By Adejumoke Adeoti and Josiah Akintunde

In the past decade, Nigeria has been slowly devoured by a kidnapping industry that began as regional militancy and ideological terror but has metastasised into a sophisticated, nationwide criminal enterprise. What started in the northeast and northwest has now spread to the south, leaving families shattered, schools empty, and entire communities living in fear. The human cost is almost unimaginable; the economic toll threatens to bankrupt the future of Africa’s most populous nation.

New figures from the National Bureau of Statistics paint a picture of a national emergency. Between May 2023 and April 2024, an estimated 2.2 million Nigerians were kidnapped. Ransoms totalling N2.2 trillion were paid — a sum roughly equivalent to the entire proposed federal health budget for 2025. In the northwest alone, families handed over more than N1.2 trillion, with 65 per cent of affected households paying an average of N2.7 million per incident. These are not statistics on a spreadsheet. They represent sold farmlands, children pulled from school, and lives that often end in the bush.

The Delta origins
Kidnapping for ransom in contemporary Nigeria traces its roots to the oil-rich Niger Delta in the late 1990s. Militants initially targeted expatriate oil workers to highlight genuine grievances: catastrophic environmental damage from oil spills, pollution that destroyed fishing grounds and farmland, and the sense that local communities saw little benefit from the vast wealth extracted from their soil.

The tactic was devastatingly effective. What began as a political protest soon became a business model. Criminal gangs realised that kidnapping generated far higher returns than legitimate livelihoods on devastated land. The target list expanded from foreigners to wealthy Nigerians — businesspeople, traditional rulers, and clergy. The formula was brutally simple: abduct, demand cash, release upon payment. A compromised and often lethargic security apparatus rarely intervened effectively. By the late 2000s, this model had spread northward, setting the stage for far more lethal variants.

Boko Haram and the abduction of innocence
The world first truly woke up to the scale of the horror on 14 April 2014, when Boko Haram fighters stormed the Government Girls Secondary School in Chibok, Borno State. They abducted 276 schoolgirls, bundling them into trucks and disappearing into the vast Sambisa Forest. Fifty-seven escaped immediately; the rest vanished into a nightmare of captivity.

The global response was swift but ultimately hollow. The #BringBackOurGirls campaign went viral, with more than 3.3 million tweets. Michelle Obama held up a placard in solidarity. Yet on the ground, the Nigerian military’s response under President Goodluck Jonathan was criticised as slow and ineffective. Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau taunted the world in a video, claiming the girls had been converted to Islam and would be sold as “slave brides.”

A decade later, the pain remains raw. According to the UN and Amnesty International, 82 of the Chibok girls are still missing or in captivity. Many endured rape, forced marriage, sexual slavery and conscription as suicide bombers or domestic servants. Some were released in secretive prisoner swaps, but at least 30 are confirmed dead. Chibok was merely the beginning. Amnesty has documented at least 17 mass school abductions since 2014, involving more than 1,700 children. In 2024 alone, Boko Haram and its splinter group ISWAP abducted around 400 people, predominantly women and children.

The case of Leah Sharibu, abducted from Dapchi in Yobe State in 2018, remains a national wound. The Christian student refused to renounce her faith and is still held, symbolising how religious identity continues to be weaponised.

Banditry and the Northwest school crisis
While Boko Haram weaponised ideology in the northeast, a more chaotic but equally deadly phenomenon — armed banditry — engulfed the northwest and north-central regions. Often operating in loose criminal-jihadist networks with links to radicalised Fulani elements, these groups have made swathes of Zamfara, Katsina, Kaduna, Kebbi, Niger, Sokoto and Plateau states virtually ungovernable.

The litany of school attacks is shameful. In December 2020, 333 boys were taken from Kankara, Katsina — President Muhammadu Buhari’s home state. Further attacks followed in Mahuta and Kagara. In February 2021, hundreds of girls were seized from Jangebe, Zamfara. 2021 saw over 1,000 students abducted across the north. The violence continued into 2024 and 2025 with raids on Kuriga, Gidan Bakuso, Maga in Kebbi (where the vice-principal was killed), and the abduction of 303 students and 12 teachers from St Mary’s in Papiri, Niger State in November 2025.

Human Rights Watch’s November 2025 report was scathing: authorities had failed to learn from previous attacks or implement basic early warning systems.

The Middle Belt: Farmland and faith
Running parallel to banditry is a more insidious pattern of violence in Nigeria’s agricultural Middle Belt. Armed groups, frequently described as Fulani militia, have targeted predominantly Christian farming communities in Benue, Plateau, Kaduna, Niger and Kogi states. Villages are razed, crops destroyed, and residents killed or abducted.

Open Doors and the U.S. State Department’s religious freedom reports paint a grim picture: Nigeria has been the deadliest country in the world for Christians in recent years, with thousands killed and abducted for their faith. In Mangu, Plateau State, over 130 people were killed in two days in May 2023. Amnesty International documented 1,336 deaths in Plateau farming communities between December 2023 and February 2024. Christian leaders describe a campaign of land seizure and ethno-religious cleansing, though the federal government has often characterised it as mere “farmer-herder clashes.”

The business of kidnapping: A growing industry
What makes this crisis particularly dangerous is its evolution into a structured parallel economy. Kidnappers use burner phones, encrypted communications, hawala money transfer systems and careful surveillance. Rural families are often forced to sell everything to meet the demands of N2-5 million. Nigeria’s anti-ransom law, which threatens families with 15-year sentences, has proved counterproductive — driving negotiations underground and leaving civilians more vulnerable, as tragically illustrated by the 2024 murder of 21-year-old Nabeeha Al-Kadriyar in Abuja after her family could only raise half the N60 million demanded.

The south-west had long considered itself relatively insulated. That illusion was shattered in May 2025 when gunmen attacked multiple schools in Oyo State, abducting over 40 children and teachers. One teacher, Michael Oyedokun, was beheaded on video. The assault demonstrated operational sophistication and a clear intent to expand territory. Gani Adams, the Aare Ona Kakanfo of Yorubaland, had warned of infiltration. Porous borders and forest corridors from the north provided ready routes for expansion.

Why the State has failed
The roots of this catastrophe lie in governance failure and impunity. Despite high-profile incidents, few major perpetrators have faced meaningful justice. Economic desperation — exacerbated by the removal of fuel subsidies, naira devaluation, inflation above 20 per cent, and catastrophic youth unemployment — has expanded the pool of recruits. Security forces are overstretched, under-resourced and sometimes compromised. Porous borders with crisis-hit Sahel nations have allowed sophisticated weapons to flow in.

A credible path forward
Nigeria does not lack solutions; it lacks the sustained political will to implement them.
First, impunity must end. Dedicated anti-kidnapping prosecution units are needed in high-risk states, with protected prosecutors and a clear commitment to arrests and convictions after every major incident.

Second, the ransom law requires urgent reform. A blanket ban criminalises victims’ families without deterring criminals. A more nuanced approach — drawing on international experience from Colombia and the Philippines — could include professional negotiation units, better financial tracking and protection for community mediators.

Third, intelligence-led community policing must replace reactive operations. This includes better local engagement, anonymous tip lines and real-time intelligence sharing. A national school safety framework with physical security, training and drills is long overdue.

Fourth, the complex issues in the Middle Belt require honest acknowledgement of both resource conflicts and ethno-religious dimensions, alongside practical measures like enforcing grazing bans and supporting ranching.

Finally, addressing root causes through education, vocational training and economic opportunity in the most affected regions is essential. Security without development is unsustainable. Regional cooperation with neighbours on border security and intelligence sharing must also improve.

A nation on the brink
Michael Oyedokun spent over two decades teaching mathematics before he was beheaded in the forest. The Chibok girls — those still missing now young women — represent broken promises to an entire generation. The children of Oyo, Zamfara, Kaduna and Borno continue to pay the price for systemic failure.

Nigeria’s kidnapping epidemic is not inevitable. It is the direct result of years of denial, half-measures and political expediency. With incidents rising dramatically and ransoms reaching trillions of naira, the crisis is accelerating. The Oriire attack in Oyo was not an anomaly but a warning.

True security is not measured by defence budgets but by whether a child can walk to school without fear. Nigeria’s leaders must now choose: confront this nightmare with honesty and courage, or watch it consume the entire country.
Dr Adeoti is a lecturer in HRM and OB, Brunel University of London. She can be reached at [email protected] Dr Akintunde, Coventry University can be reached at [email protected]