Most Reported Kidnapping Cases In Nigeria Are Faked – Police

The Nigeria Police Force has stated that a significant number of reported kidnapping cases in the country are either fabricated or orchestrated.

Naija News reports that the Force Public Relations Officer, Muyiwa Adejobi, made this assertion yesterday while presenting the gold medal to the champion of Ache and kickboxing at the 14th edition of the Biennial Police Games, known as “Oluyole 2024”, which took place at Ilaji Resorts Hotel in Ibadan, the capital of Oyo State.

Adejobi emphasized that the security situation in Nigeria is not as dire as many citizens perceive it to be, highlighting that a large portion of the population tends to believe and share information from social media without verifying its accuracy.

His words read: “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 charge 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 the ground, the security situation in Nigeria is not worrisome.”

Speaking at the event, the Director of Sports for the Nigerian Police Force (NPF), CP Patric Athairu, emphasized the importance of the game in uncovering fresh talents.

He highlighted that the game has successfully identified numerous promising individuals thus far.

“We are collating the 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 the 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 federations, 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 of this afternoon (Wednesday),” he announced.”