Nigerian gunmen raise over $5 million from mass kidnappings: Study

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

Nigeria’s SBM Intelligence said on Wednesday that 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 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 centre of Nigeria’s expanding security crisis as gunmen target schools, villages and main ​roads.

Kidnappers, who include heavily armed bandits and 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.