Toyosi Akerele-Ogunsiji
For over a decade now, Nigeria’s insecurity crisis has evolved from being a sporadic law-and-order challenge to a deeply entrenched business model. As someone who chaired social intervention programmes for the Victims of Terrorism Support Fund in Benue and Taraba States between 2021 and 2024 and led the VSF COVID-19 Intervention Programmes, I have seen first-hand the human cost, the institutional failures and the ripple effects on our communities, governance and economy. This is not just about banditry: this is a national emergency that threatens our very prospects to become a stable and economically powerful nation.
In the latest wave of horror in the past week, gunmen stormed Government Girls Comprehensive Secondary School, Maga, Kebbi State, kidnapping schoolgirls and killing the school’s vice principal as he tried to protect his students. In Papiri, Niger State, terrorists invaded St. Mary’s Catholic School, abducting students and teachers in the early hours of the morning, dragging terrified children through the bush into uncertainty.
In Eruku, Kwara State, attackers descended on a church service, killing three worshippers and abducting between 30 and 35 congregants, including the pastor, before demanding millions of naira ransoms per victim.
And in Ijebu-Ode, Ogun State, gunmen raided a quarry site, kidnapping workers, who remain missing as their families negotiate with faceless criminals. These are not isolated incidents, they form a pattern of organized criminality, not even always ideologically motivated, but economically driven. This system rewards criminal groups and entrenches their operations. Breaking this cycle isn’t only about arresting perpetrators it requires dismantling the financial infrastructure that makes kidnapping profitable.
If we fail to confront this crisis seriously, we risk entrenching a brutal parallel economy, one where the business of abduction becomes normalised, and our citizens remain hostages in more than one sense. We mourn the dead. We pray for the safe return of every abducted girl, boy, woman, teacher, worker and worshipper across these states. We hold their families in our hearts as they sit in the agony of waiting. No nation hoping for sustainable progress can afford to treat the kidnapping of its children and youth as a routine news cycle. The future of any country lies in its young people, its students, its innovators, its future workers and its prospective leaders. When criminals repeatedly target schools, churches and workspaces, they are not just attacking individuals; they are attacking Nigeria’s next generation and sabotaging the country’s long-term aspirations.
These recent attacks are not random events. They represent a pattern I have observed closely in my work across Benue and Taraba States and in my 10year service as a Member of the Presidential Committee on the Victims of Terrorism Support Fund working in the BAY states of Borno, Yobe and Adamawa which have sadly, been most hard-hitten in this prolonged insecurity crisis for as long as we can remember. I saw how entire communities were trapped in cycles of fear, how families depleted lifetime savings to pay ransoms and how the psychological wounds often linger long after victims are released. The kidnapping crisis is no longer a fringe matter, it has evolved into a sophisticated, illicit industry, one that threatens our national security, economic stability and global competitiveness.
Data and the anatomy of the crisis paint a stark picture. Between July 2024 and June 2025, Nigeria recorded 4,722 abductions and paid over N2.57 billion in ransoms. Research from the National Bureau of Statistics estimates that Nigerians paid N2.23 trillion in ransom within a single year. Bandits and terror groups are no longer merely opportunistic; they are operating a parallel economy, complete with financiers, informants, logistics networks and weapons suppliers. The audacity with which these criminals strike, sometimes in broad daylight raises urgent and uncomfortable questions: Where are they getting their weapons? How are their supply chains structured? What financial networks allow them to move freely, demand billion-naira ransoms and then vanish without a trace? This is not just banditry, it suggests a highly organized infrastructure, possibly enabled by weak intelligence, porous borders and latent institutional capture.
Our Security agencies must confront not just the foot soldiers, but the financiers, logisticians and arms suppliers behind these groups. In a booming illicit economy, kidnapping is now, in effect, an illicit but thriving economic circuit. The sums of money being demanded and often paid are no longer token gestures but substantial, organised demands.
The kidnapping economy affects far more than the families of victims. It affects every Nigerian. Businesses in Abuja reported a 33% drop in revenue due to insecurity. Many establishments now close before sunset, transport costs have surged, and insurance premiums for assets and personnel have skyrocketed.
Investors, domestic and foreign, calculate risk above sentiment. A nation cannot become an economic or innovation powerhouse if its workforce cannot commute safely, if its children cannot attend school without fear and if its entrepreneurs operate under constant threat of extortion.
Beyond the economic impact, the human cost is incalculable. In the communities we worked with in Benue and Taraba, children who survived abductions struggled to sleep; farmers abandoned fertile land; markets thinned out; daily life became a negotiation with danger. Security officers deployed to these areas often lacked real-time intelligence, actionable data or the technology needed to track perpetrators across forests and ungoverned spaces. These gaps create an enabling environment for criminals who are increasingly organized, emboldened and financially motivated.
This is why we must transition from reactive interventions to a proactive, intelligence-driven strategy. With my doctoral research focused on the assessment of artificial intelligence in Nigeria’s national and economic security, I believe strongly that the country can defeat this menace, but only with a modern, data-anchored, multi-stakeholder approach. AI-driven surveillance tools, geospatial mapping, satellite imagery, predictive analytics and ransom-flow tracing technologies can provide security agencies with the precision needed to map likely hideouts and monitor movement in real-time to prevent attacks and dismantle criminal networks. But technology alone is not enough. Human intelligence [HUMINT] remains indispensable and informant networks must be restructured, protected and fairly compensated to ensure credible, actionable information.
Financial disruption must become central to Nigeria’s anti- kidnapping framework. These groups thrive because ransom payments flow through unmonitored channels. A specialised inter-agency unit equipped with AI-enhanced financial tracking should be established to follow money trails, freeze related bank accounts and identify collaborators who facilitate these transactions. This must be complemented by community-level interventions that include youth employment and digital skills development programs vocational training and educational investments in regions where criminal groups recruit by taking advantage of poverty, hopelessness and lack of opportunity.
There is also an urgent need to integrate trained and equipped local community guards more effectively into the national security architecture. In many rural areas, they are the first responders, but they lack training, institutional support and technological reinforcement. A coordinated community-state security model, built on trust and accountability, can significantly improve early warning systems and local resilience.
This moment also calls for decisive leadership. The President and Commander in Chief of the armed forces, Service Chiefs, state governors, traditional rulers, religious leaders, the private sector and the international community must align behind a unified strategy and multisectoral response that treats kidnapping not as isolated banditry but as a national economic threat. Security is foundational to national development.
Innovation cannot thrive where students are afraid to attend school. Investors do not commit capital in places where personnel risk abduction. Human development collapses where children are stolen and women are targeted.
Nigeria must reclaim its future by protecting its people, especially its young. The kidnapping of schoolgirls in Kebbi, the abduction of hundreds of students in Niger, the seizure of workers in Ijebu-Ode, and the assault on worshippers in Eruku are not merely tragedies, they are alarms. Loud ones. And we neglect them at our peril.
Nigeria cannot continue to see its children become bargaining chips. Our schools should be sanctuaries of learning, not targets for ransom gangs. Worship places must be havens of peace, not hunting grounds.
This is a national emergency but also a moment of choice. With data-driven strategies, social investments and relentless political will, we can choose to dismantle this illicit economy, invest in protection and restore hope. We must immediately act now with clarity, compassion and conviction.
Violence will not define Nigeria’s Future.
• Akerele-Ogunsiji is an Artificial Intelligence for Development Leader & Edtech Social Entrepreneur who wrote from Lagos.
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