The story so far: Battling its worst economic crisis in years, Nigeria is also facing serious security challenges amid a resurgence of kidnappings in its troubled northern region. Over 600 people, including at least 300 schoolchildren, have been kidnapped in the northeastern and northwestern parts of Africa’s most populous nation since the end of February.

The recent surge in abductions after a brief period of relative calm has refocused international attention on the country’s rapidly deteriorating security situation, bringing back to mind the 2014 abductions when Boko Haram insurgents kidnapped 276 girls from a school in Chibok town of Borno State in northeastern Nigeria.

Since the abduction of the Chibok girls, mass kidnappings have been a recurring nightmare, with nearly 1,500 students abducted from schools in 17 different incidents over the past decade. Over 4,000 people have been reportedly kidnapped since May last year after President Bola Tinubu took office. Despite extremist groups and local armed gangs continuing to rely on kidnappings for political and financial gains, the President remains committed to a no-ransom policy.

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The recent resurgence: what happened?

Reports of a mass abduction first emerged from a remote area in northeastern Borno earlier this year. On February 29, suspected Boko Haram militants abducted at least 200 internally displaced people, mostly women and children, while they were gathering firewood outside their camps, in the Ngala Local Government Area. The United Nations said victims were ambushed near the border with Chad and taken hostage.

In Borno, an estimated 1.9 million out of a total of 3.6 million displaced individuals (as of 2022) live in displacement camps, as per the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC). They often leave their camps to search for food and firewood due to limited aid.

Similar incidents were reported from the northwestern region in quick succession. On March 7, 287 students were kidnapped from a government school in the Chikun area of Kuriga town in Kaduna State. According to reports, hundreds of gunmen arrived on motorcycles and surrounded the school just as classes were about to start. The attackers abducted children and a few staff members, demanding one billion naira (about US $600,000) for their release.

Around 48 hours later, assailants attacked a boarding school in Sokoto State at around 1 a.m., abducting 15 children from the hostel as they slept. The gunmen fled before security forces could arrive.

Tragedy struck the northern region again on March 11. Sixty-one people were kidnapped from a remote village in Kaduna. Locals told Reuters that armed men attacked the Buda community around midnight, firing sporadically. Nearly 100 others were abducted by gunmen in two attacks in Kaduna between March 16 and March 17.

The spate of kidnappings drew condemnation from human rights activists, with the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk saying that he was “appalled” by the recurrent mass abductions. “Children have been abducted from schools and women taken while searching for firewood. Such horrors must not become normalised,” Türk said. He called for perpetrators to be identified and brought to account “as a first step towards reining in the impunity that feeds these attacks and abductions.”

Nigeria last experienced a surge in targeted attacks on educational institutions in 2021. Approximately 150 students were kidnapped by armed men in four months. Although most were eventually released, at least five were killed.

The 2014 kidnapping of girls from their dormitory in Chibok continues to be one of the worst crimes committed in recent years.The incident sent shockwaves and sparked the viral #BringBackOurGirls campaign on social media.  Of the 276 abducted, several were forced to marry and endure physical and psychological abuse. A decade later, 98 are still missing.

The tactic has since been adopted by criminal gangs seeking ransom.

Who’s behind mass abductions?

At the time of the first attack in February, Boko Haram emerged as the primary suspect, given its track record of violence in Nigeria. The group has been engaged in a prolonged insurgency, causing widespread devastation and displacement. As noted earlier, kidnapping has been a key component of their terror tactics.

However, with no organisation claiming responsibility for the recent abductions and assaults, there are suspicions that local armed gangs in these regions, commonly referred to as bandits, might be behind the incidents.

Relatively new actors in the turbulent security landscape, bandits are believed to be an outcome of years of conflict over land and water between nomadic herdsmen and farming communities. . While disputes earlier centred around such basic needs, bandits have evolved into organised armed groups in recent times. Mainly present in the northwestern and central regions of the country, they have taken to looting, kidnapping for ransom, and forcibly seizing control of valuable assets like gold mines and farmlands.

The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, which analyses political violence and protests worldwide, said in a recent report that while the February kidnapping might be the doing of violent extremist organisations active in the northeast, bandits could be responsible for the three other abduction incidents in March.

What’s fuelling the kidnapping ‘epidemic’?

The rise of kidnapping as a ‘lucrative’ industry in Nigeria has stemmed from a combination of economic, security, and political issues, including a struggling economy, high unemployment rates, surging inflation, increasing food insecurity, and instability in the delta region. Ransom payments have become the primary motivation behind kidnapping incidents, as successive governments have struggled to tackle these complex security challenges.

Africa-focused consulting company SBM Intelligence says Nigeria faces security crises across all six geopolitical zones, including threats from Boko Haram, bandit groups, criminal youth gangs, sea piracy, and agitation by armed separatists. “The country’s security threats vary and overlap. The Boko Haram insurgency is expanding westwards, and the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra’s agitation is becoming more dangerous,” it adds.

Nigeria’s economic challenges have worsened due to monetary policies which caused the currency to plummet against the dollar, leading to widespread protests and increased desperation. This, in turn, drives youth to join armed gangs. The ransom menace has escalated in recent years, with armed gangs controlling significant territories and amassing a formidable arsenal of weapons, even capable of downing military planes. These gangs have seized control of mining sites and farmlands, forcing rural residents into labour and threatening the country’s food security by controlling vital agricultural areas.

As per former federal lawmaker Shehu Sani, bandits target schoolchildren because they know “it will evoke public sympathy for the pupils, and pressure will be mounted on the government to bow to their demands.”

How is the Nigerian government handling the situation?

While government security forces are working to obtain the safe release of the victims, President Bola Tinubu has rejected the idea of paying ransom for nearly 600 people abducted in separate incidents this month. Nigeria’s information minister Mohammed Idris said the President has directed troops to urgently secure the release of hostages without paying a dime for ransom. “The President has directed that security agencies must as a matter of urgency ensure that these children and all those who have been kidnapped are brought back to safety and also in the process ensure that not a dime is paid for ransom,” the Minister said.

Notably, in Nigeria, anyone found paying a ransom to free a hostage could face at least 15 years in jail. This law was enacted in 2022 due to the increasing prevalence of kidnappings for ransom in the region.

Security operations, however, are expected to last months as government forces navigate the remote forest areas where the victims are being held. Activists say the government must initiate dialogue with the bandits to resolve the ongoing conflict, expressing concerns over the potential consequences of using force.

“The Nigerian authorities should seek the safe release of those kidnapped, put in place adequate measures to prevent more kidnappings, particularly of vulnerable students, and hold perpetrators to account,” the Human Rights Watch has said.

Nigerians are facing one of the West African nation’s worst economic crises in years triggered by surging inflation, the result of monetary policies that have pushed the currency to an all-time low against the dollar. The situation has provoked anger and protests across the country.

The latest government statistics released Thursday showed the inflation rate in January rose to 29.9%, its highest since 1996, mainly driven by food and non-alcoholic beverages. Nigeria’s currency, the naira, further plummeted to 1,524 to $1 on Friday, reflecting a 230% loss of value in the last year.

“My family is now living one day at a time (and) trusting God,” said trader Idris Ahmed, whose sales at a clothing store in Nigeria’s capital of Abuja have declined from an average of $46 daily to $16.

The plummeting currency worsens an already bad situation, further eroding incomes and savings. It squeezes millions of Nigerians already struggling with hardship due to government reforms including the removal of gas subsidies that resulted in gas prices tripling.

Nigeria’s economy

With a population of more than 210 million people, Nigeria is not just Africa’s most populous country but also the continent’s largest economy. Its gross domestic product is driven mainly by services such as information technology and banking, followed by manufacturing and processing businesses and then agriculture.

The challenge is that the economy is far from sufficient for Nigeria’s booming population, relying heavily on imports to meet the daily needs of its citizens from cars to cutlery. So it is easily affected by external shocks such as the parallel foreign exchange market that determines the price of goods and services.

Nigeria’s economy is heavily dependent on crude oil, its largest foreign exchange earner. When crude prices plunged in 2014, authorities used its scarce foreign reserves to try to stabilise the naira amid multiple exchange rates. The government also shut down the land borders to encourage local production and limited access to the dollar for importers of certain items.

The measures, however, further destabilised the naira by facilitating a booming parallel market for the dollar. Crude oil sales that boost foreign exchange earnings have also dropped because of chronic theft and pipeline vandalism.

Monetary reforms implementation

Shortly after taking the reins of power in May last year, President Bola Tinubu took bold steps to fix the ailing economy and attract investors. He announced the end of costly decadeslong gas subsidies, which the government said were no longer sustainable. Meanwhile, the country’s multiple exchange rates were unified to allow market forces to determine the rate of the local naira against the dollar, which in effect devalued the currency.

Analysts say there were no adequate measures to contain the shocks that were bound to come as a result of reforms including the provision of a subsidized transportation system and an immediate increase in wages.

So the more than 200% increase in gas prices caused by the end of the gas subsidy started to have a knock-on effect on everything else, especially because locals rely heavily on gas-powered generators to light their households and run their businesses.

Why naira is plummeting

Under the previous leadership of the Central Bank of Nigeria, policymakers tightly controlled the rate of the naira against the dollar, thereby forcing individuals and businesses in need of dollars to head to the black market, where the currency was trading at a much lower rate.

There was also a huge backlog of accumulated foreign exchange demand on the official market — estimated to be $7 billion — due in part to limited dollar flows as foreign investments into Nigeria and the country’s sale of crude oil have declined.

Authorities said a unified exchange rate would mean easier access to the dollar, thereby encouraging foreign investors and stabilising the naira. But that has yet to happen because inflows have been poor. Instead, the naira has further weakened as it continues to depreciate against the dollar.

What authorities are doing

CBN Gov Olayemi Cardoso has said the bank has cleared $2.5 billion of the foreign exchange backlog out of the $7 billion that had been outstanding. The bank, however, found that $2.4 billion of that backlog were false claims that it would not clear, Cardoso said, leaving a balance of about $2.2 billion, which he said will be cleared “soon.”

Tinubu, meanwhile, has directed the release of food items such as cereals from government reserves among other palliatives to help cushion the effect of the hardship. The government has also said it plans to set up a commodity board to help regulate the soaring prices of goods and services.

On Thursday, the Nigerian leader met with state governors to deliberate on the economic crisis, part of which he blamed on the large-scale hoarding of food in some warehouses.

“We must ensure that speculators, hoarders and rent seekers are not allowed to sabotage our efforts in ensuring the wide availability of food to all Nigerians,” Tinubu said.

By Friday morning, local media were reporting that stores were being sealed for hoarding and charging unfair prices.

How Nigerians are coping

The situation is at its worst in conflict zones in northern Nigeria, where farming communities are no longer able to cultivate what they eat as they are forced to flee violence. Pockets of protests have broken out in past weeks but security forces have been quick to impede them, even making arrests in some cases.

In the economic hub of Lagos and other major cities, there are fewer cars and more legs on the roads as commuters are forced to trek to work. The prices of everything from food to household items increase daily.

“Even to eat now is a problem,” said Ahmed in Abuja. “But what can we do?”