A single faction of Boko Haram collected 90% of all ransom money paid to kidnappers across Nigeria between July 2025 and June 2026, according to a new report by SBM Intelligence, in a finding that suggests the country’s kidnap-for-ransom crisis has been effectively captured by a designated terrorist organisation.
The report, titled The Capture of Nigeria’s Kidnap Economy, found that of ₦7.779 billion ($5.78 million) paid in ransom nationwide during the period, the Jama’atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’awati Wal-Jihad (JAS) faction of Boko Haram and its allied cells took ₦7.0015 billion from just eight recorded incidents.
“Attributing each ransom to the actor named in its reporting, the JAS faction and its allied cells account for N7.0 billion of the N7.779 billion paid around the country, a staggering 90% of all ransom collected in Nigeria this year, from just a handful of incidents,” the report stated.
By contrast, the entire diffuse population of bandits and unaffiliated kidnappers, responsible for 146 separate cases, collected only ₦719.4 million between them, or 9.2% of the national total.
Two abductions, ₦7 billion
SBM Intelligence traced almost the entire national ransom bill to two mass abductions carried out months apart.
In April 2026, a faction reportedly commanded by one Ali Ngulde abducted 416 people from Ngoshe in Gwoza, Borno State, issuing a 72-hour ultimatum for ₦5 billion. The report said the full amount was paid, the largest single ransom SBM has ever recorded.
Months earlier, in November 2025, gunmen abducted 315 pupils and staff from St Mary’s School in Papiri, Niger State, in what the report called “one of the worst mass abductions in the country’s history.” Multiple intelligence sources cited in the report put the ransom paid at ₦2 billion.
“Together, these two incidents account for N7 billion and explain almost the entire national ransom bill,” the report said.
A “bumper harvest” for terrorism
The report described the shift as a structural change in how Nigeria’s kidnap industry now functions, warning that a “designated terrorist organisation is no longer merely participating in the kidnap economy; in ransom terms, it is the kidnap economy.”
It drew a sharp contrast between the economics of ideologically-driven mass abduction and everyday criminal kidnapping. Bandits and unaffiliated kidnappers, the report found, demanded ₦13.492 billion across 146 cases but collected only 5.3% of it. JAS, meanwhile, demanded ₦9.205 billion and collected 76.1% of what it asked for.
“Measured by what was demanded, the kidnap economy is a crime of the many. Measured by what was actually paid, it is dominated by a single terrorist organisation,” the report said.
It added that this concentration carries strategic consequences beyond the immediate cash figures: “For a designated terrorist organisation to collect N7 billion in a single year is hardly the criminal-justice failure that it may appear to be, because, on the contrary, it is a material transfer of resources to an insurgency, one that buys weapons, pays fighters and sustains the very campaign that produces the next round of abductions.”
A record-setting demand
The report noted that 2026 marked the first year in the life of the annual series that the highest amount demanded in a single incident and the highest amount actually paid were identical, the ₦5 billion Ngoshe ransom.
“In every prior year, a wide gulf separated the boldest demand from the largest settlement; and the fact that the two now coincide is the clearest possible signal of a counterparty with the leverage to be paid exactly what it asks,” the report said, attributing that leverage to a group “holding hundreds of hostages, and willing to kill.”
Inversion of the naira-dollar trend
The report also flagged a break from the pattern of recent years, in which ransom sums in naira climbed while their dollar value stagnated due to currency devaluation.
In 2026, the naira strengthened even as the ransom total rose, meaning the dollar value of ransom paid, approximately $5.7 million, more than tripled from the previous cycle’s $1.66 million.
Call for action on financial flows
SBM Intelligence argued that the concentration of ransom proceeds in the hands of a single armed group changes the calculus for how the crisis should be addressed, calling for action to disrupt the financing rather than treat kidnapping purely as a policing problem.
“Breaking this cycle demands two actions: disrupting the financial flows that now underwrite insurgency, and addressing the economic desperation that supplies its foot soldiers,” the report concluded. “Without a coordinated strategy that targets both the profitability of the crime and its roots, Nigeria risks entrencing kidnapping not merely as a criminal industry but as a funding mechanism for the very groups that most threaten its stability.”
(SaharaReporters)
