THE COLOUR OF A BANDIT ECONOMY

Living in an economy where money is forced out of your pocket by various players is scary and enervating, writes Austin Isikhuemen

A bandit is a robber or an outlaw belonging to a gang and typically operating in an isolated or lawless area. A typical bandit is usually armed and is ready to kill in other to be obeyed by those he wants to forcefully and illegally profit from. The original bandit, especially from Western movies, covers his face and head with a bandana, carrying guns around and riding horses on his way to, or from, robberies. He breaks into banks and bars in remote areas leaving a pool of blood and shattered skulls and carries away his loot to share with his gang. That was the bandit of yore.

Enter the Nigerian bandit. They came after the civil war ended in 1970. They were called armed robbers and they were a novelty and rare. The military regimes of the era enacted decrees that made the offence triable by tribunals and punishable by public military execution. The thinking must be that the finality that execution represents and the stigma it would bring to the family of the robber would deter others and put an end to the crime. It did not. There were cases where cars were stolen during executions as happened at the bar beach!

Notorious bandits (called armed robbers) like Ishola Oyenusi, Lawrence Anini, Shina Rambo, Mighty Joe and Godogodo made their eras a time of fear. In Anini’s case in the 1980’s the police became more afraid than the civil populace. This was exacerbated by the Robben Hood style of the gang who broke banks and sprayed the money for passersby and market women to collect while shooting and killing any policeman on site. It got so bad that they shot the Bendel State police commissioner in the nose at Ring Road in Benin City. That era only ended when courageous CSP Uanreroro led by then Commissioner of Police Parry Osayande successfully routed the gang and investigations revealed a police accomplice of the rank of DCP whose support made the gang so deadly efficient.

Banditry, called by any other name, really never stopped but some lulls took their news away from the headlines for some decades. Then the Boko Haram insurgency came and within it grew the banditry that now keeps us awake all night. What is baffling is that BH is weakening while banditry with its twin called kidnapping for ransom is growing in leaps and bounds. It is also claimed by some that illegal gold mining in parts of the country aids and abets this crime. A common feature of this unholy and violent “business” is the extortion of humongous amounts of money in return for the right to life.

The amounts being demanded and paid to bandits and kidnappers are mind-boggling. How a few faceless gang members are able to move those sums around and utilize them in our economy using the banking system despite its numerous safeguards beats one’s imagination. How are these people able to bypass NIN, BVN and KYC? Would it be wrong to speculate that bandits and kidnappers hold more cash than the vaults of our commercial banks today? Would it be unthinkable that some of them may be funding POS businesses that we all run to when cash cannot be found in the banks?

Two weeks ago, two young men who visited home from Italy were kidnapped at Uromi in Edo State. They were asked for a ransom of N40 million. After negotiations, rumours had it that the young men were released only after N22 million was paid! It was also rumoured that the banks were unhelpful in raising the cash and a resort to extensive and expensive POS transactions was the saving grace. Would you blame those young men if they never visit their fatherland again? That was not in the newspapers, of course. So are several others that happen daily across the land.

A cursory glance at our newspapers would reveal that the banditry and kidnapping reported are legion. So are the unreported. Check the Metro pages of the Punch daily newspaper and you would think we are at war. The situation is worse in the Northwest where a mix of economic, political and ethnic/communal issues come into play. People and communities already held to ransom by poverty are being held ransom by bandits who extort them, burn their homes and kill them if they are unable to meet the bandits’ demands. The helplessness of the government and the political class speaks volumes.

How come we were able to hold elections and the bandits took a sabbatical till the votes were counted, collated and results announced? Are they in league with some politicians? Were we not even going to conduct a census amid the mayhem? With the monetization of our electoral processes such as the purchase of expression of interest forms, nomination forms and campaign funding that run into billions of naira, is it improbable that a group of bandits can now sponsor a governorship candidate these days? Unthinkable?

What of the other bandits? Those who wield no guns but use pens to rob our commonwealth of billions? They are protected in their bulletproof SUVs and guarded by security agents trained, paid and armed by the taxpayer and with funds from the extraction of our national resources. How are those who said they fed school children with billions of naira during covid19 lockdown different from bandits? What of those paying millions of government funds into private accounts in flagrant disregard of regulations and the law? And you think you are not a bandit if you collect a mobilization fee running into millions of naira for a road project and abandon same while buying a luxury home in Asokoro with the money?

The bandits include those who help to make the naira value tumble downhill because they have vaults of illegally accumulated dollars which give them arbitrage stranglehold on our collective necks. While the genuine, patriotic security agents put their lives in line fighting this scourge, there must be those among them who profit from the evil enterprise and build their own empires from it. They too are bandits of a different colour.

Are there no bandits today who roam free because judicial bandits in our courts set them free? If you prevent voters from voting because they are likely to vote for your opponent, steal a ballot box and burn the ballots, mutilate election results or read a result different from the one collated, shoot into the air to disrupt collation, please tell me if you are not an electoral bandit. Have we not seen some potentates muscle out candidates that they do not like, using guns and money, or collect humongous sums from those they know they would force to step down?

Who has not seen scenes in this clime where thugs armed with all sorts of weapons are used to collect revenues leaving some of the payers maimed and most of the funds ending up outside government coffers? Some power suppliers and distributors force you to pay for the power you did not consume! Sounds strange but it happens and you pay under threat of disconnection. Sounds like banditry?

There are aspects of our lives that should make us shudder and take action but repeated occurrences have made most people dead to such events. Living in a bandit economy where money is forced out of your pocket by various players who have become untouchable can be scary and enervating. It is bad for the individual and bad for the economy. Even sports. Can Nigeria apply to host the magnificent AFCON fiesta of the type holding in Abidjan today? Will insecurity foisted by banditry allow us to win the hosting rights?

Let us think about this. The solution can only come from within, with every citizen playing his part. But the government must take the lead. Not by making laws that everyone knows would be unworkable and unhelpful such as criminalizing ransom payment when the alternative does not exist. The bandits in government must be shown the way out when caught and the highly placed people collaborating with bandits must be exposed and dealt with. Employment opportunity creation and easing the process of doing business will all go a long way toward reducing the number of those left with no option but to take up arms against society. Exhibition of bandit values through ostentatious living in a society where three-square meals have become a novelty also spurs banditry and should be stopped.

Isikhuemen, a management consultant, writes from Lagos