By Adamu Madugu, in Nigeria*
part of the CSI Fellowship for Nigerian Voices series
Nigeria’s kidnapping crisis appears to be undergoing an important change, according to a new report.
For years, kidnapping for ransom has largely operated as a dispersed criminal economy, with numerous bandit groups and criminal gangs abducting people for money. But over the past year, 90 percent of the ransom money that researchers could attribute to identified actors went to a single jihadist faction and its allied cells. This is a group that is fighting an insurgency against the Nigerian state and that belongs to a movement with a record of attacking Christian communities.
As many as 7,825 people were abducted between July 2025 and June 2026, an increase of 66 percent over the previous year, according to the report by SBM Intelligence, a Lagos-based research and security intelligence firm that publishes an annual study of Nigeria’s kidnapping economy. Kidnappers demanded about 22.9 billion naira (US$16.75 million) and received at least 7.78 billion naira (US$5.7 million).
Bulk of money goes to Boko Haram faction
SBM attributed about seven billion naira of the ransom payments, or 90 percent of the total, to the Jama’atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’awati Wal-Jihad, or JAS, faction of Boko Haram and allied cells. The payments came from just eight incidents.
By comparison, non-jihadist kidnappers and bandits in SBM’s data demanded about 13.5 billion naira but collected only around 719 million naira. In its reporting, SBM attributes ransoms according to the group identified as responsible for the incident.
This is markedly different from the picture SBM presented a year earlier. Its 2025 report, covering July 2024 to June 2025, characterised kidnapping as a structured, profit-seeking industry. At least 4,722 people were abducted in 997 incidents and about 2.57 billion naira, then worth about US$1.66 million, was paid in ransom.
Numerous bandit and criminal groups remain responsible for much of Nigeria’s everyday kidnapping activity. What has changed in the latest figures is where the money actually collected has become concentrated. SBM says JAS collected more from eight incidents than ordinary kidnappers and bandits collected from 146.
Origins of JAS
JAS is one of the two principal factions of Boko Haram, the jihadist movement that has fought the Nigerian state since 2009. Following a leadership dispute in 2016, Boko Haram divided into JAS, then led by Abubakar Shekau, and the Islamic State West Africa Province, or ISWAP.
The European Union Agency for Asylum (EUAA) describes Boko Haram as a Salafi-jihadist movement seeking to replace Nigeria’s secular state with an Islamic state governed by its strict interpretation of Sharia. Its latest assessment says JAS primarily targets civilians, including Muslims, through plunder and kidnapping for ransom, while also attacking military positions.
Another EUAA assessment says JAS regards civilians as legitimate targets and has used extreme violence and sectarianism, including massacres, suicide attacks and enslavement of people it considers “infidels” or “apostates”.
Jihad and insurgency
The flow of ransom money to JAS therefore has implications that go beyond the kidnapping business. Money entering JAS may be strengthening an armed movement with broader objectives.
SBM says such financial flows may buy weapons, pay fighters and sustain the insurgency, resulting in further abductions. Its conclusion is that kidnapping risks becoming a funding mechanism for groups that threaten Nigeria’s stability.
SBM consequently argues that disrupting the financial flows generated by kidnapping should form part of efforts to weaken the insurgency.
The amounts involved add to the concern. JAS was unusually successful in turning its ransom demands into actual payments. It demanded about 9.2 billion and collected about seven billion, a collection rate of 76.1 percent. Non-jihadist kidnappers and bandits, by comparison, demanded about 13.5 billion but collected only 5.3 percent of that amount.
For Nigeria’s Christians, there is an additional reason for concern. The latest figures show the enormous financial returns JAS can extract from mass abductions involving hundreds of people.
Lucrative mass abductions
Most of JAS’s ransom revenue came from just two such abductions. SBM says five billion naira was reportedly paid for 416 people abducted from Ngoshe in Borno State. Another two billion naira was paid following the abduction of 315 pupils and staff from St Mary’s School in Papiri, Niger State. Together, those two payments account for almost all of the seven billion naira attributed to JAS and allied cells.
The Ngoshe case was particularly significant. SBM says the kidnappers demanded five billion and received the full amount, making it both the largest ransom demand and the largest payment it has ever recorded. The report argues that holding hundreds of captives gives an armed organisation leverage that ordinary roadside kidnapping gangs generally cannot command.
Mass abduction itself has become increasingly important in Nigeria’s kidnapping crisis. SBM says four out of five people abducted during the latest reporting year were taken in group seizures, while large-scale school kidnappings have also returned.
Kidnapping economy fuels insurgency
The significance of the 90 percent figure therefore lies in more than the amount of ransom money involved. Nigeria continues to have a large, dispersed kidnapping industry involving bandits and criminal gangs.
But at the upper end of that economy, an organised jihadist faction has demonstrated an ability to conduct mass abductions and extract sums far greater than those received by the numerous non-jihadist kidnapping groups.
For Christians, the concern is that one of the organisations demonstrating this capacity belongs to a jihadist movement with a history of violence against Christian communities.
For Nigeria as a whole, the concern is larger. A kidnapping economy capable of extracting millions of dollars from families, communities and institutions has demonstrated its capacity to channel an extraordinary concentration of that money into an armed insurgency fighting the Nigerian state.
The CSI Fellowship for Nigerian Voices is a six-month program for a select cohort of Nigerian journalists to shed light on the struggle that local Christian communities have been facing in the Middle Belt, thus increasing public awareness and engagement by the international community.
