems cannot be eliminated
by treating them as mere incidence of criminality that would
disappear with the imposition of draconian penalties as deterrents.
Second, and more importantly, the measure is doomed because it
derives from a shallow and ahistorical understanding of the problem.
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