Ransom Payments Fuel Terrorism and Exploitation in Nigeria’s Vulnerable Communities 

The young man was in anguish when he spoke.

He had spent 60 days in captivity, blindfolded and in chains. Tortured, starved, and in despair, he had been held in a forest between Zamfara and Katsina States in northwestern Nigeria.

He was abducted on his way home from work. The terrorists whisked him and his colleague away on a motorcycle, speeding into the dense wilderness. 

“Will we get ₦50 million [$33,362] from you?” asked the terrorist riding the motorcycle he had been forced onto. “I am only a school teacher,” he replied. “Where could I possibly get such money?” The terrorist was unconvinced, saying, “You will provide it after some torture, you will.”

For weeks, Kamalu Ibrahim* remained chained to a tree alongside 50 other captives. The conditions were unbearable—beatings, starvation, and the constant fear of execution. Their captors taunted them, hitting them with sticks and cutlasses. They called the captives’ families daily, negotiating their worth like traders in a brutal marketplace.

Desperate for his freedom, Kamalu’s family scrambled to raise the ransom. They borrowed from friends, sold valuables, and depleted their savings. Yet, it was not enough. The kidnappers demanded more than money. 

“They would ask for consumables,” he said. He had seen them negotiate ransoms with other families, demanding motorcycles and mobile phones as part of the deal. While his ransom did not include these items, he explained that once a ransom amount was agreed upon, the kidnappers would specify the brand and model of the phone they wanted. Motorcycles were non-negotiable. They were part of the deal.

In rural communities, particularly in Zamfara, motorcycles are a common ransom demand. “When families pay the money, the terrorists still refuse to release the captives unless they get motorcycles, which cost about ₦2 million each,” said Alhaji Mu’azu, a community leader in Ruwan Kura, Bukuyum LGA in the state. 

Kamalu’s family paid the ransom in two separate instalments—amounts he declined to disclose. “They are not trustworthy,” he said. “They rarely release a captive after just one ransom payment.”

His ordeal is not unique. Across Nigeria, families are forced to make impossible choices, selling farmlands, homes, or stored crops at giveaway prices to buy freedom for their loved ones. Sometimes, even paying the ransom is not enough.

In many cases, relatives must deliver the money in person, risking abduction. “There were two men there who got abducted when they came to pay their parents’ ransom,” Kamalu recalled. “Their parents had been kidnapped on their way to their farmland.” 

The family, like many others, had already been displaced by constant attacks and abductions. Originally from a community near a terrorist hideout, they had migrated to Giwa, Kaduna State, for safety. But even in displacement, their lives were not free from extortion. “They still had to pay imposed levies,” Kamalu explained. “And occasionally, they would return to their village to farm.”

From the road to the forest

Through the crackling waves of the call that bridged the distance between us, Kamalu began recounting the events that turned him into a commodity in this brutal trade. It started on a Sunday evening in May 2022. He was aboard a commercial vehicle, returning to Kaduna from a school supervision trip in Zamfara. It was just past 9 p.m., and he and his colleague had fallen asleep, lulled by exhaustion, when the sudden jolt of the vehicle woke them. He had travelled this route before. He had made this journey countless times. But this time was different.

The driver had swerved abruptly, the tyres slipping off the tarred road as he attempted to manoeuvre in panic. The driver had sighted them ahead—ten men emerging from the darkness, armed and waiting along the Funtua-Giwa axis. There was no escape. Before Kamalu could grasp what was happening, the driver and a front-seat passenger flung their doors open and disappeared into the night. And then, the men closed in.

The terrorists singled out Kamalu and his colleague, stripped them of their money and phones—including the ones they had hidden in the vehicle—blindfolded them and took them away. Was it a tip-off? Or was it how they dressed that made them targets? He had no idea. 

The first place they were held captive was not far from the abduction site—no more than a fifteen-minute walk. It was a settlement, almost. “They had their families there. We could hear the voices of children,” Kamalu remembered. That night, the captors gave them food—bean porridge and dry bread. It was the last real meal they would eat for a long time.

“They asked if they would get some money from us,” Kamalu recalled. When they could,  the captors assured them they would be released the following day after getting the money. “They demanded ₦200,000 [$133]. And I told them that I had no such at the moment. However, I could ask someone to send the money if they would release us.”

At dusk the following day, the terrorists removed their blindfolds. And for a moment, they thought they were being freed. But it was only the beginning. They led them out onto the expressway, then past it, into deeper terrain—mud, stagnant water, the thickness of the forest swallowing them whole. 

Then they arrived at a clearing, where other armed men were waiting. That was when it dawned on them:  they had not been kidnapped by their final captors. They had been traded. The men who had first taken them were not the final destination. They were middlemen, abductors who traded in human lives, pulling travellers from the roads and selling them to terrorists who lived deep in the forests.

The terrorists who bought them wasted no time. That night, they walked through the forest. Not slowly, not at a careful pace, but hastily, their legs moving because they had no other choice. “That was my worst nightmare. I had never embarked on a trip as treacherous as that. And I don’t think I would again,” Kamalu added.

They made them carry their luggage on their heads. They crossed rivers–some shallow, others so deep that the water rose to their necks. Their clothes clung to their bodies, their breath coming in sharp gasps. “I have never felt thirst like I did that night, so thirsty that we could feel our throats so dry,” he said. They stopped to rest only three times, no more than an hour before the journey resumed. When dawn broke, and they had not yet reached the terrorists’ camp, they called for motorcycles. 

At the terrorists’ hideout, Kamalu met several other captives chained to trees.

“They had our eyes covered and chained us to trees, like the captives we met,” he said. “You would think they were not human because they were malnourished.”

The terrorists routinely offered the new captives “tea”—a code for beatings. “If you said yes, you would be severely beaten.” He could not understand why the terrorists had to do that. Perhaps it was a test of obedience or psychological control, he assumed.

In the days that followed, they endured more physical torture; they remained chained and blindfolded, surviving on less than three spoonfuls of rice once a day as they waited for their families to pay the ransom that would secure their freedom. “You would attend to every need blindfolded,” Kamalu recounted. “Praying, defecating, eating, urinating, sleeping—all of it.”

Then his voice wavered again. “One of the most disturbing things was how they deliberately denied us the chance to relieve ourselves,” he said, close to tears. “We would keep begging to be allowed for two, sometimes three weeks before they finally let us.” In their desperation, Kamalu and his fellow captives resorted to eating African locust beans, hoping it would suppress the urge and ease the pain.

When it rained, the terrorists sometimes would lay dry logs for them to sleep on. But after a while, they stopped. “They said the cold would make our families hasten the ransom,” Kamalu recalled. So, they let them sleep on the wet ground.

Over time, Kamalu formed a bond with the other captives—not to escape, but to survive. “We prayed together, supplicated together, and supported one another,” he said. “We were not from the same region or religion.” In their shared suffering, they became a family.

Kamalu and his colleague were the last to be freed during his captivity. 

Who profits from kidnapping?

Kidnapping for ransom is no longer an isolated crime—it has become a structured economy deeply embedded in Nigeria’s conflict landscape. For the victims, it is a torturous ordeal marked by physical abuse, psychological trauma, and financial devastation. For the perpetrators and intermediaries, it is an enterprise—a brutal, underground economy that enriches terrorists, negotiators, and traders alike.

It dates back to the pre-colonial era when people were abducted for slavery. The practice continued during colonial rule until slavery was abolished. In modern Nigeria, the first recorded case emerged in the 1990s in the oil-rich Niger Delta in the South-South, where militants kidnapped oil workers to pressure the government over environmental degradation. Over time, ransom payments became a funding strategy for insurgents, spreading to terror groups in the Northern region.

Between May 2023 and April 2024, Nigeria’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) estimated that households paid ₦2.2 trillion ($1.4 billion) in ransom. The NBS’s Crime Experience and Security Perception Survey reported 51.89 million crime incidents during this period, with the Northwest recording the highest cases. Data from SBM Intelligence shows that since 2019, Nigeria has witnessed 735 mass abductions. Between July 2022 and June 2023 alone, 3,620 people were abducted in 582 cases, with about ₦5 billion ($3.3 million) paid in ransom.

Although ransom payments were outlawed in 2022, and President Bola Tinubu vowed in 2024 that ‘no dime’ would be paid to kidnappers, abductions continue to plague the country. In February 2024, terrorists in Abuja demanded ₦290 million ($193,499) and food supplies for seven hostages. In August of the same year, terrorists in Niger State killed 13 people and demanded 130 motorcycles in exchange for the release of 26 kidnapped women. In rural communities, families sell harvested crops at giveaway prices to meet ransom demands. 

“Those without stored crops sell their farmlands or even remove the roofing sheets from their homes,” said Mu’azu, a community leader. “The local market keeps getting flooded with cheap crops, which traders buy at subsidised prices. While traders profit, the terrorists get the money, and the victims are left with nothing.”

A network of mediators also thrives within the ransom economy. In September 2024, Nigerian authorities arrested two individuals who acted as intermediaries in arranging ransom payments across northern Nigeria. 

The long-term economic impact is devastating. It creates an immense financial burden on victims’ families and entire communities, leaving them without the resources to recover even after securing their relatives’ release. Beyond household finances, the ransom economy fuels inflation, particularly in commodities often demanded by kidnappers. 

Kamalu witnessed firsthand how terrorists insisted on motorcycles as part of ransom deals, making them non-negotiable. This demand has driven up the cost of motorcycles in affected regions, making them more expensive for ordinary buyers who rely on them for business and transportation. The same applies to mobile phones, which kidnappers use as bargaining tools in negotiations.

The aftermath 

Kamalu survived. But survival is not the same as freedom. Back home, he sought help, spending several days in the hospital, receiving therapy and relearning how to walk. He considered himself lucky—not entirely broken by the experience. However, certain things trigger him. Songs, for example—the ones the terrorists played repeatedly in the forest. “Whenever I hear them, I ask the person listening to either turn them off or change the song. They bring back everything—the captivity, the torture, especially what they did to one elderly man.”

He is also uneasy around nomads or anyone dressed like one. He has become more conscious of his surroundings. Yet, his love for travelling remained unchanged. His job requires it, and he has embraced it. “I believe in destiny,” he said. “But there are routes I no longer take. And when I do, I am extremely cautious.”

Kamalu sees education as a key factor in breaking the cycle of violence, especially in rural areas. “These terrorists are illiterates, not just in Western education, but even in Islamic knowledge,” he said. “All they know is herding. That is all they have done their entire lives.”

*Names with asterisks were changed to protect the sources.

Additional reporting by Abdullahi Abubakar