Nigeria : Lawmakers Outlaw Ransom Payment

The Nigerian Senate has passed a bill imposing jail terms of at least 15 years on anybody who pays ransom to free someone who has been kidnapped. The decision voted on Wednesday by the Senate also made the crime of abduction punishable by death in cases where victims die and life imprisonment in other cases. Armed gangs operating mostly in north eastern and north-central states of Nigeria have for more than a decade spread terror through kidnappings for ransom, targeting students, villagers and motorists on highways. According to a report by SB Morgen (SBM) Intelligence, a Lagos-based political risk analysis firm, between June 2011 and March 2020, at least $18.34m was paid to kidnappers as ransom mostly by families and the government, while thousands who could not afford the ransom were killed.
Speaking to reporters after the vote, the Chairman of the Senate’s Judiciary, Human Rights and Legal Committee, Opeyemi Bamidele said, “making ransom payment punishable with lengthy jail sentences would discourage the rising spate of kidnapping and abduction for ransom in Nigeria, which is fast spreading across the country”. Though this year, President Muhammadu Buhari’s government classified the armed kidnapping gangs, known locally as “bandits”, as terrorists, it has not stemmed the kidnappings phenomenon which is now witnessed on daily bases by the entire population both in the urban and rural areas. Within a four-month period that i...