The Lagos state high court sitting in Ikeja, on Friday, the 25th of February, 2022 finally sentenced the popular billionaire Kidnapper Evans and two of his accomplices to life imprisonment.
Evans was arrested in a sting operation after investigation proved that he and his cohorts were the masterminds behind the kidnapping of Mr Donatius Dunu, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Maydon Pharmaceuticals Ltd on February 14, 2017, and a ransom of €223,000 was collected from his family. Evans and his accomplices before then had been accused of other numerous kidnap cases and they were subjects of police investigation until he was busted and arrested with his gang.
What the Nigerian laws say about the crime of Kidnapping and abduction for ransom:
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The crime of kidnapping was duly provided for in the criminal code act in S.364 of and it reads thus:
S.364. Kidnapping
Any person who?
(1) unlawfully imprisons any person, and takes him out of Nigeria without his consent; or
(2) unlawfully imprisons any person within Nigeria in such a manner as to prevent him from applying to a court for his release or from discovering to any other person the place where he is imprisoned, or in such a manner as to prevent any person entitled to have access to him from discovering the place where he is imprisoned,
is guilty of a felony and is liable to imprisonment for ten years.
In the criminal code, the crime of kidnapping carries the punishment of ten years imprisonment but some state legislators and even federal legislators have in some many plenaries argued that the punishment of 10 years jail term for a kidnapper is not efficient to punish a kidnapper and to deter other prospective kidnappers from committing the crime and this led to some states and federal legislators proposing and even passing a bills/laws to provide stiffer punishments for the crime of kidnapping.
Lagos state is one of the states that are openly against the 10 years jail term for kidnappers provided in the criminal code. Though the federal law which is the Criminal code already provides for the crime of kidnapping and its punishment, Lagos state have passed a state law that provides for stiffer punishments for kidnappers; stiffer than the punishment of 10 years jail term provided in S.364 of the criminal code.
The Lagos State promulgated a law in 2019 captioned “The Lagos State Kidnapping Prohibition Law, 2019” and Section 3(3) of this law punishes kidnapping with a jail term of 25 years to life imprisonment and when the kidnapper is liable for the death of the hostage, he will be liable for for death penalty as provided in s.2(2) of the law.
The senate has also proposed a bill to amend s.364 of the criminal code which provides for the punishment of 10 years jail term for a kidnapper. The federal lawmakers have incessantly argued that stiffer punishments like death sentence or life imprisonments for the crime of kidnapping will be the best alternative punishment. A bill was then proposed by the senate: captioned “Abduction, Wrongful Restraint and Confinement Bill 2021. The bill’s primary goal is to introduce stiffer punishment for kidnapping, wrongful restraint and wrongful confinement for ransom.
In summary, although the punishment for the offense of kidnapping is Nigeria as provided in s364 of the criminal code is 10 years jail term, some states of the federation have made a law which provides for stiffer punishment for kidnappers; Lagos for example provided for 25 years to life imprisonments for kidnappers and in some cases death penalty for the kidnapper(s) if the hostage died in the custody of the kidnapper.
The Evans, the kidnapper’s case was a very notorious case and he and his cohorts finally met their Waterloo as they had been sent away for life.