Ransom payments

A few years ago, when I was based in N’Djamena, I visited the Waza National Park, in Northern Cameroon on three different occasions.

The Park is located in a desolated corner of Central Africa. The main road between N’Djamena and Waza is a very strange place. You feel desperately isolated over there. It is a Cameroonian road that has seen better days. If you stop your car and walk to the right hand shoulder of the road you are in Nigerian territory. If go off road to the left you soon hit the Chadian border. On both sides you meet from time to time a few villages where life is tough and as arid as the land. And at certain times of the year, you come across the nomad people known as Mbororo, a subgroup of cattle-herders linked to the Fulani ethnic group. Actually, it is much easier to see their cows in the Waza National Park than wild animals.  

It is not a place for mass tourism.

This was the place however where a French family was kidnapped a couple of months ago. The parents and their children, plus another male relative, had been on a visit to the park. They were then taken by force across the border into Nigeria. At the time the media said they had been hijacked by the terrorist group Boko Haram. Maybe, maybe not, as there are other armed bandits in the region.

The fact of the matter is that the family was released without a fight and in very unclear circumstances a couple of days ago. The French government, including the President himself, were very much at the forefront of this liberation and made sure the media coverage was as good as it gets. And they were quick to deny that ransom money had been paid.

I want to believe so. I also know that up to very recently the French authorities used to pay – and deny it – for the French nationals that had been kidnapped in Africa to be set free. That was a very wrong approach to the problem. That was the best way to encourage the bandits expand the business and to look for more victims.

But is it a better approach to put a lot of political pressure on the governments of Cameroon and Nigeria for them to make a nice gesture and open the prison gates to a good number of incarcerated people who happen to be connected to the kidnappers?