The Public Relations Officer of the Nigeria Police Force, Muyiwa Adejobi, has asserted that a significant number of abduction incidents shared on social media are orchestrated by the purported victims with the aim of extorting money from their families.
Mr Adejobi revealed this during the presentation of the gold medal to the winner of Ache and kickboxing of the 14th edition of Biennial Police Games, tagged “Oluyole 2024” held at Ilaji Resorts Hotel in Ibadan, Oyo State capital.
He stated that security difficulties in Nigeria are not as severe as most Nigerians assume and that most Nigerians believe what they see on social media, which is being regenerated and recycled as contemporary issues.
“Most kidnapping incidents are fake or stage-managed. When people shout that they are being kidnapped, it is not all these incidents are real. Many people fake kidnapping to get money from their people, while some do that to collect ransom from their families,” Adejobi was quoted by The PUNCH as saying.
He continued: “So, from us, the situation is not as bad as people read it on social media. We have the information, we have the data. Though we have isolated cases, we arrest them on a regular basis, we have taken the fight to their camps, we neutralized many of them, we arrest them and charged them to court.
“Most videos and news of insecurity happening in Nigerian online are old news, hardly will any conventional media house publish or broadcast them the way they are on social media.
“If you want to analyse kidnapping, how many cases do we have in Oyo? How many do we have as per geo-political zone? So, if you want to analyse security situations, you don’t do that with mere speculations or psychological projections.
“We collate information and data of incidents, we are the ones to tell you if the security situation is worrisome or not, and with what we have on ground, security situation in Nigeria is not worrisome.”
He, therefore, urged Nigerians to assist the police and other security agencies in tackling insecurity, adding that people should raise the alarm so that police can take action against insecurity.
Meanwhile, a coalition of Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) under the auspices of the Civil Society Joint Action Group had stated that at least 2,423 people were killed, while 1,872 were abducted within eight months of President Bola Tinubu’s administration.
The Executive Director of the Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC), Auwal Musa Rafsanjani revealed this while addressing a press conference in January in Abuja on behalf of the coalition, urging the President to declare a state of emergency on the current security situation in the country.
