The Nigerian Senate has enacted a bill that mandates at least 15 years in prison for paying a ransom to liberate a kidnapped person, as well as making kidnapping punishable by death in circumstances when the victim dies.
Making ransom payment criminal by lengthy prison sentences, according to Opeyemi Bamidele, head of the Senate’s justice, human rights, and legal committee, would “discourage the escalating spate of kidnapping and abduction for ransom in Nigeria, which is swiftly spreading across the country.”
The bill, which changes Nigeria’s terrorism statute, calls for the death penalty for convicted kidnappers in cases when the abduction results in the death of a victim, as well as life imprisonment in other circumstances.
Armed gangs operating primarily in Nigeria’s northeastern and north-central states have used kidnappings for ransom to terrorise students, peasants, and highway motorists for more than a decade.
Thousands of people have also died as a result of their actions.
The government of President Muhammadu Buhari has already designated the armed kidnapping gangs, known locally as “bandits,” as terrorists this year – but the kidnappings, which have become nearly everyday occurrences, have not stopped.
In at least five distinct occurrences between December 2020 and March 2021, bands of robbers kidnapped around 760 children from boarding schools and other educational establishments across northern Nigeria.
The kidnapping of more than 300 boys from their boarding school in Kankara, in northern Katsina state, in December 2020 brought up memories of Boko Haram’s 2014 abduction of 276 schoolgirls in the northeastern town of Chibok, which drew international condemnation.
After six days, the youngsters were released, although the government claimed that a ransom had been paid.
According to a research by SB Morgen (SBM) Intelligence, a Lagos-based political risk analysis organisation, at least $18.34 million was paid to kidnappers as ransom – largely by families and the government – between June 2011 and March 2020.
Before being delivered to the president for signature, the Senate bill will be considered in the House of Representatives.
