Ololade Adeyanju
Many Nigerians have accused the media of glamorising the atrocities committed by notorious kidnapper, Chikwudubem Onwuamadike, aka Evans.
Also, the Nigeria police has been strongly criticised over alleged poor management of information about the arrest of Evans and his deadly exploits.
A few citizens have taken to social media to express their displeasure with the media for their coverage of Evans.
They accused the Nigerian media especially of casting Evans more as a celebrity, rather than the ruthless criminal that he is.
The alleged kidnap kingpin has given interviews to several major Nigerian outlets, getting as much as a nine-minute interview on frontline TV stations. A particular interview has, reportedly, been viewed almost a quarter of a million times on YouTube.
Some notable media outlets have also lent their medium to Evans’s wife and family to make emotional appeals for his release, while photos of his luxury properties have been published repeatedly.
Many Nigerians on social media, who are enraged with Evan’s self-confessed atrocities, have called for harsh penalties for the alleged criminal, with some demanding capital punishment.
Director-General, Bureau of Public Service Reforms, Joe Abah, said in a tweet that the reporting of Evans’s crimes and lifestyle would have the effect of pushing people into crime, rather than deterring them.
Social media activist, Japheth Omojuwa, tweeting with handle @Omojuwa, said: “If anything less than a life jail term happens to Evans, half the Nigerian population will become kidnappers by 2040, other half? Kidnapped.
The short lived hashtagFreeEvans (#FreeEvans) campaign also drew a lot of condemnation on social media, with a user tweeting, with the handle @teddi_speaks, saying: “You won’t be tweeting #FreeEvans if you’ve been a victim of kidnapping. Disgusting hash tag.”
Also, a top member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, in the National Assembly of Ghana, Samuel Ablakwa, chided the police for their public revelations on the notorious kidnapper.
Ablakwa told local Joy News, in Accra, he “really would have wished that the police did not put all the information as publicly as they did.”
Commenting on the revelations that Evans and his family have obtained Ghanaian passports, Ablakwa said he wished that the Nigeria Police authorities had shared this information with Ghana earlier.
“How we manage information is very critical,” he stressed.
Ablakwa also wants the security agencies to move fast to seal loopholes that allowed Evans to move stealthily in Ghana.
“It is important that with adequate tracking, the loopholes are quickly identified and closed so that other criminals, especially terrorists, would not exploit that and cause maximum damage,” he added.