THE trend of abductions and kidnapping for ransom as a big business in Nigeria is worrying and should be declared a national disaster. The planned, well-coordinated criminal enterprise is growing, with a large number of people providing different services to feed the ‘supply chain’. There are the snitches, who provide information on soft targets.
They monitor the movement of those who have been marked for abduction and give the information to those that would execute the plan. The ‘execution squad’ carry out the operation, with their job being to pick the target up and lead them to a ‘’safe house’’ or inside the bushes where they would be kept until ransom is paid. And then, there are the service providers, who provide meals and other sundry services for those in captivity.
In between, there’s the security apparatus. Some are agencies that provide information on targets, their bosses, or colleagues and their movement to kidnappers in one hand, while there are enablers in big cities that provide cover for the terrorists in case things go wrong on another. These also ensure that the police and other security agencies give soft landing to the kidnappers should things go awry.
Many of the criminal elements behind the mass abductions in Nigeria go after soft targets such as school children, attendees at Churches and Mosques where large number of people congregate, or local farmers while they are tilling the land. They target these vulnerable groups because they know that there would be public outrage and government is likely to pay huge ransom for their release. In addition, security agents are not likely to engage them as they won’t want the victims killed whilst trying to rescue them.
Apart from the big-time criminals in this newly-founded ‘profession’, there are new recruits or learners on the ‘job’, who abduct people within the city centres for as little as N50,000. They pick up just about anybody for some quick cash. In a more bizarre twist, there are those who self-abduct. They feign their own kidnap in a bid to extort money from their friends and loved ones. Wives reported to have been abducted reappear a few days after the husband must have parted with huge sums of cash. There are reports of children’s involvement in self-abductions, in a bid to force money out of their parents’ earnings.
These scenarios are now so rampant that it has become difficult for security agencies, especially the police, to carry out thorough investigations.
This was partly responsible for the initial denial when 177 worshippers were abducted during church service in the Kurmin Wali community of Kaduna state. The initial response from the police was that there was nothing amiss until the church provided the names of those that were abducted in broad day light.
Yet, the criminals succeeded in marching their victims into the bushes without anyone to challenge them. Although about a dozen of the worshippers were said to have escaped while being taken, the latest mass abduction shows that Nigeria still has a long way to go in the area of security of lives and properties.
After the Christmas day ‘present’ from the American President, Donald Trump in conjunction with Nigeria’s security agencies that bombed terrorist targets in Sokoto State, the initial fear by the terror groups seems to have disappeared, almost as though they are daring the American President for more action.
It even appears that more Christians are being targeted more than before and they seem not to be in a hurry for negotiations. What is on the burner, for now, is to get back 17 motorcycles allegedly lost during a military operation in the area. That has been set as a condition before any meaningful negotiation can take place.
When a sore is allowed to fester, it soon assumes a dangerous and life-threatening wound. That is what abduction for ransom has become in Nigeria. Nigerians paid at least N2.57 billion to kidnappers between July 2024 and June 2025, while abductors demanded N48 billion in the same period, according to a new SBM Intelligence study on the country’s kidnap-for-ransom economy. The report records 4,722 victims across 997 incidents, with at least 762 deaths linked to abduction-related violence. The report describes kidnapping in the country as a “lucrative criminal enterprise.”
While the North-west remains the most violent region, with Zamfara, Kaduna, and Katsina states as hotspots, SBM Intelligence’s report show that the Southern region faced targeted “religious abductions and financial extortion.”
On a geopolitical zone count, the Northwest leads across both indicators: 425 incidents, accounting for 42.6 per cent of the total number of reported incidents, and the total number of people abducted being 2,938, accounting for 62.2 per cent of the total. In comparison, the Southwest presents the best figures -5.3 per cent of total incidents, with the least number of people kidnapped at 144, which is 3% of the total.
Katsina state recorded the highest number of incidents, with 131 people kidnapped, while Zamfara state logged the highest number of victims at 1,203 people – more than a quarter of the national in total. A striking pattern was observed in the South-south, where kidnappers in a single case in Delta State, demanded N30 billion, an amount that represents a large share of the nationwide ransom demanded as captured by the study.
Although demands topped N48 billion, the amount paid was N2.57 billion (about $1.66 million) over the 12 months under review. Borno state ranks the highest in ransom paid, but just one case bumps the state up the rankings: the N766 million that was paid to the kidnappers of Justice Haruna Mshelia of the Borno State High Court, who was abducted in September, 2024. His kidnappers got the exact amount they demanded. The firm’s data suggests that Boko Haram got the largest share of ransom paid in this period.
Shockingly, these figures are for just one year. In a country where data means little or nothing to many of us, one can only imagine the actual amount that would have gone into these abductions-for-ransom enterprise, many of the victims of which are just happy to get back with their loved ones alive.
Kidnapping as an act of organised crime was relatively rare in Nigeria before the 1990s.
Abductions were typically tied to political rivalries, intercommunal conflicts, or ritual practices. But since the mid-1990s, kidnappings have become more widespread, beginning in the Niger Delta, where much of Nigeria’s oil wealth resides. It was around this time that environmentalists and local activists began to denounce the practices of international oil companies operating in the Niger Delta but with little or nothing to show for the wealth coming from their soil.
Oil spillages were polluting rivers and farmlands, depriving locals — many of whom were farmers or fishermen — of their livelihoods. Tensions were threatening to boil over between oil companies and the locals, and when environmental activist, Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight others were executed by Nigeria’s military government on trumped-up murder charges, the situation deteriorated. Local armed groups began abducting foreign oil workers and blowing up pipelines around the turn of the century to make a political statement, realising that they could embarrass the Nigerian government — by now a nascent democracy — and also strike at its chief money-maker.
Soon enough, they figured out that they could make a third point: kidnap expatriate workers for ransom to fund their cause. Local and international oil companies tapping Nigeria’s crude reserves have operational headquarters mainly in Port-Harcourt and work in the oilfields that dot the Niger Delta, making the entire region a target-rich environment. Kidnappings soon became headline news in the region.
Back then, it was mostly the elite that were the targets. Naturally, the trend drew media attention. Port-Harcourt, home to many expatriate oil workers, became a kidnapping hotspot. A government amnesty, offered to the armed groups of the Niger Delta in 2009, as Nigeria sought to take back control of its oil wealth, led to the disbanding of many of the groups. Some of their leaders went into politics and became bigwigs. Some became traditional rulers in their communities, while others got big businesses from the Federal Government to protect oil pipelines. Arguably, the major beneficiary of this government intervention is High Chief Government Ekpemupulo, also known as Tompolo, who got a N4 billion monthly contract to secure oil pipelines in the region.
Now, their brothers up North are also after their share of the national cake. But theirs has been given the garb of religion – the same reason adduced by Abubakar Gumi, a known sympathiser of kidnappers and terrorists from the North who has been canvassing that they should be treated with kid gloves. Until he perceived that Trump may be on his trail and went underground, Gumi was always in the news defending bandits and criminals and canvassing a soft landing for them.
In April, 2022, the Nigerian Senate passed a Bill outlawing the payment of ransom to kidnappers, but the law has been ineffectual. Even when government says, “Don’t pay ransom”, it is the police that will advise you in the background to pay it, because they know that they rarely arrest kidnappers.
Amnesty International recently noted that it was deeply concerned by the abductions in Nigeria which has become a lucrative business and that government must immediately tackle the scourge. “The Nigerian authorities have left the rural communities of Niger state and several others at the mercy of gunmen who kill and abduct people daily,” the group wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.
However, how many police officers are there to actually do the job of enforcing law and order? Do they even have the tools with which to work effectively? The situation is so bad that many Nigerians are openly calling on the Federal Government to allow Nigerian citizens to carry guns in self-defence. If that is not feasible, there is also the agitation for the setting up of armed local vigilante to defend communities.
Indeed, the Federal Government must think and act fast before the situation further degenerates as most Nigerians are tired of living in perpetual fear. It would be sad indeed if local communities begin arming themselves in self-defence as the state that has the constitutional backing of protecting lives and property of citizens seem incapable of discharging its duties.
Crimes and criminal enterprises are flourishing in the country and it is time for the Bola Tinubu administration to face the reality on ground and tackle the problem headlong. If Trump has to be involved again to rid the nation of terrorists and criminals, so be it. A nation that cannot protect its citizens from internal bandits and criminals should have its backside kicked. State Governors should also stop negotiating with bandits as it sends wrong signals.
The Katsina State government that is also considering giving amnesty to repentant terrorists should think twice as such a policy would come back to haunt and hurt the state. The practice of absorbing ‘’reformed’’ bandits and Boko Haram elements into the Nigeria Army is another policy that should be discarded forthwith. They can be absorbed elsewhere, but not in our security agencies. Those that have carried arms against the Nigerian state and have killed our gallant Soldiers should not be trusted enough with our collective wellbeing or given a soft-landing. May God save Nigeria.
See you next week.
- Akintunde is the Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Glittersonline newspaper. His syndicated column, Monday Discourse, appears on News Point Nigeria newspaper on Monday.