State Responses to the Menace of Kidnapping in Nigeria

Kidnapping has become one of the main security threats in the Nigerian state and hardly does a day go by without report of missing person across the length and breadth of the country. With the fast-rising rate of ransom-induced kidnapping cases, Nigeria has overtaken global hotspots such as Colombia, Mexico, Brazil, the Philippines, Venezuela, Ecuador, India, Bangladesh and Pakistan to attain the unenviable status of the capital of kidnapping for ransom in the world. While this development may signify the loss of capacity by the state to effectively discharge its constitutional duty of protecting lives and property, literature on kidnapping in Nigeria tends to gloss over the responses of the state to the phenomenon and their challenges. This chapter, which employed descriptive analysis of data derived from secondary sources, examined the legal, political and military dimensions of state’s responses to the menace. With the rational choice, the deterrent, the relative deprivation and the conspiracy theories as its guide, the chapter found out that the lack of will to effectively arrest and prosecute kidnappers, politics of resource control and complicit on the part of the political, religious and military leadership in the country act as limiting factors on state’s responses. Inter alia, the chapter recommended the removal of security from the exclusive legislative list to the concurrent list to accommodate the creation of state police forces to allow for better measures to protect the population against the menace of kidnapping in Nigeria.