Underground economy

 It is official: ransom payment for kidnapped persons in Nigeria is big business. Some N2.23trillion was paid out as ransom money over 12 months between May 2023 and April 2024, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has revealed.

The bureau, which is the nation’s official statistician, said there was an estimated 51.89million crime incidents recorded across Nigerian households in the period under review. In the Crime Experience and Security Perception Survey report recently published on its website, the NBS said the Northwest geopolitical zone had the highest incidence of crime at 14.4million cases reported, followed by the Northcentral zone with 8.8million incidents reported. Conversely, the notoriety of the Southeast zone for insurrectionist violence wasn’t as bad as it seemed, apparently, because the zone reported the least incidence of crime with 6.18million cases. The survey further showed that rural areas experienced more of crime attacks than urban areas, with 26.53million incidents reported in rural households as against 25.36million incidents in urban areas.

Of households affected by kidnapping incidents, 65 percent were forced to pay ransom to secure the release of their loved ones. The average amount paid as ransom for a kidnapped relation was N2,67million, totalling to an estimated N2.23trillion ransom payment within the reference period, the NBS report stated.

It might help to properly figure out the stated volume of ransom payment by juxtaposing it with transactions in the official economy. The N2.23trillion that the statistical bureau estimated kidnappers collected in 12 months is way bigger than the N1.97trillion the Lagos State Government targets as Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) to partly finance its proposed N3trillion 2025 budget. The estimated ransom payment is nearly half of the N4.91trillion projected for defence and security spending in the N49.7trillion 2025 federal appropriation bill that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu presented to the National Assembly (NASS) last week. 

We can only darkly imagine what that volume of cash in the hands of criminals was applied to by them in further hazarding the safety of Nigerians. That is not to mention the motivation to further kidnappings such bountiful yield must have constituted to kidnappers. But one thing is clear: it was a thriving underground economy that could have contributed substantially to the gross domestic product (GDP) in the conventional economy were those proceeds taxable.

The statistical bureau said in its report that many victims cited lack of confidence in law enforcement and a belief that police intervention would not lead to meaningful action as major reasons for not reporting their experiences. Amidst the widespread nature of crime, public perception of safety was low as the survey found that 9.6 percent of Nigerians believed they were at risk of becoming victims of crime within the next 12 months. The fear of crime was higher in rural areas where 13 percent of the population felt vulnerable, compared with seven percent in urban areas.

The report also impugned the effectiveness of security agencies, particularly the police, in responding to emergencies. According to the NBS, 33.1 percent of Nigerians reported that security agencies responded to emergency calls within 30 minutes. The bureau as well said approximately four out of 10 households interacted with state or local security forces during the survey period, with half of such households contacting the police. Satisfaction with police responses was however low, especially in cases of livestock and crop theft where 42.9 percent and 42.4 percent of victims respectively expressed satisfaction. In many rural areas, local vigilance groups were seen as more reliable providers of security.

“ Ransom payment: We can only darkly imagine what that volume of cash in the hands of criminals was applied to in further hazarding the safety of Nigerians”

Late last week, the statistical bureau reported a cyber-attack on its website. In a post on its X handle, the bureau said: “This is to inform the public that the NBS website has been hacked and we are working to recover it. Please disregard any message or report posted until the website is fully restored.” The bureau, however, did not disown the crime survey report earlier published or suggest it was unofficially made public. There were subsequent online reports alleging that the statistical bureau’s chief executive officer got into hot water with security high echelons over the crime survey report that was considered embarrassing to government, and that the NBS website was shut down and not hacked as claimed. Let’s be clear that those reports weren’t confirmed. But it would be tragic if allegations of a crackdown on the bureau were true because the survey report – coming from the source it came – should rather offer helpful insight into security architecture that could be devised by managers of the security establishment rather than be viewed from the narrow prism of its fleeting implication for government image.

Ransom payment to criminal elements has been a tough choice that often confronted relations of kidnapped victims, but the security establishment always refused to acknowledge it was happening. What the statistical bureau report did was to highlight the reality and magnitude of the trend. Much as it wasn’t openly acknowledged, the trend riled governing authorities, with frantic attempts made in the past to rein it in.

In April 2022, the Senate chamber of the ninth NASS passed a bill imposing a jail term of at least 15 years for payment of ransom to free someone who has been kidnapped. The bill also made kidnapping punishable by death in the event that the victim dies in the encounter, with life imprisonment prescribed in other events. Arguing for the bill, then chairman of the judiciary, human rights and legal committee of the red chamber (now Senate Leader), Senator Opeyemi Bamidele, said making ransom payment punishable with a lengthy jail sentence would “discourage the rising spate of kidnapping and abduction for ransom in Nigeria.” The bill, which was to amend the nation’s terrorism law, never got to secure presidential assent because the House of Representatives did not get done with its concurrence as statutorily required. 

On the heels of the Senate’s passage of the bill, however, there was a lively national debate as to whether it made sense to penalise someone who was compelled to pay ransom for freedom of his kidnapped relation when you did not prevent the kidnap from happening in the first place. The survey report by NBS underscores the unwisdom of paying ransom to criminals, because it is a self-inducing option that encourages further kidnap for ransom when a demand for ransom is met. But the challenge is more to the security establishment to prevent citizens being put on the tough spot of submitting to ransom demand by criminals.

One of the most sensational cases of kidnap and ransom payment in recent history was that of the Al-Kadriyar sisters early this year. Mansoor Al-Kadriyar, a Federal Capital Territory (FCT) resident, was abducted by bandits in his family home in Bwari Area Council early in January, along with his five daughters and their cousin, a daughter to Mansoor’s brother who got killed in the kidnap operation. Two days later, Mansoor was let off by the bandits to go raise N60million for the release of the girls. One of the abducted sisters was Nabeeha, a 400-level Biological Science student of Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria, who on 12th January was killed by the kidnappers to press home their death threat against the remaining five girls if the ransom demand was not hurriedly met. Nabeeha’s five sisters who remained in captivity included Najeebah, a 500-level Quantity Surveying student. A relation of the Al-Kadriyars made their predicament known on social media, and a crowdfunding initiative hashtagged #Najeebaandhersisters was launched by sympathisers. The highpoint of the crowdfunding drive was the disclosure by immediate past Communications and Digital Economy Minister Isa Pantami that a friend of his had volunteered N50million to make up the N60million ransom being demanded by the bandits for the release of the remaining Al-Kadriyar sisters. Pantami, in a post on his verified X handle, tweeted that while he personally was not in support of paying ransom to criminals, he’s had to solicit funds for the release of the remaining sisters in view of the fate that befell Nabeeha.

Government did tackle the kidnapping wave in the FCT and elsewhere, and has largely gotten an upper hand. But Pantami, as ex-minister, initiated a policy of linking Subscriber Identification Module (SIM) cards with holders’ National Identity Number (NIN) – a policy that has so far failed to hamstring kidnappers from using phone lines to demand ransom payment, among other illicit uses. The NBS crime survey report should be a wake-up call to revisit this policy and make it work to billing. One question the survey report didn’t answer is: what happened to the kidnappers who picked up so much ransom money?