ESSAY ON KIDNAPPING AND INSECURITY IN NIGERIA: CAUSES
AND THE WAY FORWARD
The use of the word kidnapping dates back to the 17 th century Britain
where infants(kids) of rich families were napped (caught in sleep) for ransom,
the phenomenon, kidnapping is not only peculiar to underdeveloped or
developing countries like Nigeria, it is a global occurrence. It is on its increase
and it affect every sector of the society casing fear and panic in the hearts of
citizens.
Kidnapping in its actual serve mean the abduction of people or holding
people hostage for monetary gain that is in order to collect ransom from
victim’s family or for use to perform rituals and other diabolic practices, it can
also be as an appeasement to win political appointment, and position. In recent
times, kidnapping has been on its increase virtually touching every sector of the
society. It has tightened its grip on the educational and political sector of the
society, we hear of school student, teachers and administrators being kidnapped
in their numbers, we also hear of Business and political stakeholders kidnap.
Kidnapping is a major cause of insecurity, fear and alarm. In a country
like ours, kidnapping have contributed to the great load of insecurity challenge
in the nation that seems insurmountable. This leads to the issue of security and
insecurity. Security is a state of affairs when human and material resources are
protected and secured against the threats of subversion, sabotages and
espionage. National security is the dynamics of our national ability and
readiness to deal effectively with external threats from rival states and their
organizations and also from internal threats which put physical existence of the
population. Its strategic infrastructures, identity values and interest at risk.
Insecurity is a condition capable of negatively affecting the peace,
security and stability of the society. It is a state of unrest, commotion, troubles,
fear, panic and dread. Insecurity in Nigeria has reached its peak, the nation is
faced daily with different groups antagonizing the government, religious
sectors, ethnic group and the citizens at large.
Nigeria continues to suffer from perennial multipronged insecurity
challenges ranging from terrorism to violent, ethnically tinged famers-herders
communal conflict and clash over agricultural land, Caused by antipathetic
behavior of various ethnic groups and regions towards the government and
many other factors that are causes by the government itself.
It’s fact that insecurity as well as kidnapping has invincible social
sponsors like poverty, unemployment, high level of corruption insensibility of
the government to societal needs, economic and political exploitation and social
degradation and inadequate distribution of wealth among ethnic groups in the
country which has rendered so many youths and graduation jobless and have
driven them to desperately look of a means of survival this exposes them to
illegal means of searching for wealth and would also push them into social vices
like kidnapping which seems to be one of the most lucrative business that can
transform a penniless youth into a rich and wealthy youth in a blink of an eye.
Youth employment in the country is increasing alarmingly everyday and
development infrastructure in order to create employment opportunities has
been lacking hereby crippling the efforts to drive the economic resurgences of
the 7th most populous nation in the world and sinking the nation’s youth into
the river of poverty where the only life but of survival seems to be illegal and
despicable means of gathering wealth. In case of insecurity and kidnapping it is
the youths that carryout this acts efficiently, they are the ones with vigour and
agility that is needed by the leaders of this notorious groups who perpetrate this
attacks. Weak security architecture is also a factor whence there is poor welfare
of security.
Personal, inadequate funding, lake of modern equipments to combat this
security challenges. Although a better security architecture is needed to combat
insecurity and kidnapping in Nigeria, but equipping the military and police
force with exotic weapons will not end insecurity and kidnapping faster than
creating enabling environment that will help the people overcome insecurity and
its concomitant hazards, govenment should organise diversion programmes for
youths in sports, arts and entertainment, increase the penalties for kidnapping
and security related offenses and provide adequate employment and youth
empowerment programmes with vocational education to combat the issues of
poverty and unemployment this would help reduce insecurity and kidnapping.
Government should conduct threat assessment in all areas of the country
deemed vulnerable to kidnapping and insecurity attacks, development of strong
community support networks to ensure that criminals are napped.
In conclusion, countering and preventing the menace of insecurity and
kidnapping requires the government to adapt and innovate technological tools to
always be a step ahead of these criminals, Government should spend more on
vocational education, faith based organizations should be encouraged to
undertake programmes to educate and change the minds of citizens towards
crime participation. This is the first generation that would possibly take the
world to the brink of political, economic and security breakdown. The process
of this breakdown begins with the youths and all hands must be on deck to stop
it.