Nigeria is facing an alarming surge in kidnappings—from schoolchildren to highway travelers and rural families. The crisis is no longer regional but national. While structural issues fuel the violence, AI-powered early-warning systems, satellite monitoring, and predictive analytics offer a path toward proactive intervention before kidnappers strike again. The recent surge of mass kidnappings across Nigeria marks a dangerous evolution of the country’s long-standing insecurity challenges. What once appeared confined to the North-Central region—rooted in historical mistrust, land disputes, illegal mining, and banditry—has now grown into a nationwide enterprise of abductions, stretching from forests to highways and even peri-urban communities. Criminal networks have become more coordinated, exploiting poor road networks, ungoverned forest corridors, weak rural policing, and overstretched security agencies. Communities already battling farmer–herder tensions now face organized kidnapping ...