WHY THE NATION IS LOSING THE WAR AGAINST AN INDUSTRY WORTH BILLIONS
An Oblong Media Global Intelligence Strategic Security Assessment
By Hon. Chima Nnadi-Oforgu
There comes a point when a nation must stop describing a problem as a security challenge and begin calling it what it truly is.
Nigeria has reached that point with kidnapping.
What started decades ago as isolated criminal activity has now evolved into a sophisticated criminal economy, complete with supply chains, intelligence networks, financiers, informants, negotiators, money launderers, corrupt public officials, compromised security operatives and, ultimately, customers.
The customers are terrified Nigerian families.
The product is human freedom.
The currency is ransom.
And business is booming.
KIDNAPPING HAS BECOME A THRIVING INDUSTRY
The uncomfortable truth many Nigerians refuse to confront is that kidnapping is no longer merely a crime.
It is a profitable business model.
According to security reports and intelligence assessments, thousands of Nigerians are abducted annually, generating billions of naira in ransom payments. SBM Intelligence reported that between July 2024 and June 2025 alone, at least 4,722 people were kidnapped in 997 incidents, while confirmed ransom payments exceeded ₦2.56 billion. Numerous analysts believe the true figure is significantly higher because many payments are never reported.
Nigeria’s National Bureau of Statistics previously estimated that Nigerians paid approximately $1.42 billion in ransom payments within a single year, highlighting the enormous scale of the criminal enterprise.
When criminals repeatedly earn billions with little risk of capture, they do not see themselves as criminals.
They see themselves as entrepreneurs.
The result is predictable.
More kidnappings.
More victims.
More families plunged into debt.
More communities terrorised.
More schools abandoned.
THE CHIBOK LESSON NIGERIA NEVER LEARNED
The 2014 kidnapping of 276 schoolgirls from Government Girls Secondary School Chibok shocked the world.
Many expected that tragedy to become Nigeria’s turning point.
Instead, it became a template.
Since then, over 1,500 students have reportedly been abducted in school-related attacks across the country.
Between 2020 and 2025 alone, hundreds of students were kidnapped from schools in Katsina, Zamfara, Kaduna, Niger, Kebbi and other states.
Recent reports indicate that school kidnappings continue to spread into areas previously considered relatively safe. Armed gangs have increasingly targeted educational institutions because they understand a simple reality:
Children generate emotional pressure.
Emotional pressure generates ransom payments.
Ransom payments generate profits.
And profits attract imitators.
THE RANSOM DILEMMA
Every parent understands the instinct to save a child at any cost.
No father will calmly watch his daughter suffer in captivity.
No mother will calculate policy implications while her son is chained in a forest.
This is why kidnapping is so effective.
It weaponises parental love.
However, at a national level, a difficult question must be asked:
Can a country permanently defeat kidnapping while ransom remains guaranteed?
Every successful ransom payment sends a message to criminal groups:
“Repeat the process.”
Whether payments are made directly by families, communities, politicians, religious bodies, corporations or governments, the economic signal remains the same.
Kidnapping works.
FOLLOW THE MONEY
Perhaps the greatest weakness in Nigeria’s anti-kidnapping strategy is the failure to aggressively pursue ransom proceeds.
The Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit has repeatedly warned that kidnapping for ransom is no longer an isolated crime but a major source of funding for organised criminal and terrorist networks.
Financial intelligence experts have identified links between ransom payments, money laundering, arms trafficking, terrorism financing, drug trafficking and organised crime.
The question therefore becomes:
Who receives the money?
Where is it invested?
Who purchases properties with it?
Which public officials suddenly become wealthy?
Which security officers maintain suspicious lifestyles?
Which politicians possess unexplained assets?
The global anti-mafia model has long demonstrated that organised crime is best defeated not merely through arrests but through financial warfare.
Follow the money.
Freeze the assets.
Confiscate the wealth.
Destroy the incentive.
THE MOLE PROBLEM
One of the greatest suspicions among Nigerians is that many kidnappings succeed because criminals possess insider information.
Victims are often tracked with frightening precision.
Travel plans become known.
Security deployments become compromised.
Rescue operations become leaked.
Road movements become predictable.
This raises disturbing questions.
How many kidnappers have accomplices within government?
How many have accomplices within security agencies?
How many have accomplices within telecommunications companies?
How many have accomplices within local communities?
A nation cannot defeat criminal networks while protecting the infiltrators who enable them.
WHY NIGERIA MAY NEED A SPECIAL OPERATIONS COMMAND
Nigeria’s security architecture was not designed primarily for modern asymmetric kidnapping warfare.
Bandits operate in forests.
Terrorists move across state boundaries.
Kidnappers blend into communities.
Traditional policing often struggles against such fluid threats.
What Nigeria requires is a dedicated Special Operations Command consisting of:
Intelligence specialists
Counter-terror experts
Drone operators
Cyber intelligence analysts
Forest warfare specialists
Financial investigators
Electronic surveillance teams
Rapid response rescue units
Such a force must be insulated from political interference and subjected to the highest level of vetting.
THE FOREIGN MERCENARY OPTION
This proposal will be controversial.
But difficult times often require difficult conversations.
Several countries have successfully utilised foreign military contractors and specialised mercenary units to combat insurgencies and organised criminal networks.
Countries across Africa have at various times employed external military expertise when domestic capabilities proved inadequate.
The logic is straightforward.
A foreign force has:
No family ties to local criminals.
No tribal affiliations.
No political loyalties.
No local business interests.
No long standing corruption networks.
Most importantly, they bring fresh intelligence methodologies and independent operational capabilities.
This does not mean replacing Nigerian security forces.
It means complementing them.
Foreign specialists could help:
Train elite anti kidnapping units.
Conduct intelligence driven operations.
Build surveillance systems.
Establish counter infiltration procedures.
Vet security personnel.
Transfer modern rescue doctrines.
The objective would be knowledge transfer and network disruption.
Not permanent dependency.
ESTABLISH A NIGERIAN INTERNAL AFFAIRS COMMAND
Perhaps the most important reform of all is the creation of an entirely independent Internal Affairs and Public Integrity Command.
Its sole responsibility would be:
Investigating unexplained wealth.
Tracking illicit enrichment.
Monitoring public officers.
Monitoring security officers.
Conducting covert integrity tests.
Following suspicious financial flows.
Imagine if every director, permanent secretary, commissioner, military officer, police commander and agency head knew that an independent covert unit was constantly auditing their wealth.
Corruption would become substantially more difficult.
And many kidnapping networks would suddenly lose their protectors.
THE ELECTION QUESTION
Many Nigerians continue to believe that the next election will solve the country’s problems.
History suggests otherwise.
Changing politicians without changing institutions merely changes beneficiaries.
A compromised system can absorb new leaders while preserving old behaviours.
The real challenge is institutional reform.
A country cannot vote its way out of insecurity while retaining the same incentives, the same weaknesses, the same leakages and the same culture of impunity.
THE WAY FORWARD
Nigeria must stop treating kidnapping as isolated criminality.
It is an economic ecosystem.
The solution therefore requires economic disruption.
Follow ransom money aggressively.
Confiscate criminal assets.
Create an elite Special Operations Command.
Establish an independent Internal Affairs Command.
Deploy advanced surveillance technologies.
Strengthen border security.
Protect schools as strategic national assets.
Sever political protection networks.
Consider carefully structured foreign specialist assistance.
Make kidnapping financially unprofitable.
Until kidnapping becomes a losing business, it will remain a growing business.
And until Nigeria develops the political will to dismantle the ecosystem that sustains it, families will continue to pay the price, in fear, in debt, in trauma, and too often, in blood.
The tragedy is no longer that kidnappers exist.
The tragedy is that kidnapping has become one of the most successful industries in modern Nigeria.
By Hon.Chima Nnadi-Oforgu
Duruebube Uzii na Abosi
For Oblong Media Global Intelligence
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