Nigerian gunmen raise over $5 million from mass kidnappings, study finds

Nigerian kidnappers have collected nearly $5.8 ​million in ransom payments in the last year from civilian abductions, crime that is crippling education and ‌eroding public trust in the government, a security consultancy said on Wednesday.

Nigeria's SBM Intelligence said 7,825 people were kidnapped between July 2025 and June 2026, up 66% from the year before.

At least 1,142 people were killed, and total confirmed ​ransom payments more than tripled to 7.78 billion naira ($5.79 million), it said.

The figures were compiled from ​media reports, interviews and publicly available information, and SBM said they were conservative because ⁠many ransom payments were never disclosed.

A faction of the Islamist group Boko Haram collected 90% of the ​recorded ransom payments from kidnappings in the northeast, but there were more incidents and victims in the northwest, ​according to SBM.

The findings were released as Nigeria's president ordered security forces to rescue as many as 600 civilians kidnapped last week in north-central Niger State.

The presidency and military did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the report’s findings.

The kidnap-for-ransom ​industry is at the center of Nigeria's expanding security crisis as gunmen target schools, villages and main ​roads.

Kidnappers, who include heavily armed bandits and Islamist militants, hold their victims for weeks or months until payments are ‌made.

SBM ⁠estimated that Boko Haram, which is known as Jama'atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda'awati Wal-Jihad, received about 7 billion naira, mainly from two mass incidents where over 300 people were seized in each event.

Some 315 pupils and staff were seized from a school in Papiri, Niger state, in November.

Schools remain routinely targeted over a decade after ​Boko Haram's raid on ​a school in Borno's ⁠Chibok that brought such kidnappings to international attention.

"School abductions have resurged, with the Papiri attack reviving a tactic whose costs ripple through education, farming and public trust," ​the SBM report said.

Nigeria's security crisis is likely to be a central issue ​in the next ⁠elections in January.

When he came to power three years ago, President Bola Tinubu pledged - like his predecessors - to tackle insecurity but analysts say the recent wave of kidnappings shows the policy has failed to deliver tangible progress.

"Without ⁠a coordinated ​strategy that targets both the profitability of the crime and its ​roots, Nigeria risks entrenching kidnapping not merely as a criminal industry but as a funding mechanism for the very groups that most ​threaten its stability," SBM said.

-Reuters