Keypoints:
- Ransoms hit ₦7.78bn ($5.79m)
- Abductions rise 66 percent
- Boko Haram faction takes ₦7bn ($5.21m)
NIGERIA’S kidnapping economy has expanded sharply, with armed groups collecting at least ₦7.78bn ($5.79m) in confirmed ransom payments in the year to June 2026, as mass abductions increasingly provide cash to criminal gangs and Islamist militants.
New research by SBM Intelligence, an Africa-focused market intelligence, security analysis and strategic consulting firm, recorded 7,825 people kidnapped between July 2025 and June 2026, up 66 percent year on year, while at least 1,142 people were killed. The figures show how hostage-taking has evolved into a major revenue stream within Nigeria’s worsening security crisis.
Ransom payments more than triple
The ₦7.78bn ($5.79m) in confirmed payments represents a dramatic increase from the ₦2.57bn ($1.66m) documented during the previous reporting period.
SBM’s earlier study, Locust Business: The Economics of Nigeria’s Kidnap Industry, recorded 4,722 abducted people across 997 incidents between July 2024 and June 2025, with at least 762 people killed.
The latest figures therefore point not only to a resurgence in kidnappings but also to a sharp increase in the amount armed groups are extracting from victims and their families.
SBM cautions that even the ₦7.78bn ($5.79m) figure is conservative. Its calculations draw on media reports, interviews and publicly available information, while many families never disclose whether they paid a ransom or how much money changed hands.
That means the documented total captures only confirmed transactions rather than the full financial cost of kidnapping across Nigeria.
The trend reinforces concerns raised in Africa Briefing’s earlier examination of Nigeria’s expanding kidnapping industry, where families have been forced to sell land, livestock and other assets to secure the release of relatives.
Boko Haram faction takes ₦7bn
The most striking finding concerns Jama’atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’awati Wal-Jihad, the Boko Haram faction commonly known as JAS.
SBM estimated that the group received about ₦7bn ($5.21m), largely from two mass kidnapping incidents in which more than 300 people were seized in each attack.
SBM findings indicate that the faction accounted for about 90 percent of recorded ransom payments from kidnappings in Nigeria’s north-east.
That regional distinction is important. The north-west recorded more kidnapping incidents and victims, underlining the different forms the crisis takes across the country.
Bandit groups operating across the north-west and north-central regions have built lucrative businesses around abducting villagers, travellers and schoolchildren, while jihadist organisations in the north-east appear increasingly capable of extracting exceptionally large payments from mass hostage-taking.
Schools return to the frontline
Schools remain particularly vulnerable.
SBM highlighted the November 2025 kidnapping of 315 students and staff from St Mary’s Catholic Primary and Secondary Schools in Papiri, Niger State, as evidence of the renewed threat posed by mass school abductions.
The tactic echoes the 2014 seizure of 276 schoolgirls from Chibok in Borno State, an attack that turned Boko Haram’s kidnapping campaign into an international issue.
But the costs reach far beyond ransom demands.
Fear of attack can keep children out of classrooms, force communities to abandon farms and discourage travel and commerce along insecure roads. In areas where the state has limited reach, every successful abduction can deepen public distrust in government protection.
The security challenge is further complicated by misinformation. Africa Briefing has also reported on Nigeria’s struggle with kidnapping-related misinformation, as authorities attempt to distinguish genuine security threats from rumours and manipulated online claims.
Fresh abductions intensify pressure
The SBM findings have emerged as Nigeria confronts another major kidnapping crisis in Niger State.
President Bola Tinubu ordered security forces to launch a rescue operation after gunmen seized what residents said could be as many as 600 civilians from communities in the state. The exact number of captives has not been independently confirmed.
The latest attack puts renewed pressure on Tinubu, who came to office in 2023 promising to improve security but continues to face insurgency in the north-east, banditry across the north-west and north-central regions and kidnapping in other parts of the country.
Security is also becoming an increasingly important political issue ahead of Nigeria’s January 16, 2027 presidential election.
As Africa Briefing noted in its analysis of the election campaign testing Tinubu’s reform record, insecurity is competing with living costs and economic hardship as one of the major issues likely to shape voter judgement.
Kidnapping becomes a funding machine
The most troubling implication of SBM’s findings is the ability of hostage-taking to sustain the groups carrying out the violence.
Ransom revenues can support recruitment, logistics and armed operations, allowing money extracted from kidnapped civilians to reinforce the organisations responsible for Nigeria’s insecurity.
That creates a dangerous cycle: successful kidnappings finance the capacity for further attacks, while each high-value ransom strengthens the economic incentive for armed groups to seize more victims.
SBM argues that Nigeria therefore needs more than rescue operations and military deployments. Authorities must also reduce the profitability of kidnapping and address the conditions that allow armed groups to operate, recruit and move across vulnerable communities.
Without such a strategy, the consultancy warns, kidnapping risks becoming entrenched not merely as organised crime but as a financing mechanism for groups capable of further destabilising Africa’s most populous country.
For Nigeria, the ₦7.78bn ($5.79m) ransom bill is therefore more than a measure of what desperate families have paid. It is evidence of a security crisis that is increasingly financing itself.
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