A Google-accessed analytical report by SBM Intelligence, a Lagos-based geopolitical research and strategic consulting firm specialising in market and security intelligence for Nigeria and West Africa, claims that Nigeria’s kidnapping crisis has become a booming criminal enterprise, with N2.56 billion ($1.66 million) paid in ransoms and 4,722 civilians abducted in just 12 months (between July 2024 and June 2025).
The report also said that “kidnapping for ransom had emerged as a pervasive and destabilising criminal enterprise in Nigeria, one that capitalises ruthlessly on the country’s economic fragility. While precise ransom figures remain obscured by victims’ fears of reprisals and institutional opacity, the escalating financial burden on communities is undeniable”, the report pointed out.
A closer look at the details of the report indicates that the Northwest remains the epicentre of abductions, with Katsina State recording the highest number of kidnap-related incidents (131), followed closely by Kaduna (123), Zamfara (113), and Niger (40). However, Zamfara topped the list for the actual number of victims, with 1,203 people kidnapped, accounting for over 25 per cent of all recorded abductions.
Notwithstanding that the North remains most severely impacted, the report exposed the fact that kidnapping is becoming increasingly decentralised, with the Southeast and South-South regions experiencing targeted religious abductions and financially motivated crimes.
The data also show a divergence between ransom payments in naira and their dollar equivalents, reflecting Nigeria’s ongoing currency crisis. While ransom demands have surged in naira terms, the dollar value has stagnated or declined due to sharp devaluation.
Another aspect of the report claimed that 7,568 people were kidnapped within the period covering June 2023 and July 2024 in 1,130 incidents across Nigeria. These are not mere statistics. They are human beings in flesh and blood.
The report blamed the country’s poverty situation for the exponential growth of this criminality. The World Bank, in one of its reports, revealed that 89 million Nigerians are impoverished for a country of less than 250 million people. This assertion makes Nigeria the most populous country in Africa and the second poorest populated country after India in 2023.
We recall that the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics (NBS), in a comprehensive report on Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) in 2022, said that a survey it carried out found that 63 per cent of Nigerians (133 million people) are multidimensionally poor, experiencing deprivations in areas like sanitation, energy, food insecurity, and housing. The survey also highlighted that poverty is higher in rural areas (72 per cent poor) than in urban areas (42 per cent poor).
All these reports paint a picture of a country in distress. Worse, in our view, is the seeming despondency on the part of officialdom which may have resigned to this shame as a new normal.
The prevalence of poverty and its undergirding role in acts of criminality, have since ceased to matter to the ruling class whose lifestyle also inspire the criminals in the country to aspire to get their own share of the wealth through any means including kidnapping. Why would they care since they have all the protection they need from the state?
Elsewhere around the world, kidnapping, as in Nigeria, instils fear and distrust among the population, who in turn demand increased security. That is beginning to apply disturbingly in Nigeria, where parents now fear sending their children to boarding schools, which have become a soft spot for these criminals. People fear travelling by road and even using public transportation services like taxis because they are apprehensive about the next passenger in the cab. Or, for that matter, the disposition of the operator of the service himself.
Our worry, beyond the economic benefits to the criminal elements who indulge in this heinous crime, is the severe psychological trauma it inflicts on victims and their families and the financial hardship it brings to them.
Kidnapping everywhere reduces investment and slows development. However, the difference between other nations and Nigeria is that there is a concerted effort to combat this dreadful phenomenon by strengthening their legal frameworks, increasing law enforcement training, improving victim support services, and fostering international cooperation through organisations like the United Nations and Interpol.
If Nigeria is doing these, the escalating cases of kidnapping do not indicate that they are effective enough as a deterrent. The danger around this crime in the country is that victims and their families no longer trust the security agencies or their ability to give them the succour they crave in such bizarre circumstances.
A situation where victims’ families are expected to fund the process of fighting the crime inflicts even greater frustration and pain on them. Often, they prefer to deal with criminals directly rather than subject themselves to the horror of realising that their anguish has only pecuniary attraction to the security agencies who have the mandate to protect them against such pain in the first place.
This situation points to the fact that the figures quoted above by SBM Intelligence may be a tip of the iceberg. Even that we hope ought to be serious enough to provoke the authorities into more action directed at weeding out the criminals and giving the people the peace they earnestly deserve.
