By Haruna Salami
The Senate has voted unanimously to approve death penalty for kidnapping in the face of rising insecurity in the country.
The resolution was sequel to a motion on “Urgent Need to Address Escalating Insecurity in Kwara, Kebbi and Niger States – Call for Immediate and Comprehensive Federal Intervention” sponsored by Senator Lola Ashiru (Kwara South), Deputy Senate Leader.
Debating the motion, the red chamber said Nigeria is currently at war and must do all within its power to defeat terrorism.
The Senate said kidnapping will henceforth carry the death penalty without the option of fine and no judge will have the discretion to lower the sentence.
Accordingly, the relevant sections of the Terrorism Act will be amended to ensure that this is implemented swiftly.
They frowned at a situation where a judge would use his or her discretion to reduce the current life imprisonment for kidnapping to 20 years jail term in a particular matter.
Although the legislators said President Bola Tinubu is “trying his best” in the rescue of some kidnap victims, they wondered how the children from Kebbi school and the CAC in Kwara were rescued without any gunshot or arrest of perpetrators.
They want to know who are the mediators between the armed bandits and the government.
Senator Sani Musa (Niger East) “we are not bold enough to tackle the problem, let us grab those mediating first”, adding “who are we going to blame if this consumes all of us?”.
The lawmakers said they know who the terrorists (kidnappers) are, where they live and what they want and urged the government to summon the political will to deal with them.
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