Nigeria: 7,825 Kidnapped Nigerians Paid N7.8bn Ransom in 2026 - Report

What the report says

A new SBM Intelligence report cited by Leadership says kidnapping victims and their families in Nigeria paid about N7.78 billion in ransom in 2026, involving at least 7,825 abducted people. The findings were published in Abuja on 27 August 2026 and were presented as a challenge to repeated official denials that ransom payments are made to secure releases in mass abduction cases.

The report, titled "The Capture of Nigeria's Kidnap Economy," says the largest share of the money went to the Jama'atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda'awati Wal-Jihad (JAS) faction of Boko Haram and allied cells. It attributes roughly N7.0 billion, or about 90% of the total paid nationwide, to just eight incidents. SBM Intelligence argues that this marks a shift in Nigeria's kidnapping economy, with ransom payments increasingly concentrated in the hands of a single armed group rather than being spread across many criminal actors.

Two large abductions drove most of the total, according to the report: the kidnapping of 416 people in Ngoshe, Borno State, and the abduction of 315 pupils and staff from St Mary's School in Papiri, Niger State. Together, those cases accounted for about N7 billion of the ransom paid. The report also says the North continued to account for the vast majority of kidnappings, with Zamfara, Sokoto, Borno and Niger among the most affected areas.

SBM Intelligence said the pattern shows that kidnapping is not only a policing problem but also a financing channel for insurgent violence. It called for measures that target ransom flows and the conditions that sustain armed groups. The figures should be treated as the report's estimates, based on incidents it monitored, rather than independently verified totals for every case nationwide.