THE BUSINESS OF BANDITRY: WHY WOULD KIDNAPPERS ABANDON A CRIME THAT PAYS MILLIONS?

North-West Nigeria's insecurity has defied logic, common sense, and repeated promises of government intervention.

How do we expect bandits to abandon kidnapping when ransom payments continue to generate millions of naira for criminal networks? How do we expect banditry to end when kidnapping has evolved into a lucrative criminal enterprise, while innocent citizens are left to bear the financial, psychological, and human costs?

Even more disturbing are allegations of political interference, questionable negotiations, and possible complicity by individuals who may benefit directly or indirectly from the ransom economy. These allegations demand credible, independent investigations. They must neither be dismissed casually nor treated as established facts without verifiable evidence.

The fundamental question, however, remains: If kidnapping continues to generate enormous profits, what economic incentive do these criminals have to abandon it?

THE STATISTICS ARE ALARMING

According to a report by Nigerian security consultancy SBM Intelligence, reported by The PUNCH on 6 October 2026, at least 20,115 people were abducted across Nigeria between July 2023 and June 2026.

During the same three-year period, kidnappers reportedly demanded approximately ₦81.9 billion in ransom but received about ₦11.4 billion.

The figures become even more troubling when examined annually. Between July 2025 and June 2026 alone, 7,825 people were reportedly kidnapped, while confirmed ransom payments reached approximately ₦7.78 billion.

That represents a dramatic increase from the ₦1.05 billion reportedly collected between July 2023 and June 2024.

These figures reveal a disturbing economic reality: ransom payments have increased substantially, even as the number of people kidnapped has fluctuated.

Although these figures cover Nigeria as a whole rather than the North-West alone, they demonstrate the scale and financial attraction of the country's kidnapping economy.

Source: SBM Intelligence figures reported by The PUNCH, 6 October 2026.

THE NORTH-WEST: A REGION HELD HOSTAGE

The situation across Zamfara, Katsina, Kaduna, and Sokoto states illustrates the persistence and geographical concentration of the crisis.

According to Human Rights Watch's World Report 2026, drawing on SBM Intelligence research, 2,938 people were kidnapped in Nigeria's North-West between July 2024 and June 2025.

Zamfara recorded 1,203 abductions, followed by Kaduna with 629, Katsina with 566, and Sokoto with 358.

These are not merely numbers in a statistical report. Behind every abduction is a family plunged into uncertainty, a household potentially forced to sell its assets, and a community increasingly afraid to travel, farm, trade, or send children to school.

When farmers cannot safely access their farmlands, agricultural productivity suffers. When travellers fear highways, commercial activities decline. When students become targets, education itself becomes a casualty of insecurity.

The result is a vicious cycle in which violence destroys livelihoods, poverty deepens, and communities become increasingly vulnerable.

Source: Human Rights Watch, World Report 2026: Nigeria.

WHEN KIDNAPPING BECOMES A BUSINESS MODEL

One of the greatest strategic failures in tackling banditry is the tendency to treat it exclusively as a military problem without adequately confronting its economic foundations.

Armed groups require money to purchase weapons, obtain supplies, maintain their networks, and sustain operations. Ransom payments can provide that money.

Research published by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) has identified kidnapping for ransom as a major source of revenue for armed bandit groups in North-West Nigeria. Other sources include cattle rustling, extortion, illegal mining, and levies imposed on communities.

This means that kidnapping is not simply an expression of lawlessness. For some organised criminal groups, it has become a calculated revenue-generating activity.

The logic is straightforward: identify vulnerable targets, abduct them, issue ransom demands, negotiate payment, collect the money, and use the proceeds to sustain criminal operations.

If the financial rewards remain substantial and the risk of arrest, prosecution, and asset forfeiture remains comparatively low, the criminal enterprise has powerful incentives to continue.

A government that wants to dismantle banditry must therefore dismantle the financial system that sustains it.

Source: ACLED, research on armed banditry and kidnapping in Nigeria.

PEACE NEGOTIATIONS WITHOUT ACCOUNTABILITY

Peace negotiations can sometimes help secure the release of hostages and reduce immediate bloodshed. Dialogue, therefore, should not automatically be dismissed as a policy instrument.

However, negotiations become strategically questionable when they are not accompanied by enforceable agreements, independent monitoring, disarmament measures, and credible guarantees that communities will remain protected.

What happens when negotiations produce temporary calm but armed groups retain their weapons, operational networks, and financial resources?

What happens when hostages are released, only for fresh abductions to occur weeks or months later?

And what happens when communities are told that peace has been achieved, while residents continue to pay levies, abandon their farms, or flee their homes?

These are questions that government authorities must answer.

Peace cannot be measured merely by the number of meetings held, the number of agreements announced, or the number of photographs taken with supposed peace brokers.

It must be measured by whether people can sleep safely in their homes, travel without fear, return to their farms, and conduct their businesses without paying protection money to armed criminals.

Where ransom payments are made to secure hostages' release, authorities must also consider the potential consequences for future kidnappings. Such payments may save lives in the immediate term, but they can also reinforce the perception that abduction is financially rewarding.

The challenge is to protect hostages without allowing a permanent criminal economy to flourish.

THE POLITICAL DIMENSION: ALLEGATIONS MUST BE INVESTIGATED

Public suspicion grows when insecurity persists despite repeated political promises, security operations, and peace initiatives.

Allegations that politicians or influential intermediaries profit from ransom collections are particularly serious. If credible evidence exists, the appropriate response should be an independent investigation, not political defensiveness or silence.

However, allegations must not be confused with proven criminal conduct. No individual should be declared guilty without evidence and due process.

The government should establish transparent mechanisms for investigating suspected ransom-related financial transactions, identifying intermediaries who facilitate criminal payments, tracing illicit funds, and prosecuting anyone found to be financing or profiting from kidnapping.

The objective should be accountability, not political scapegoating.

If anyone is exploiting the suffering of kidnapped Nigerians for personal or political gain, such conduct must be exposed and punished under the law.

Likewise, if investigations find no credible evidence against particular individuals, that conclusion should be made public.

National security is too important to be sacrificed on the altar of political protection, institutional complacency, or partisan accusations.

WHY DOES THE GOVERNMENT KEEP SHIFTING THE BLAME?

Nigerians deserve more than recurring assurances that security agencies are working tirelessly to address the problem.

They deserve measurable results.

The government cannot indefinitely blame previous administrations, difficult terrain, intelligence gaps, inadequate equipment, or the complexity of criminal networks without explaining what concrete steps it is taking to overcome these obstacles.

Every security challenge has operational difficulties. That is precisely why governments establish intelligence services, deploy security forces, maintain investigative institutions, and allocate enormous public resources to national defence.

The relevant questions are therefore unavoidable:

Why do some armed groups repeatedly return after military operations?

Why do vulnerable communities continue to suffer attacks despite repeated security assurances?

Why are the financial networks supporting kidnapping not being dismantled more decisively?

Why are those who finance, facilitate, or profit from criminal violence not being pursued with the same determination as the gunmen themselves?

And why should citizens continue to accept explanations without seeing sustained improvements in their safety?

These questions are not an attempt to undermine the government. They are legitimate demands for accountability from citizens whose taxes are supposed to help finance their protection.

WHAT MUST CHANGE?

Ending banditry requires a comprehensive strategy that combines security operations with financial investigations, effective policing, intelligence coordination, judicial accountability, and the protection of vulnerable communities.

First, security agencies must intensify intelligence-led operations against kidnapping networks and their operational infrastructure.

Second, financial investigations must target the proceeds of ransom payments, illicit transactions, extortion, and other criminal activities. Where evidence establishes wrongdoing, prosecution and lawful asset recovery should follow.

Third, peace agreements must be independently monitored and linked to verifiable security outcomes. Negotiations should never become a substitute for the state's responsibility to protect citizens.

Fourth, the government must strengthen the security of rural communities, schools, major roads, and agricultural areas. Protecting people before they are abducted is more sustainable than repeatedly negotiating their release.

Fifth, credible allegations of official complicity must be investigated impartially, regardless of the political status of the persons involved.

Finally, affected communities need reliable channels for reporting threats, receiving protection, and obtaining justice without fear of retaliation.

These measures will not eliminate insecurity overnight. However, they address the incentives and institutional weaknesses that allow criminal networks to survive.

THE FINAL QUESTION: WHO BENEFITS WHEN INSECURITY CONTINUES?

The tragedy of North-West Nigeria is not merely that armed criminals possess weapons. It is that the kidnapping economy continues to exact a terrible price from ordinary citizens.

Parents fear for their children. Farmers fear for their lives. Traders fear travelling. Families borrow money, sell property, or exhaust their savings to secure the release of loved ones.

Meanwhile, the criminal networks responsible for these atrocities may continue to generate revenue from the very people they terrorise.

This is an unacceptable contradiction in a country whose government has a constitutional responsibility to protect lives and property.

If kidnapping remains profitable, if criminal financiers remain beyond the reach of the law, if peace agreements lack enforcement, and if public officials are not held accountable for failures within their institutions, the cycle will be difficult to break.

The solution is not to abandon dialogue altogether, nor is it to rely exclusively on military force. It is to combine effective security operations with financial disruption, credible investigations, lawful prosecution, and sustained protection for vulnerable communities.

Nigeria must move beyond the politics of blame and the theatre of repeated assurances.

You cannot defeat a criminal enterprise by confronting only its foot soldiers while leaving its money, financiers, networks, and enabling conditions untouched.

And you cannot credibly claim to have restored peace when innocent citizens still live at the mercy of armed men who can abduct them today and demand millions tomorrow.

The time has come for the government to demonstrate that the protection of Nigerian lives is more important than political convenience, public relations, and the endless exchange of blame.

A nation cannot defeat banditry while allowing the business of banditry to remain attractive, profitable, and insufficiently punished.

Ahmad M. Salihu 

ahmad.msalihu22@gmail.com