According to Vanguard nigeria, Abducting people and whisking their victims into the impenetrable forests, where the killer herdsmen/kidnappers demand various ransoms from relatives, has turned into not just a mere business but a systematized and money-spinning venture in Edo State.
Hitherto, money-making kidnappers targeted wealthy people whose movements they tracked, seized them wherever convenient, blindfolded them, and took them to sequestered houses where they demanded a payoff.
This was the method usually applied by Chukwudumeme Onwuamadike, popularly known as Evans and ‘The Billionaire Kidnapper,’ a native of Nnewi, Anambra State, and his gangsters, convicted for kidnapping in 2022.
Not peculiar to Edo State, as the neighbouring Delta State is also under siege, there is something strange about the kidnappers whose comfort zone are the dense forests in Edo State.
Co-conspirators known as “monitors” start the supplier network by mounting surveillance on victims and alerting the next group of people on the network, referred to as “grabbers.” Locals typically serve as the monitors and grabbers.
According to our findings, kidnappers themselves enlist members of their type to act as monitors and grabbers to hide their tracks.
In many cases, the grabbers take their prey to a spot in the jungle and sell them to the group known as “off-takers.”
There are “collectors” in the supply network who receive the payoffs and give them to the off-takers for their payment.
Many victims recognized the region of the country from where the kidnappers hailed by their language. They would explain to you who abducted them, what language they spoke, why they were taken, and how they were treated.
The unemployed youths and recent graduates who engage in kidnapping typically hide their victims in hidden buildings and demand ransom from their friends and family instead of taking them into the woods. They mostly speak Pidgin English.
Igbo kidnappers and Yoruba kidnappers also speak their dialects when they reach their “safe” zone, while the Fulani and Hausa kidnappers, whose looks are distinctive, communicate in vernacular. The Fulani kidnappers particularly like to bundle their victims into the forests, where they have built several rickety camps.
Fulani herdsmen before the infiltration
In Edo State, it used to be a joy to see the migrant Fulani herdsmen, who arrived during the dry season and left during the rainy season because of the tsetse fly, which was harmful to their cows.
The Fulani herdsmen armed themselves with sticks, arrows, and knives to protect themselves from attacks by other dangerous animals in the bush and to discipline their straying cows.
Now that the problem of tsetse fly infection has been resolved, their presence is year-round, and their wives sell their local milk in different towns and villages markets.
Then, they led their cattle off farmlands, and because of their religious convictions that they should not eat certain animals, they gave farmers rodents, guinea fowl, and animals they killed in the bushes whenever they saw them. Though they later started selling them.
If their cows ate and damaged crops on people’s farms, they paid compensation through their community leaders.
With the check on the effects of the tsetse fly, some wealthy men from the areas saw cattle rearing as profitable and took to the business, engaging the Fulani herdsmen to rear their cows alongside their own in the forests.
A royal father confirmed to Saturday Vanguard that some Fulani herdsmen have lived with them in their communities for upwards of 70 years and more without violence until lately.
Indeed, some Fulani herdsmen were granted access to build temporary camps for their cows in the forest, and their wives/children resided in the community.
Encroachment by kidnappers and killer herdsmen
The state began to experience problems with some Fulani herdsmen’s violent tendencies in the middle of the 2000s, and they peaked around 2012.
Vanguard’s investigation reveals that the criminally inclined Fulani, some of whom were not native to Nigeria, began to migrate to the southwest, south-south, and southeast after learning about the people’s hospitality to other Fulani living there.
Ondo ordered all herdsmen within its forests who were not registered with the state government to either leave the state or come and register in 2021, following the establishment of the Western States Security Network, also known as Amotekun.
Amotekun moved into the forests to enforce the directive when the seven-day ultimatum to illegal herders expired.
According to Amotekun, Ondo State’s Commandant, Chief Adetunji Olu-Adeleye, who oversaw the operation, some herdsmen consented to register and were already registered. He said those who agreed to leave the state and its forest reserves were escorted to the neighboring states’ borders.
Since Amotekun operates in Osun and Ekiti States, adjacent to Ondo State, Kogi and Edo States became their destinations.
The herders were expelled from the Owo axis at the Sobe area of Owan West local government area and Ibilo in Akoko-Edo local government area, both in Edo State. The Amotekun operatives escorted them from the Ore and Akoko axes of Ondo State to the Ofosu end of Edo State.
Since Edo lacked a robust security system like Amotekun’s, the herders sought refuge in the state, where they were able to associate with other Fulani criminals who had been terrorizing the state from all points of entry and departure.
They hung around in their camps and mixed with the other Fulani herdsmen, but soon they returned to their illegal activities until the secret was revealed
