“NYSC kidnap: N950m ransom throws families into panic” – News Report, October 3, 2026.
For the parents of 19 graduates traveling from Ibadan, Oyo State to Owerri, Imo State, there is nothing happy about the month of October. President Tinubu’s Independence Day address to the nation deliberately excluded insecurity among the matters on his national agenda. It was just as well because, his government, like Buhari’s, has failed woefully in discharging the most fundamental responsibility of governments – security of lives and properties.
The youths, packed into two buses, and going in a convoy, were victims of a nation in which government officials, traveling with heavily armed escorts, don’t give a damn about the rest of us run the gauntlets set up by bandits everywhere.
The young people were kidnapped in Imo State – a state controlled by the All Progressives Congress, APC, whose governor is the Chairman of the APC Governors Forum and the President of Nigeria is also APC.
Of what use are those positions when life is brutish in the state and nobody is safe?
Reports about the incident on Saturday and Sunday have proved to Nigerians how the agencies of governments at the federal and state levels have failed in their duties to Nigerians in general and the youths in particular.
Two buses loaded with youth corps members from Oyo State had headed for Abia and Akwa Ibom States on Wednesday, September 30, 2026. When Nigeria had a semblance of governance, the trips should have ended at Umuahia and Uyo on the same day.
Thanks to Buhari, Tinubu and David Umahi and the death traps everywhere, called roads, the buses stopped at Oba, Anambra State.
Suspiciously, the two drivers of Uko Akwa Ibom Motors Nigeria Limited “resumed their journey around 5am on Thursday.”
They had barely entered Imo State when gunmen emerged from the bush. “They blocked the two vehicles and took 19 passengers, all corps members, into the bush.”
Given the dangers involved in traveling by road today, how could two drivers decide to resume the journey at 5am? The rest of the trip to Umuahia should be less than three hours, and to Uyo, not more than five hours.
Starting at 7am, when the roads are busy, the two buses would still have reached their destinations in broad daylight.
The fact that other passengers and the two drivers escaped is extremely suspicious and investigations should focus on their roles in the kidnap episode.
By Sunday morning, another kidnap victim has been identified; the bandits have increased their ransom demand to N1 billion.
Poor Yoruba parents, whose children were on their way to serve their country, now have to beg, borrow or steal N50 million to give hoodlums in Igboland, in order to protect their investments in those graduates.
And, there is no guarantee that they will be released – even with ransom paid. It has happened before.
Today, October 4, 2026, Nigerians are confronting one of the consequences of having horrible road network and no security of lives and properties.
Where were soldiers and policemen at check points – almost every kilometer of the South-East?
Irrespective of what happens next, the parents should file a class action suit against the FG.
The young people will be traumatized for life.
Many might never travel to the South-East for the rest of their lives.
The basis of the NYSC experience has been destroyed.
The time has come for Nigeria to reconsider the National Youth Service Corps.
Perhaps, it should be suspended until the security situation improves.
Seven years ago, my last daughter – six girls, six graduates – was due for call up.
It had been my policy not to influence their posting.
There was no problem with the older siblings.
But, by 2019, some states had become too insecure to risk the life of a daughter.
I waited for the outcome – while speeding up the next option; sending her abroad for postgraduate studies. Fortune favoured everybody.
She was posted to Imo State; where she served.
Today, even Imo would have triggered plan B. I wouldn’t send my dog to Imo. That’s how things have changed; and, the end of horrors is not in sight.
ADVICE TO FG REGARDING THE YOUTHS ABDUCTED
“To every rule there is an exception.”
I honestly pray that the young people will be rescued. Their abductors are heartless beasts; and care very little for human lives.
The latest reports indicate that the ransom demand has been reduced.
To them it is all transactional – irrespective of the trauma experienced by victims – corps members, parents, siblings, friends, etc. The victims have served their country enough.
Once rescued, the FG should issue them discharge certificates and return them to their families.
There should be no more service after this experience.
JUST IN: The corps members were rescued, yesterday, October 7, 2026. That notwithstanding, the issues raised here remain relevant.
WIKE/APC POLITICS: THE ABSURD IS NEW NORMAL
“Our ways are drunkard ways…a drunkard knows quite well he has a house, but how to get there puts him in a dither” – Alexander Pope, 1688-1744.
Mr Wike is the most hilarious politician ever in Nigeria’s political history.
It is amazing how he has somehow managed to get several politicians on his side till today, including President Tinubu.
I first took notice of him when he got four former governors of the PDP to help in sabotaging the party in 2023. Governors Makinde of Oyo and Ortom of Benue, two of those who followed him, must by now be wondering how their lives would have been different if they had worked diligently for the PDP presidential ticket.
Pathetic Ortom is now fighting to reclaim 23 cars he allegedly removed from State House Makurdi – when he could have been a Federal Minister.
Everybody, including Tinubu, makes mistakes.
Wike had left a long trail of former political associates, including people who appointed him to high office, who will live to regret their mistakes for the rest of their lives.
Right now, he is the only Nigerian politician who supports, or so it seems, two parties – the PDP and the APC. Only in a country where “politics without principles” prevails can such exist.
After breaking up the PDP, he succeeded in getting INEC to recognize his own faction; which now appears to have the only presidential candidate who has taken no position on any matter on the national agenda.
Furthermore, under this bizarre scheme, PDP candidates are expected to campaign for Tinubu; not their presidential candidate.
After that they can campaign for themselves – against APC opponents.
If you are scratching your head, just remember that worse things have happened before; prompting Saul Bellow, 1915-2005, to declare: “There is a pleasure in being mad which none but mad men know”.
Bellow was referring to Hitler; but some of the things happening in Nigeria now should scare the rest of us who hold no party card.
Like Wike, and imbued with arrogance of power, several elected APC governors, chairmen of local governments, among others, have been issuing threats against other parties; some governors have announced, in advance, the votes that will be delivered to Tinubu; apparently, irrespective of the actual votes cast.
They need to be reminded: “Those who make peaceful change impossible make violent change inevitable.”
Nobody has a monopoly of violence anymore in Nigeria.
The APC Chairman, who allegedly boasted about AK-47s, needs to be reminded that only one bullet is required to silence him forever.
Wike, still in PDP, has also invaded the APC Governors Forum.
Taking dead aim at the chairman of the forum, he had succeeded in dividing that forum by recruiting some sympathizers – who would be well-advised to remember what happened to the four PDP governors who joined Wike in wrecking the PDP. I pity them.
Yet, this entire charade is like a giant balloon; which can be deflated by one pin prick.
Wike’s grand-standing will crash if Tinubu gets tired of him and sacks him or even merely redeploys him to the Ministry of Environment…
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