We need to mine enough information from him
All over the world, the arrest by security operatives of a notorious criminal is celebrated by the security agencies and even the media. While the police bask in the euphoria of the arrest, for the latter, it is time to feast on the different angles to the life and operations of the criminal, in their bid to be the first to report the story. Perhaps this explained the scrambling for snapshots by some police officers with the country’s most celebrated kidnapper, Chukwudi Onuamadike a.k.a. Evans, who was arrested on June 10 at the Magodo area of Lagos.
We cannot deny the police their celebration of such a big catch. But, in all they do, they must be mindful of one thing: no evil must befall Evans. Neither must he escape from detention under any circumstance; Nigeria needs him alive. We should credit a criminal who had been on the police watch list for about seven years before he was caught, using all manner of subterfuge, with some intelligence. Although, as some people have argued, Evans was only seemingly smart because government has not equipped the police and other security agencies well enough; the truth is, some other dangerous criminals had been caught by the police, even in recent times.
We need Evans alive because there is no serious crime that he had not participated in, from armed robbery to drug trafficking and kidnapping. He confirmed what many people have always known: that though robbery and drug trafficking may be sweet, kidnapping is sweeter. Right now, these crimes, and perhaps ritual killings, are about the most heinous crimes that the police and other security agencies are battling. So, Nigeria’s security and intelligence operatives certainly have a lot to sip from the wealth of experience of the man the police themselves described as the most intelligent kidnapper in the country. Indeed, in some other countries, psychologists and criminologists would by now be busy analysing his stories and confessions with a view to fashioning out policies and programmes that would aid the government in preventing crimes as well as resolving knotty and seemingly knotty ones.
Evans’ life should be preserved to enable us have insights into how they operate in the crime world. He has seen it all. He has told us what led him into crime although we may not agree with him that that was enough reason to embrace that course of action. He has told us about the source/s of his arms supply, he has told us about his sedentary lifestyle and how wealthy people can avoid being kidnapped, his bank account.
Indeed, he seems to be cooperating well with the police the way he has been singing since his arrest. Evans has volunteered information to the effect that he worked on vital background checks as presented by people close to their targets; how they settled officials at the airports to look the other way when they were taking drugs abroad, etc.
But he does not seem to have said much about his bank account. He needs to help the nation in this regard. His statement that he has barely N20,000 in his account can only be taken with a pinch of salt. The security agencies still have to prod him to tell us more in this regard.
Occasionally he may appear incoherent, the fact is, some sense can be made of the apparent nonsense that he might have volunteered and might still volunteer. Ordinarily, we would not have needed to warn against the police making public some of their investigations but for the fact that some of such information are already in the public domain. For example, for security reasons, the identity of the victim who escaped that eventually set the process of Evans’ arrest in motion should have been protected. In today’s organised crime world, such information should be regarded as top secret. Even if the police inadvertently gave out such information, the media owes the responsibility of protecting it from getting to the public. The lucky victim is now apprehensive with the release, on court orders, of one of Evans’ boys.
In all, the police have done commendably well by ensuring that Evans was caught without any serious incident. The country needs all the information that can be useful in fighting crime that he may want to divulge. The least we also owe him is to ensure that he gets fair trial in the law court.
Logging you in...
