At least 7,825 kidnapping victims in Nigeria paid N7.78 billion to non-state actors and terrorists in 2026, according to a report by SBM Intelligence.
The revelation comes after several denials by government and security agencies that ransoms were paid to secure the release of victims of mass abductions across the country.
The report, titled: “The Capture of Nigeria’s Kidnap Economy,” said one group, the Jama’atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’awati Wal-Jihad (JAS) faction of Boko Haram, collected 90 per cent of all ransom paid from just eight incidents monitored.
It found that of the N7.779 billion ($5.78 million) paid in ransom nationwide during the period, the JAS faction of Boko Haram and its allied cells took N7.0015 billion from eight recorded incidents.
“Attributing each ransom to the actor named in its reporting, the JAS faction and its allied cells account for N7.0 billion of the N7.779 billion paid around the country, a staggering 90 per cent of all ransom collected in Nigeria this year, from just a handful of incidents,” the report stated.
According to the report, ransom demanded fell from N48 billion to N22.9 billion, yet the amount actually paid more than tripled, from N2.56 billion to N7.78 billion.
The collection rate also jumped from 5.35 per cent to 34 per cent.
Two abductions drove the year’s total: the N5 billion ransom for 416 captives taken from Ngoshe, Borno State, and the N2 billion paid for 315 pupils and staff abducted from St Mary’s School in Papiri, Niger State.
Between them, the two incidents accounted for N7 billion, almost the entire national ransom bill.
SBM Intelligence traced almost the entire national ransom bill to the two mass abductions carried out months apart in Borno and Niger States.
In April 2026, a faction reportedly commanded by Ali Ngulde abducted 416 people from Ngoshe in Gwoza, Borno State, issuing a 72-hour ultimatum for N5 billion. The report said the full amount was paid, making it the largest single ransom SBM has ever recorded.
Months earlier, in November 2025, gunmen abducted 315 pupils and staff from St Mary’s School in Papiri, Niger State, in what the report described as “one of the worst mass abductions in the country’s history.”
Multiple intelligence sources cited in the report put the ransom paid at N2 billion.
“Together, these two incidents account for N7 billion and explain almost the entire national ransom bill,” the report said.
The report described the shift as a structural change in how Nigeria’s kidnap industry now functions, warning that a “designated terrorist organisation is no longer merely participating in the kidnap economy; in ransom terms, it is the kidnap economy.”
It drew a sharp contrast between the economics of ideologically driven mass abduction and everyday criminal kidnapping.
Bandits and unaffiliated kidnappers, the report found, demanded N13.492 billion across 146 cases but collected only 5.3 per cent of it.
JAS, meanwhile, demanded N9.205 billion and collected 76.1 per cent of what it asked for.
“Measured by what was demanded, the kidnap economy is a crime of the many. Measured by what was actually paid, it is dominated by a single terrorist organisation,” the report said.
“For a designated terrorist organisation to collect N7 billion in a single year is hardly the criminal-justice failure that it may appear to be, because, on the contrary, it is a material transfer of resources to an insurgency, one that buys weapons, pays fighters and sustains the very campaign that produces the next round of abductions,” it warned.
