“Tell Your Family, Friends To Prepare Ransom Before Traveling On Nigerian Roads,” NYSC Warns Corps Members
Members of the National Youth Service Corps have been told to be prepared to pay abduction-for-ransom syndicates now on the loose in Nigeria.
Before departing on a road trip, college graduates serving as corps members were required to notify their family and friends, according to a security advise issued in March 2021. This would allow them to prepare enough ransom in case they were kidnapped, saving them from an untimely and brutal death at the hands of vicious criminals.
“When travelling in high risk road such as Abuja-Kaduna, Abuja-Lokoja-Okene or Aba-Port-Harcourt road, then alert your family members, friends and colleagues in order to have someone on hand to pay off the ransom that could be demanded,” Security Awareness and Education Handbook for Corps Members and Staff said between pages 58 and 59.
After the handbook surfaced on social media on Thursday, backed by well-known figures such as UK-based medical expert Olufunmilayo Ogunsanya, the NYSC issued a statement denying it as fake news.
“Management wishes to emphatically state that the clause quoted is not embedded in NYSC Security Tips pamphlet which was put together by a highly respected retired security expert,” the NYSC said in a statement sent to The Gazette on Thursday night.
However, corps members who communicated with Peoples Gazette confirmed the guidebook, shared screenshots of their own hardcopies, and acknowledged getting the handbook in March 2021 from their individual camps in Taraba and other states.
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“I received my own copy in March 2021 before I left the camp,” said John Elochukwu, who recently concluded his youth service. “I did not even read the document until I saw online comments and I went to open my own copy to check and found that the paragraphs were exactly the same as those posted online.”
The manual also advised corps members to avoid traveling with laptops, tablets, or mobile devices, stating that any banking information discovered on such devices might be used to assess a victim’s financial worth.
Kidnapping has grown into a multibillion-naira business in Nigeria, with thousands of young people joining the criminal enterprise. A ransom could be anything from N50,000 ($100) to N20 million ($40,000).
Security agencies and state laws that punish abductors with the death penalty have failed to deter the crime.
In recent years, kidnappers have targeted youth corps members along Nigerian highways, with several of them dying as a result. Many have called for a reform of the NYSC legislation, which was established in 1973 to institutionalize national unity following the Nigerian Civil War of 1967-70.
