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Top1. Introduction
Human kidnapping engages the conscription, transportation, transferring, harboring or receiving an individual using force, coercion or other related means for numerous reasons including exploitation and extortion (Clawson et al., 2006). During kidnapping incidences, deprivation of liberty, safety, security, lack of access to health care or medical services, sanitary conditions, education or contact with family members and other heinous crimes are often committed against the victims (Uzorma and Nwanegbo-Ben, 2014). The origin of kidnapping is traced to 1682 in England where children were kidnapped and sold to colonial masters as slaves or agricultural workers (Turner, 1998; Mohammed, 2008). Present day kidnapping incidences are fuelled by poverty, inadequate education and opportunity, ethnic discrimination or social injustice and inequality between gender, tribes, race and states as well as quest for inexpensive labour or sex (Struckman-Johnson and Struckman-Johnson, 2016). In several parts of the present world, kidnapping has become an uncontrollable menace with statistics revealing that Mexico suffered an estimated 105,682 and 1695 kidnapping cases in 2012 and 2013 respectively (US Department, 2014; Partlow, 2014). Roughly 800,000 children are reported missing each year in the United State (Uzochukwu, 2016). In Nigeria, there are over 1,000 kidnapping incidents on a yearly basis in recent times with several unreported cases. Among the victims are hundreds of foreign nationals who were kidnapped in the Niger Delta region since January 2007 (Catlin Group, 2012; Fage and Alabi, 2017). The wave of kidnapping in Nigeria began with the abduction of expatriate oil workers in 2005 as a way of drawing global attention to the many years of neglect, injustice, exploitation, marginalization, and underdevelopment of the oil producing areas by government and oil explorers. However, the social problem of kidnapping has spread like wild-fire to other parts of the country with individuals of different calibres and classes as targets (Nnamani, 2015; Inyang and Abraham, 2013). In other crime prone regions of the world, kidnapping has progressed steadily into a very lucrative business in forms of hostage-taking and hijacking while its growing pervasiveness and brutality has made it an issue of concern to the international communities. One of the problems militating against halting this heinous crime by the various international and national bodies is the lack of reliable information on its scale and modus operandi as well as the most effective means of preventing it. The act of monitoring, alert and tracing incidences of kidnapping based on live, accurate and timely data collection, analysis and interpretation also remain key challenges (Struckman-Johnson and Struckman-Johnson, 2016; IOM, 2002; Davis, 2006). Attempts at resolving these challenges include development of various automated human monitoring and activity reporting systems, including geo-fencing.