On 21 August, armed men entered a mosque in Dekara village in Niger State while Friday prayers were underway. At around the same time, nearby settlements were also raided. A few days later, a video circulated on social media showing hundreds of people, including women, children and elderly people, sitting on the ground in a wooded area. One of the armed men addressed their families, asking them to identify their relatives in the footage.

The exact number of people abducted remains unclear. Local residents say the figure is around 600. At least 30 peoplewere killed in the aftermath of the attack, while around 2,000 others crossed the border into Benin. The Nigerian government launched a large-scale rescue operation involving the military, police and intelligence services.

New figures released immediately after the incident showed that what happened in Dekara was far from exceptional. Between July 2025 and June 2026, 7,825 people were kidnapped in Nigeria. That represents a 66 percent increase compared with the previous period. During the same period, at least 1,142 people were killed, while the confirmed amount of ransom paid by families to kidnappers reached 7.78 billion naira, or approximately $5.8 million.

At first glance, this looks like a severe security problem. A closer look reveals something else. Kidnapping in Nigeria is moving beyond a fragmented activity in which individual criminals extort money and is turning into an economy with its own financing, bargaining system, target selection and expectation of recurring revenue.

The price of a human being is also determined through bargaining in this economy.

The economics of mass abduction

It is impossible to attribute all kidnappings in Nigeria to a single organization. In the northeast, Boko Haram and groups linked to ISIS remain active. In the northwest and central parts of the country, heavily armed criminal networks locally referred to as bandits attack villages, roads and schools. In some areas, the boundaries between these two worlds are becoming increasingly blurred.

In the past, kidnapping was often a more selective crime targeting a particular businessman, politician or wealthy family. Today, mass abductions are becoming increasingly prominent. According to data from the past year, around 80 percent of victims were taken in attacks carried out against groups of people.

The economic logic behind this is fairly straightforward. A single raid on a village or school can result in dozens, sometimes hundreds, of people being captured. Negotiations can then be conducted with the hostages’ families and communities. Even if the amount obtained from each individual remains relatively low, total revenue rises rapidly as the number of hostages increases.

The cost for the attackers is also relatively limited. An armed group enters a remote settlement where state presence is weak, takes people into forested areas and can hold them there for weeks or even months. Vast forests that security forces struggle to reach, poor roads and porous borders make this easier.

This is why a human being in Nigeria today has almost become a mobile financial asset. From the kidnappers’ perspective, a hostage’s family income, profession, place of residence or the fundraising capacity of their community can influence the course of negotiations.

The limits of the ransom ban

Nigeria faces an extremely difficult dilemma. Paying ransom is illegal. The logic is understandable. As long as money continues to be paid, kidnapping remains profitable, and every successful negotiation becomes a source of financing for the next attack.

Yet it is much harder to tell a mother or father whose child is being held in a forest not to pay because doing so finances the criminal economy.

Families often do not know when a rescue operation will begin or whether it will succeed. Hostages can be held for weeks under the threat of hunger, disease and violence.

In such circumstances, economic theory loses its meaning for a family. Selling a house, livestock, farmland or any other possession in an attempt to buy back the life of a loved one becomes understandable for many people.

When a family pays ransom and saves its child, it may have done what it considers the right thing. But when that money is converted into weapons, motorcycles, fuel, food or new recruits, the capital for the next kidnapping is created.

A government ban alone does not break this equation. When citizens are told not to pay, they expect to see a reliable rescue capacity in return.

When they do not see it, they are forced to choose between the law and a life.

In fact, this is one of the strongest features of the kidnapping economy. The state’s security deficit and the family’s desperation converge at the same point. Armed groups turn the gap between the two into money.

The costs beyond ransom

The reported $5.8 million in ransom payments may therefore be somewhat misleading. For a large economy such as Nigeria, with a population of more than 230 million, the figure may appear limited at first glance. Yet the real cost of the kidnapping economy is far greater than the amount that ends up in the attackers’ pockets.

Agriculture is one example. When farmers are afraid to go to their fields, production declines. When villagers move to safer areas, farmland is left unused. When truck drivers avoid certain routes, the cost of getting agricultural products to market increases.

The heavier costs appear in lost education, declining agricultural production, closed businesses and the erosion of public trust in the state. When the security vacuum persists for long periods, some armed groups can evolve into parallel authorities that control roads, determine movement in rural areas or collect money from local populations.

This is where the political dimension of the kidnapping economy begins.

When the state fails to protect its citizens, an armed group gains more than money.

It shrinks the space of the state.

Breaking the kidnapping market

The administration of Bola Tinubu has intensified security operations in recent months. The rescue of more than 300 hostages around Kainji Lake National Park in early August was one of the government’s largest single-day hostage rescue operations to date.

Kainji Lake National Park

There is now a market in Nigeria that makes kidnapping possible.

On one side, there is a pool of people who can be recruited into armed groups from environments shaped by poverty, unemployment and local conflicts. On the other, there are vast areas where state control is weak. Forests in which kidnapped people can be hidden for weeks, easily crossed state and national borders, the circulation of illegal weapons and intermediaries who carry ransom payments are all parts of this system.

Rescuing hostages will therefore not be enough. It is necessary to track the channels through which money moves, dismantle local informant networks, strengthen rural policing and intelligence capacity, secure roads and make it more difficult for armed groups to recruit new members.

Most important of all is public trust in the state.

Because the moment the state asks a family not to pay a ransom, it is in fact making a silent promise to rescue their loved one. When that promise cannot be fulfilled, the kidnappers’ bargaining power increases.

This is part of the problem Nigeria faces today. Armed groups make money by kidnapping people. Families sell what they own to get their loved ones back. The state, meanwhile, is trying both to prevent ransom payments and to rescue hostages.

Each of the hundreds of people sitting on the ground in the Dekara video is a mother, a child, a spouse or a father.

For the kidnappers, each one is a separate negotiation.

The real issue is not how many people have been kidnapped. It is why kidnapping a human being remains so profitable.