Senate President Akpabio advocates for capital punishment, rejects negotiations and ransom payments as fuel for terrorism.
In a definitive and hardline address, Senate President Senator Godswill Akpabio has declared the Nigerian Senate’s unequivocal opposition to negotiating with terrorists or paying ransoms to kidnappers, advocating instead for the imposition of the death penalty on convicted abductors.
The declaration was made on the floor of the Senate on Wednesday during the ministerial screening of Defence Minister-nominee, General Christopher Musa. Akpabio asserted that succumbing to ransom demands directly finances and incentivizes further criminality.
“This Senate is against negotiations with terrorists; we are against the idea of paying ransom to terrorists. They would use the money to buy more arms and kidnap again,” Akpabio stated emphatically.
Leveraging his executive experience as a former governor of Akwa Ibom State, Akpabio outlined his previous zero-tolerance policy towards kidnapping, which he claimed made the state inhospitable for criminals. He recalled that arrested suspects would often plead for mercy, claiming ignorance that they were operating within his jurisdiction.
He charged the incoming Minister of Defence and all security agencies to replicate this uncompromising stance on a national scale. “We can make Nigeria so hot that anyone that crosses in from a Sahel state, Niger or Mali, when arrested, the person will be pleading… ‘I don’t know that it was part of Nigeria’ because of the policies we have put in place,” Akpabio elaborated.
The Senate President also delivered a sharp critique of current security strategies that blend kinetic (military) and non-kinetic (negotiation) approaches. He argued that such negotiations are futile with individuals often driven by narcotics and devoid of intent to honour agreements.
“A kidnapper is a kidnapper. This Senate is of the opinion that once we arrest any kidnapper, he should face capital punishment so that the society can be kept safe. Many countries have done that,” Akpabio declared, positioning legislative support for the most severe punishment as a necessary deterrent.
This pronouncement signals a pivotal shift in the upper legislative chamber’s prescribed approach to Nigeria’s pervasive security crisis, prioritizing stringent punitive measures over dialogue with non-state armed groups.
