Causes and the Remedies for Curbing the Menace of Kidnapping in Nigeria

Kidnapping is one of the criminal activities which has negative effects in every human’s society and which has also resulted to rape, physical assault such as beatings, kicking/ maltreated of victims, financial victimization and leads to loss of precious lives. This paper intends to examine causes and the remedies for curbing the menace of kidnapping in Nigeria. The study covers the concept of kidnapping, causes of kidnapping, effects of kidnapping, theoretical framework, and remedies for curbing kidnapping in Nigeria. Some of the causes are unveiled in the study such as unemployment, excessive consumption and trafficking of hard drugs, poverty, insecurity, and lack of contentment. The effects of kidnapping could lead to psychological trauma, lack of trust and fear among the citizens, depression, severe stress, emotional attack, anger to fear of unknown. Remedies are recommended for the study, government at all levels needs to create more jobs opportunities for the youths or unemployed graduates, and poverty alleviation programmes should be fully extended to the less-privileged especially in the rural areas to ease the economic hardship; parents and guardians should always monitor the activities of their children at all time with the aim of curbing the negative behaviour that could lead to kidnapping activities. Also, government should establish and fund counselling centres at the various communities or local government levels and employ professional counsellors to help the victims or perpetrators of kidnapping with counselling skills and techniques to modify unacceptable behavious and to assist them to function better in the society.