Nigerian anger at police kidnap

By Bilkisu Labaran Ohyoma
BBC, Abuja

Pressure is mounting for prosecutions after the governor of an eastern Nigerian state was kidnapped and held in a hotel while his deputy was sworn in.

The story has dominated Nigerian newspapers

On Monday a senior police officer lost his job following last Thursday's kidnapping of Anambra State Governor Chris Ngige.

A short statement from President Olusegun Obasanjo's office announced the compulsory retirement of Assistant Inspector General of Police in charge of the south-eastern zone 9, Raphael Ige.

It was Mr Ige who reportedly led a team of dozens of policemen to the governor's office, seized him and led him away in a scene that seemed to have been lifted straight out of the fiction books.

Godfather

The police later said he was being held in protective custody, but in a telephone interview with state radio from the hotel where he was being detained, Dr Ngige said he believed the kidnapping had to do with his failure to do the bidding of his political godfather.

The papers this weekend were full of more reactions and commentaries about the incident, reflecting the shock of many Nigerians that such a thing could happen to someone of the calibre of a state governor.

The governor himself was no less flabbergasted, with one newspaper, This Day, telling of how he broke down in tears for two minutes as he recounted his ordeal to some tribal chiefs.

One observer told me that he saw the incident as mirroring the murkiness and lawlessness of the Nigerian political system.

A senior political adviser to President Obasanjo, Professor Jerry Gana, described the incident as "a threat to democracy which we cannot support".

The observer, though, thinks the government now needs to go further and make some prosecutions in order to regain the confidence of Nigerians in the democratic system.

Parties involved in the saga are due to meet ruling party figures on Tuesday with the dust far from settling over the whole affair.