Abuja – The House of Representatives yesterday called on the Federal Government to urgently convene a security summit that will include all security agencies, so as to fashion out an effective response to the kidnapping phenomenon in the country.

This menace which had become clog in the wheel of progress in the country, had necessitated the lawmaker, Hon. Babatunde Gabriel Kolawole (Ondo State) to raise the motion under matters of urgent public importance.

Praying that the House should suspend all relevant rules to enable him move the motion on the floor of the House, Hon Kolawole told the House that there was urgent need for the FG to declare a state of emergency on kidnapping in the country.

According to him, that it had become necessary to beam search light on those disgruntled elements in the society, due to the fact that in the last ten years, the incidence of kidnapping for ransom had escalated to alarming proportion, that no one is safe anymore.

Speaking further, Kolawole said that NYA International, London based firm that gathers intelligence on crime, reported that in the half of 2013 alone, Nigeria had the most kidnapped attempts in the world.

Nigeria accounted for 26% of all such recorded incidents, followed by Mexico with 10% while Pakistan with 7%, and as at 2014, Nigeria was number 5 on the global kidnapping hotspots, he added.

Listing so many prominent Nigerians who have been kidnapped, both past and present, which includes: former president Goodluck Jonathan’s foster father, Mike Ozekhome, mother of former Finance, okonjo Iweala, he said that the wife of the current  CBN Governor Margaret Emefiele was not also spared.

“Presently, school children are no longer safe as shown by the kidnapping of three students from Babington Macaulay Junior Seminary School in Ikorodu, Lagos State on Monday February 29th this year”.

“Nigeria is now seen as the kidnap capital of the world, having risen from 475 reported cases in 2011, 500 in 2012 to presently over 1, 500 cases annually”.

Majority of the  lawmakers spoke in favour of the motion, and without hesitation voted in favour of the motion, when put to vote by the Speaker Rt. Hon. Yakubu Dogara who presided over the plenary session.

The House later call on the Executive to provide in the 2017 budget, fund to purchase high tech equipment to track down kidnappers, and also mandated the House commitee on Legislative Compliance to ensure compliance and report back to the House within three weeks.