What a Time to Be a Nigerian Kidnapper!

Nigeria in 2025 looks like a crime thriller script, but this time there’s no Hollywood ending, just billions in ransom, little to no arrests, and kidnappers acting like they’re running legitimate businesses. From schoolchildren to farmers, office workers to churches, no one and no where seems off limits.

The feeling that rings across streets and WhatsApp groups from Lagos to Maiduguri is simple: What a time to be a kidnapper. Seriously, what a f*****g time.

Kidnapping Is Now an Industry

Research from geopolitical analysts shows that between July 2024 and June 2025, kidnappers across Nigeria abducted at least 4,722 people, and extracted ₦2.57 billion in ransom from those victims and their families. That’s just the documented share of ransom actually paid, despite over ₦48 billion being demanded.

To put that in context, nearly 5,000 Nigerians were kidnapped in 12 months. About 800 people killed during these abductions, and ransom demands skyrocketing into the tens of billions.

This isn’t a security glitch. It’s an entire criminal supply chain, with demand, price points, standard negotiation tactics, and some extremely smooth operators calling the shots.

Here’s How the Ransom Business Works

Kidnappers in Nigeria have moved beyond throw-away raids and hit-or-miss captures. This is a structured, profit-driven enterprise:

Demand Inflation

In some abductions, kidnappers have demanded up to ₦30 billion for just three captives. That’s more than some state budgets.

Price Negotiation

Families don’t usually pay full demand, they pay what they can.

Even then, getting that “discounted ransom” still means years of debt, selling land, or emptying life savings.

Market Spread

Northern states like Zamfara, Katsina, and Kaduna are the epicenters, but kidnappers are everywhere. South-South and South-East regions are no longer safe havens.

Kidnapping is now a national economic hustle for organized criminal networks.

Schools, Streets, and Homes: No Place Is Sacred

Remember Chibok?
Ten years later, the pattern hasn’t disappeared, it has expanded.

In late 2025 alone, several mass school abductions saw hundreds of children stolen away, and then later released after negotiations and tactics that were never fully explained publicly.

This cycle — abduction → silence → ransom/negotiation → release — has become so common that many Nigerians now assume boo-boo news conferences mean nothing until an arrest is made. But arrests? Convictions? Public justice? That’s where the story gets murky.

Rescue Without Retribution

Every time the police or the military “rescue” kidnapped victims, Nigerians ask:

Where are the kidnappers? Arrested? Dead? Tried? Locked up?

Too often, it’s crickets and the answers are nowhere to be found.

Stories of operations that free captives are broadcast widely, but kidnap gangs disappear into the bush, almost like they have government invitation letters. Hundreds are freed; few are ever brought to justice.

There are two possibilities:

• Security forces are outgunned and overextended.
• Kidnappers are too connected, too resourceful, or maybe both.

Either way, the justice system isn’t catching up.

The Perverse Incentives at Play

Here’s the brutal truth: If kidnappers can reliably extract ransom and then fade into obscurity, why wouldn’t they keep doing it?

Compared with most other criminal enterprises, kidnapping pays better than petty theft, kidnappers may risk less time behind bars than armed robbers (at least from what we’ve seen), there’s no real public consequence for doing it and sometimes the government negotiates quietly, even if they deny it.

When the cost of failure is low, and the reward is high, crime adapts and flourishes.

The Human Cost

We’ve all seen the clips on social media:

• Parents crying because they’ve paid life savings.
• Communities spending nights negotiating with invisible men in the bush.
• Kids returning home and still living in fear.

This isn’t hypothetical. These are real human stories.

Even when ransom is paid, it doesn’t guarantee safety. In some cases, hostages have been killed despite surrendering cash.

Every abduction scars families, and every ransom paid becomes a signal flare to the next hungry gang.

So what’s the government doing?

Officially, the narrative is: “We’re tackling insecurity.” Or “Kidnap for ransom is under control.”

Unofficially? Every year, ransom figures rise. No comprehensive national statistics on convictions and most kidnappers still roam free.

And when media captures kidnappers mocking government officials on video, that’s truly a national embarrassment.

Final Thought: The Problem Isn’t Just Crime. It’s the System

So once again: What a time to be a kidnapper.

If you don’t get arrested, if you make billions, if your worst consequence is “negotiated release”, then yeah, it almost looks like a job with perks.

But here’s what most Nigerians already know: This crisis won’t end until kidnappers start worrying more about jail or death sentences than ransom. And right now? It’s the other way around.