Generation of Architectural and Other Safety Measures Against Kidnappings at Residential Environments in Kogi State of Nigeria

Kidnapping in Nigeria is a serious national security challenge; Kogi State of Nigeria is not exempted from this challenge. Therefore, it became very important to conduct a research work with regards to kidnappings in Kogi State because of their frequent issues in the state. The aim of this research was to overview the cases of kidnapping at residential environments in Kogi State, in order to generate architectural and other safety measures to curtail their future occurrences in Nigeria. The research focused on desktop study as the instrument for data collection; it reviewed five different newspapers in Nigeria with the availability of kidnapping cases in Kogi State to get information relating to them. Thus, table was used for the presentation and analysis of the research data and the results were checked via contents analysis technique, so as to validate them. Among the findings are: armed kidnappers stormed the compound and forcefully entered the house; a professor was kidnapped at the gate of his private residence immediately he alighted from his car, and some police officers are part of the kidnapping cartel. Among the recommended safety measures are: all external doors must be well reinforced steel type to international standard, in order to reduce the rate at which kidnappers enter the house forcefully; residential buildings must have a design of very strong automatic sliding gate and having protective devices above it as exactly in the case of fence, in order to reduce delay arising from the manual gate opening that may lead to kidnapping at the gate entrance, and any police officer that is caught being part of the kidnapping cartel should be dismissed from his/her official job immediately and must be jailed for minimum of 10 years or as may be better determined by the court of law.