The Nigeria Police Force openly disclosed that some of the kidnapping cases reported are staged or fake.
This statement was given by the Force Public Relations Officer, Muyiwa Adejobi, at the gold medal ceremony for the Ache and kickboxing winners of the 14th Biennial Police Games, also known as “Oluyole 2024,” which took place at the Ilaji Resorts Hotel in the capital city of Oyo State, Ibadan.
He clarified that Nigeria’s security problems are not as severe as most people think, noting that people tend to accept what they see on social media, which is always being recycled and remade as current problems.
Adejobi said, “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.
“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 phycological projections.
“We collate information and data of incidents, we are the ones to tell you if security situation is worrisome or not, and with what we have on ground, security situation in Nigeria is not worrisome.”
In light of this, he asked Nigerians to support law enforcement and other security organizations in combating insecurity, stressing that citizens ought to raise an alarm to enable law enforcement to take appropriate action.
NPF Director of Sports CP Patric Athairu stated in his remarks that one of the fundamental goals of the game is to find new potential, and he added that the game has been successful in finding a lot of new talent thus far.
“We are collating number of talents discovered so far so as to introduce them to the federation for their necessary support. We might need to bring some of them out of where they are serving to give them opportunity to focus more on discovering their talents.
“We are meeting with the Federation chairman because of the new talents discovered which are subject to verification. We are waiting for records from these federation, and we shall make it available as soon as possible.
“As the medal stands, Zone two is leading at the medals table having won about 17 golds and over 35 medals, followed by the Force Headquarters with 15 golds and 34 medals as at this afternoon (Wednesday),” he said.
