Identifying the Economic Rationale for Criminal Behavior within the Context of Kidnapping for Ransom in Nigeria

Abstract

This study endeavoured to formulate an economic rationale for why human beings commit crime, particularly the heinous crime against persons known as kidnapping. This forms the major objective of this study. The issue of kidnapping has attained such significance in Nigeria that the country was recently listed as sixth on the global kidnap index, putting Nigeria amongst countries with serious kidnapping problems, behind Philippines, Venezuela, Columbia, Brazil and Mexico. Utilising secondary data, the study applied functionalist theoretical assumptions and employed Qualitative Document Analysis (QDA), thereby utilising a qualitative approach to gain an in-depth understanding of the causes, nature and quantum of kidnapping for ransom in Nigeria. The theoretical framework that governed this study was Becker’s Rational Choice model, where an individual’s decision to commit a crime is based on the costs and benefits analysis. The study revealed that kidnapping for ransom in Nigeria is a multifaceted phenomenon with social, economic, political, cultural and demographic ramifications. Our study further showed that there are many economic causes of the spate of kidnapping in Nigeria. Prominent among them are unemployment, poverty, low literacy level and high rate of school dropouts, increasing urbanisation, multidimensional inequality, low real income, and spiraling inflationary trends, among others. We recommended that government should tackle this menace head-on by instituting measures to reduce poverty, creating enabling environment for more productivity; thus, leading to increased employment, increasing school enrolment and improving educational infrastructure, reducing rural-urban migration to make the rural areas worthwhile to live in, discouraging ransom payments to free captives and instituting stiffer laws against kidnapping.