90% of Nigeria’s Ransom Money Went to One Group – Report

• Warns, Nigeria risks entrenching kidnapping “not merely as a criminal industry but as a funding mechanism for the very groups that most threaten its stability

Our Correspondent

Nigeria’s kidnapping industry didn’t just grow last year. It changed owners. Between July 2025 and June 2026, no fewer than 7,825 people were abducted across 1,713 incidents. At least 1,142 were killed. But the numbers that matter most to the future of the country’s security are not about victims. They are about money.

According to the 2026 Economics of Nigeria’s Kidnap Industry report by SBM Intelligence, kidnappers demanded N22.9 billion this year, less than half of the N48 billion demanded in 2025. Yet the amount actually paid more than tripled from N2.56 billion to N7.78 billion. The collection rate jumped from 5.35 percent to 34 percent.

The reason: one group. A faction of Jama’atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’awati Wal-Jihad, JAS, under Boko Haram, collected N7 billion of that N7.78 billion. That is 90 percent of all ransom paid in Nigeria, from just eight incidents.

Two abductions explain almost the entire national ransom bill. In April 2026, 416 people were taken from Ngoshe in Gwoza, Borno. The group demanded N5 billion and, according to intelligence sources cited by SBM, got it in full- the largest ransom ever recorded in the country.

Months earlier, in November 2025, 315 pupils and staff were abducted from St Mary’s School in Papiri, Niger State. The price: N2 billion. Together, those two cases account for N7 billion.

“The everyday kidnap economy demanded N13.5 billion but collected just N719 million, a 5.3 percent collection rate,” the report states.

“JAS, by contrast, demanded N9.2 billion and collected N7 billion, a 76 percent rate. Measured by what was demanded, the kidnap economy is a crime of the many. Measured by what was actually paid, it is dominated by a single terrorist organization.”

The geography of abduction has not shifted. The North still accounts for 93.7 percent of all victims. The Northwest remains the epicentre. Zamfara led the country with 236 kidnapping incidents and 1,921 victims, nearly a quarter of the national total.

Sokoto recorded 179 incidents and 1,157 victims. Katsina had 187 incidents. Kaduna recorded 134 incidents and 814 victims.

Mass abduction is now the dominant method. Four in five victims were taken in group seizures of five or more people. Zamfara alone recorded 92 mass abductions, followed by Sokoto with 76. The largest seizure was Ngoshe. The second largest was Papiri. Both were planned, military-style operations, not roadside snatches. And both worked.

School abductions have also returned. The Papiri attack revived a tactic that forces school closures, pushes farmers off land, and erodes public trust. “A single seizure radiates outward into lost schooling, lost livelihoods, and a deepening deficit of trust,” SBM notes.

The report found that paying ransom is no guarantee of survival. In at least six incidents, victims were killed after money was handed over.

In March 2026 in Oro Ago, Kwara, five of eight worshippers seized from an ECWA church were killed despite a reported N20 million community payment. In the same state, ECWA pastor Rev. James Audu Issa was murdered after millions were paid. A monarch in Kwara was killed after N18 million was paid.

The danger has also spread to those who carry the money. In at least six cases, ransom bearers were abducted themselves. Among them: a Chief Imam in Sabon Birni, Sokoto; two men in Erinmope-Ekiti; and OPC leader Bayo Fabiyi in Kwara.

Kidnappers are also adapting to cash scarcity. In 14 incidents, they demanded motorcycles, food, fuel, phones and even cigarettes instead of naira.

SBM’s data reveals two separate kidnap markets operating in parallel. The first is the diffuse bandit and criminal-gang economy. High volume, low yield.

They account for 59 percent of all ransom demanded but only 5.3% of what was collected. Their demands are often beaten down, or victims are killed or rescued.

The second is the ideological, mass-abduction model run by JAS. Low volume, extreme yield. With leverage from holding hundreds of hostages and a willingness to kill, they get paid what they ask. That concentration of money is the report’s central warning.

“For a designated terrorist organization to collect N7 billion in a single year is… a material transfer of resources to an insurgency, one that buys weapons, pays fighters and sustains the very campaign that produces the next round of abductions.”

The state’s response has not kept pace. There were 302 anti-kidnap operations nationwide. But they were unevenly distributed. Benue recorded 26 operations for 32 incidents. Edo and Delta, in the South-South, launched 25 and 23 operations respectively and killed 38 kidnappers. Zamfara, which leads the country in incidents, victims and deaths, recorded only four anti-kidnap operations all year.

Six states recorded zero operations: Bayelsa, Cross River, Ebonyi, Gombe, Jigawa, and Osun. Gombe is the anomaly — incidents jumped 1000 percent, but no operations were recorded.

The report concluded that breaking the cycle requires disrupting the financial flows that now fund insurgency, and addressing the economic desperation that supplies foot soldiers.

It added that for years, naira ransom demands climbed while their dollar value fell due to devaluation. That reversed in 2026. The N7.779 billion paid is worth about $5.7 million at the June 2026 rate, more than triple the previous year. Because the naira strengthened, the dollar value rose faster than the naira figure.

For the first time in the report’s history, the highest amount demanded and the highest amount paid are the same event: the N5 billion Ngoshe abduction.

“It is the clearest possible signal of a counterparty with the leverage to be paid exactly what it asks.” That leverage, SBM argues, belongs to groups that can hold communities hostage and govern in the state’s absence across vast northern forests.

Without coordinated action, the report warns, Nigeria risks entrenching kidnapping “not merely as a criminal industry but as a funding mechanism for the very groups that most threaten its stability.”

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