Kidnapping With A Twist

                             

When we woke up on monday to the news that gunmen had kidnapped the wife of Mr. Jimitota Onoyume, Rivers State Correspondent of the Vanguard Newspapers, in Ethiope East Local Government Area of Delta State, my first reaction was consternation, then worry (for the wife), then amusement, then pity. . . for the kidnappers, because they later contacted the journalist with his daughter's phone line and demanded a 10 million naira ransom!

And here I was thinking the kidnapping business was booming - these guys must be having a bad run. To make a demand of 10 million naira ransom from a journalist, you must really be desperate, and these guys take the cake. Where did they think he was going to get that kind of money from? Did they think he had some kind of underground storage where cash was stashed? It amazes me that any sane thinking kidnapper would leave the rich business moguls, corrupt politicians, governors, and public wealth thieves, people who we KNOW clean their arse holes with hard currency, and head straight for a journalist who's a regular bloke like them.

In the phone conversation, Mr. Jimitota told them that he had never held one million naira before, but they replied that he had an SUV, which he informed them was a 1995 Pathfinder model, bought as fairly used, but they in their eternal wisdom, obviously knew best. He pleaded with them to release his wife, that journalists, though seen on television, are not known to be rich, a fact known to everyone. . . except the WISE kidnappers. Then they asked him for MTN airtime, which he promptly sent. Now we have reports that they've come down to 5 million naira!

Really, all this unnecessary comic relief could've been avoided if they'd just steered clear of the journalist, or any other journalist for that matter. Even a 5 year old child knows that if you want to make it big in the kidnapping business, you've gotta go for the rich, spendthrift, corrupt money bags in society, not journalists and teachers! It's right there in the manual; It's the first thing they teach you in Kidnapping 101!

Now there are reports that the kidnappers have come down to 1 million naira!