What’s driving the latest student abductions in Nigeria?

The mass kidnappings in Nigeria’s northwest is attracting attention now because, unlike elsewhere, the perpetrators are well-organized criminal gangs and the number of victims has been dramatically large, says CFR’s John Campbell.

In the town of Kankara, around three hundred schoolboys were abducted in December. Days later, more than eighty students in Dandume were targeted in a failed kidnapping.

Both episodes were reminiscent of the 2014 kidnapping of close to three hundred schoolgirls in the northeastern town of Chibok which drew worldwide condemnation. (More than one hundred Chibok girls are still missing.)

Twitter@SaharaReportersDec 23

Campbell says kidnapping, which is highly profitable for criminal and jihadi groups, is especially attractive now in the face of a nationwide economic slowdown brought on by a decline in international oil prices and disruptions from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Explosive population growth has pushed up the prices of food, especially beef. Criminal gangs often rustle cattle as well as kidnap, as was the case at both Kankara and Dandume, he points out further.

The political landscape of Nigeria in
2020 indeed was chiotic, unstable, unenjoyable & uncertain marked by
unabated kidnappings, destruction of lives & properties by so called "Banditory while Security apparatuses became either helpless or tactically defeated,

— NWOGWUGWU IKECHUKWU SYLVANUS (@NwogwugwuS) December 30, 2020

Links between Boko Haram and criminal gangs?

Ties appear to be transactional and opportunistic, notes Campell, adding that bandit networks are involved in illegal weapons trafficking and on occasion supply Boko Haram.

“They sometimes sell those they kidnap to Boko Haram or carry out criminal operations at the group’s request. It’s possible that their foot soldiers overlap. But such groups are, in essence, criminal, while Boko Haram’s motives are ideological, religious, and political in nature (though the militant group readily resorts to criminal methods).”

Boko Haram expanding?

Cambell points out that Boko Haram has become a catchall label for a kaleidoscope of factions; the one led by Abubakar Shekau is the best known, but it is only one of several.

If Shekau was involved in the Kankara kidnapping, as he claims, “then his faction is indeed newly active in the northwest,” far from the Lake Chad Basin where it usually operates.

“But it remains too early to tell whether the abduction is a genuine reflection of a Boko Haram expansion into the area or if the jihadi group made an opportunistic claim for publicity.”

Aside from Boko Haram, other jihadi groups are already active in the northwest, sometimes operating in concert with bandit groups or on behalf of herders quarreling with farmers over land and water use, the CFR expert added.

Nigerian government’s response

At Dandume, Nigerian security services responded quickly, says Campbell, adding that while the federal government is taking credit for foiling the abduction, it was a local militia played a pivotal role.

In the case of Kankara, the state, not the federal government secured the release of the victims, likely by paying ransom, he says.

The constituency he abandoned is Nigeria, and daily bloodletting, kidnappings and banditry bear ample testimony to the national impact of the failure of President Buhari to govern well.

— #WhereIsDADIYATA? 🔴 (@m_malumfashi) December 30, 2020

On a national level, President Muhammadu Buhari’s government is being criticized for its failure to provide security to Nigerians—from Boko Haram and other jihadis in the north, from conflicts over land and water use in the Middle Belt, and from a low-level insurgency in the oil patch in the south.

“The nationwide crime wave, particularly abductions such as those in Kankara, saps public confidence in all levels of government.”

Like its predecessors, the Buhari government has responded to these security challenges by resorting to force, and Campbell posits that the current administration has “advanced no political initiative to address their social and economic drivers.”

“The Nigerian army’s strategy of fortifying bases has ceded control of the countryside to jihadis, bandits, and others.”

And though paying ransom is illegal in Nigeria, the “federal government is too weak to enforce the law,” and the practice is widespread.

The national police and the army (which is almost always used to maintain internal order rather than respond to external threats) are understaffed and poorly trained, with their low pay often in arrears, and this, Campbell says, compounds the problem.

Moreover, the CFR analyst notes, Nigerians distrust the country’s security services, long associated with abuses against the civilian population.

National and regional security

The kidnapping at Kankara and the failed abduction at Dandume underscore the country’s rising security challenges, he says.

Although the schoolchildren were rescued in these particular episodes, criminal and jihadi groups appear to move freely through northern Nigeria, a region with a population of roughly one hundred million.

Once the political and security hegemon of West Africa (if only briefly), Nigeria has failed to respond effectively to its vast security challenges, and its capacity for regional leadership has consequently declined, Campbell says.

“This, in turn, exacerbates instability across the wider region in the face of a criminal and jihadi onslaught.”

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