N655 million paid as ransom money in Nigeria’s new gold rush?
By Kene Obiezu, contributor to USAfricaonline.com
As leadership continues to fail in Nigeria, foisting impossible difficulties on a beleaguered country, those who chew up chaos, those who thrive on uncertainty and disorder, have continued to reinvent themselves and mop up their tactics to rush headlong into what has now become Nigeria`s thriving market of oddities, criminalities and illegalities.
It explains the frenetic increase in the activities of non-state actors all over the country. It unmistakably explains why violent crimes are on the rise all over the country. Above all, it explains why life in a once peaceful and prosperous country has suddenly become a cut-throat rat race.
If the rain now falling on Nigeria is pouring, the clouds did indeed pile up a long time ago and for a long time.
According to a recently published report by SBM titled “The Economics of Nigeria`s Kidnap Industry” about N653.7 million was paid as ransom in Nigeria between July 2021 and June 2022.
By the report, more than 500 incidents of kidnapping were recorded and 3,420 people were abducted across Nigeria, with 564 others killed in violence associated with abductions in the one-year period.
The report also detailed that N6.531 billion ($9.9 million) was demanded in ransom in the period considered of which only N653.7 million ($1.2 million) was paid.
These figures were compiled without taking into consideration the humongous amounts paid as ransom (at least N100 million each) by the victims of the AK9 train attack of March 28,2022 that continue to be released in batches.
A breakdown of the harrowing scourge that kidnapping has become by region shows that in the one-year period, the North-west recorded a total of 177 incidents of kidnapping with 2,199 persons kidnapped and 331 casualties; the North-east recorded 29 incidents with 54 persons kidnapped and 17 casualties; the South-west had 54 incidents with 199 persons kidnapped and 37 casualties; the South-south recorded 67 incidents of kidnapping with 194 persons kidnapped and 37 casualties ; the North-central had 108 incidents of kidnapped with 719 persons kidnapped and 106 casualties, and the South-east had a total of 62 kidnapping incidents with a total of 112 persons kidnapped and 51 casualties.
Amidst Nigeria`s widely publicized paucity of data, these figures are extremely distressing to say the least. More than anything, they show how Nigeria has become a favourite stomping ground for those whose business it is to pick off others, hold them hostage and cause them to part with huge sums of money, that is if they do not part with their lives in the process.
That every day, news coming out of Nigeria is laden with the rampage of kidnappers continues to reduce Nigeria to a figure of fun both locally and internationally.
What obtains is a situation where non-state actors have run amok and the state is struggling to contain them. If Nigeria`s security forces have been putting in a decent shift to stem the tide of terrorist activities in the country, their efforts have been undermined by the systemic rot embedded in Nigeria`s security architecture.
If for many years there were wild fears that Nigeria would not be ready to cope with relentless assaults from the enemies of the country, those fears are now being harshly realized, and the price Nigerians are paying is indeed a steep one.
Kidnapping in Nigeria is not at all an isolated crime. It is just one of a number of violent crimes convulsing Nigeria at the moment. And unless Nigeria mobilizes to meet it headlong as a way of ridding the country of dangerous crimes and criminals, it will continue to rake out figures that mock the Giant of Africa. Follow him @kenobiezu
