What’s Behind Nigeria’s Kidnapping Crisis?

The abduction of hundreds of Nigerians, including almost 350 schoolchildren in just a matter of days, has reignited a pressing debate about the persistent security crisis gripping the country.

A resurgence of mass kidnappings came after US President Donald Trump threatened military action in Nigeria to stop what he calls the killing of Christians by radical Islamists.

The Nigerian government has responded that “violent attacks affect families and communities across religious and ethnic lines”.

The religiously diverse country of 230 million people is the scene of long-brewing conflicts that have killed both Christians and Muslims, often indiscriminately.

AFP looks at the evolution of mass kidnappings in Africa’s most populous country.

– Origins of mass kidnappings –

One of the first mass kidnappings that drew international attention was in 2014, when nearly 300 girls were snatched from their boarding school in the northeastern town of Chibok by Boko Haram jihadists.

Since then, Nigeria has recorded hundreds more mass kidnappings, with armed gangs targeting vulnerable populations for ransom and rampaging throughout poorly policed rural areas.

In the latest Catholic school attack, survivors recounted the gang’s arrival in the dead of night. They then packed their victims into buses and vans and onto motorcycles.

– Who is behind the kidnappings? –

Both jihadists and criminal gangs known locally as “bandits” are involved in kidnapping in northern regions.

In northwestern rural areas, roaming groups of bandits stage deadly raids on villages, kidnapping people for ransom and looting cattle.

Their primary focus is money. Figures thrown around in the media range from demands of hundreds of dollars to tens of thousands per person seized.

Armed gangs target vulnerable populations for ransom and rampage throughout poorly policed rural areas

Banditry mainly grew out of land conflicts between farmers and herders. Since 2011, as arms trafficking increased and the wider Sahel region fell into turmoil, the gangs became more organised.

– Who are the main targets? –

Large congregations make for easy prey. Only 50 of the over 300 children — most of them nursery and primary school age — taken on Friday from St Mary’s school in Niger have escaped.

Schools in at least nine of Nigeria’s 36 states are either fully or partially closed for fear of further abductions.

– Is the situation getting worse? –

The total number of people kidnapped in Nigeria is difficult to determine, as many cases go unreported.

But Nigeria has faced a “continuous kidnapping epidemic for more than a decade, driven by numerous criminal and extremist groups”, said International Crisis Group’s Nnamdi Obasi, citing various estimates of “between 3,600 and 7,500” abducted annually from 2022 to 2024.

The cybersecurity organisation Beacon Security recorded a 100 percent increase in abductions between the first half of 2024 and 2025, while “armed attacks” spiked by more than 250 percent.

The government launched a safe schools initiative in 2014, but the strategy appears to have been ineffective.

Obasi pointed out that a proper solution would require improved stability generally.

“Schools are never quite going to be islands of safety in a sea of insecurity. The government must curb the wider insecurity that is plaguing many parts of the country before schools can be truly safe,” he said.

– What’s being done to curb abductions? –

The Nigerian military, considered one of the region’s most powerful, is overstretched as it also grapples with jihadist activity in the east.

The country is estimated to have around 370,000 police officers, and until President Bola Tinubu’s decision to reassign VIP police bodyguards on Sunday, nearly 100,000 of them were not engaged in core policing work.

Analysts have suggested a lack of political will to curb kidnapping.

Politicians “are mostly insulated from the fallouts with their retinue of protection assets. So, it is ordinary people that suffer,” said Chidi Odinkalu, a Nigerian professor in international human rights law at Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.

President Bola Tinubu postponed his trip to South Africa for the G20 Summit, staying in Nigeria to handle the kidnapping crisis instead

Governmental failure to clamp down on mass kidnapping over the years has “emboldened” the gangs, “and over time, the abduction of schoolchildren became a money-making venture for the terrorists”, said Aisha Yesufu, co-founder of the #BringBackOurGirls movement which led the campaign for the release of the Chibok girls.

– What about the Trump effect? –

There are several possible explanations behind the sudden upsurge in kidnappings, with some blaming Trump’s remarks about mass killings in Nigeria.

His statements could have “inadvertently instigated or emboldened opportunistic armed groups that are seeking to exploit international narratives by attacking soft targets”, Obasi said.

“The Trump threat has emboldened those who were saying Tinubu and his government are out to lunch,” Odinkalu said.

Some security analysts say the armed groups are trying to hold large numbers of captives as potential human shields in case the United States follows through on its threat of airstrikes.

A local government official in Nigeria’s eastern Borno state holds similar beliefs.

Abubakar Mazhinyi is the chairman of the Askira-Uba district in Borno, where the government has been fighting an Islamist insurgency for 16 years, and where 13 women and girls were kidnapped by suspected ISWAP militants on their way from a farm on Saturday.

He speculated that “they are taking them as shields” in case of an attack.

But Obasi suggests the attacks “may also be acts of defiance by some armed groups, taunting the US to make good on its threat of military action in Nigeria”.

(AFP)