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ABSTRACT
Assumptions and debates on the trend, causes or motives, implications, and appropriate sanctions on kidnapping dominate literature, are largely speculative, and come mainly from the media or academic and nonacademic writers. The aim of this article is to explore the perspectives, perceptions, feelings, and thinking of kidnappers, in their raw form, on these sub-areas of kidnapping. This paper engages a naturalistic methodological approach, whereby sampled kidnappers in Abakaliki and Umuahia prisons provided self-account narratives of the criminal activities and worldview based on their social construction and interpretative meanings. Cross-sectional survey design, and a nonprobability sampling technique of respondent-driven sampling type, were utilized to select a sample of 86 from a total population of 123 convicted and nonconvicted inmates. Findings confirmed public concerns on the epidemiological rise in kidnapping in Nigeria, the dominance of economic motive as the driving force, significant negative sociopsychological and economic-cum-political implications, but moderate, smart, and balanced sanctions versus the punitive policy were generally favored. The policy implication calls for social inclusion and job opportunities (especially among the productive population), value reorientation, and mental sea-change, and a smart but cool, dispassionate, nonpanicked, and nonhurried penal policy.
Notes
1. Chiboy is a popular young politician from Ebonyi state and former president of a certain youth wing of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP). He was a key figure at the center of the last administration of 2011–2015 and was committed to fighting crimes in the state. He is also notorious for using violence to fight his real and perceived enemies in the guise of fighting crimes.