Inventive kidnappers
“I was selling rice and beans in a wheelbarrow which I was popularly known for, but I was using that to hide my membership of the kidnap gang. No one
- Law enforcers must be more proactive and creative if criminals keep reinventing their operations
“I was selling rice and beans in a wheelbarrow which I was popularly known for, but I was using that to hide my membership of the kidnap gang. No one knew my involvement in the crime,” said Issiaq, 25, who was recently arrested by operatives of the Oyo State Police Command Monitoring Unit.
He confessed to involvement in two kidnappings. “I didn’t follow the gang on the first operation. I didn’t know where the victim was picked from. However, I was the one who took food to my five gang members and the victim who was held hostage in the bush. I was given N500,000 out of N10 million collected as ransom,” he stated.
He went with the gang on the second operation, and said he was “given N1.5 million out of the N15 million ransom paid by the victim’s family members.”
He named their gang leader, Umoru, and another member, Sanda, who “had AK-47 rifles… and used to bring two with ammunition for kidnap operations.” Both are at large.
Commissioner of Police Olugbenga Ayodeji Abimbola told journalists that Issiaq was arrested along with two others, Bior and Umaru. The gang had abducted two Fulani cattle owners, Gurumo and Adamu Issa, from their homes in Aiyetoro Village, on January 27. The kidnappers took them to a forest hideout, and demanded N30 million from their families as ransom, with a threat to kill them if the payment was not made or delayed. They released the abductees after five days following the payment of N15 million.
The police boss attributed the arrests of three members of the gang to “discreet investigation and sustained intelligence gathering.” He said they also confessed to several other kidnapping and armed robbery operations across Oyo State, adding that investigation is ongoing to apprehend the remaining members of the group.
This case highlights a chilling trend in criminal tradecraft: the use of occupational camouflage. By adopting the persona of a wheelbarrow pusher—a ubiquitous, hardworking, and often overlooked figure in the country’s markets—the suspect exploited social invisibility to conduct surveillance and facilitate abductions.
This confession serves as a grim reminder for security consciousness and has serious implications for public vigilance. It reveals a need for more robust human intelligence within local markets and residential areas to identify individuals whose patterns of life don’t match their purported trade.
Read Also: Nigeria now prime investment destination, Tinubu tells CSOs
The arrests signal a broader challenge. As kidnappers become more creative in their masking, the institutional response must move beyond reactive arrests to proactive, intelligence-led policing that monitors informal hubs more closely.
Similar to the “rice and beans” wheelbarrow pusher, there have been several instances of criminals posing as street vendors. For instance, in various parts of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) and Lagos, suspects have been arrested for posing as fruit or vegetable hawkers.
Their primary goal was to monitor the pattern of life of residents—noting when people leave for work, when children return from school, and the level of private security at specific gates.
Also, there have been reports of criminal informants posing as sachet water vendors at traffic gridlocks. They use the proximity to vehicles to peek inside and identify “high-value” targets (individuals with expensive gadgets or jewellery) to tip off kidnap gangs further down the road.
Such cases emphasise that today’s kidnappers in the country are moving away from violent snatching and toward intelligence-led abductions, making public vigilance and community-based intelligence more critical than ever.
The necessity of prosecution in kidnapping cases extends beyond simple punishment; it is a critical instrument for maintaining law and order. Where kidnapping has evolved into an intelligence-led industry, the role of the judiciary is as much about deterrence as it is about public safety.
Ultimately, prosecution is the final check in the security ecosystem. Without it, arrests are merely temporary disruptions in a criminal career rather than a permanent solution to a national crisis.
