Kidnappers in Nigeria collected more than $5 million in ransoms in a year, analysts say

Audio By Carbonatix

ABUJA, Nigeria (AP) — Kidnappers in Nigeria collected more than $5 million in ransom payments over the last year, a Lagos-based intelligence group said Thursday, as the country faces a multifaceted security crisis.

“For every ransom that is paid for a kidnapping incident, you are simply birthing another kidnapping incident,” Kehinde Giwa, a security analyst at SBM Intelligence, told The Associated Press.

SBM Intelligence said in a report on Wednesday that 7.78 billion naira ($5.8 million) was paid in ransom for releasing people who had been kidnapped between July 2025 and June 2026. The group said that 7,825 people were kidnapped in that time, a 66% increase from the previous year.

Abductions are common in Nigeria, where militant groups target schoolchildren and other civilians to put pressure on the government and extract ransoms.

Last week, dozens of people were kidnapped from a mosque in a spate of abductions at several villages in Nigeria's north-central Niger state.

Armed groups, known as bandits in Nigeria, regularly carry out raids and kidnappings for ransom in the northwest and north-central parts of the country. Authorities have said the bandit groups include mostly former herders who took up arms against farming communities, after clashes between them over increasingly strained resources.

There is also an insurgency by Islamic militants in the country’s northeast that has lasted more than a decade.

“Nigeria is not winning the war,” said Giwa, from SBM Intelligence. “There are close to 21 kidnapping incidents that happen on a daily basis.”

Abba Bukar, a resident of Maiduguri, in the northeastern state Borno, said Thursday that he was abducted in June close to a university and spent around four weeks in captivity.

“My father paid around 2 million naira (about $1,500). He had to sell my house and belongings and borrow money,” Bukar said, adding that the family is still struggling to recover economically from the ordeal.

The United States and Nigeria recently formed a military partnership to tackle the West African country's multifaceted security crisis.

The U.S. in February sent troops to Nigeria to help advise its military, and in March, the U.S. also deployed drones there after Trump’s allegations about Christians being targeted in Africa's most populous country.