On the morning of Monday, November 17, 2025, the familiar alarm of mass abduction pierced the fragile calm of northwestern Nigeria: terrorist gunmen forced their way into the dormitories of Government Girls' Comprehensive Secondary School in Maga, Kebbi State, killed the school's vice-principal, Hassan Makuku and fled with 25 girls. The attack is the latest in more than a decade of school raids that have hollowed out whole communities and turned classrooms into ground zero for a national crisis.
Only days earlier, suspected bandits abducted six senior directors of the Federal Ministry of Defence on the Kabba-Lokoja highway, officials travelling for a promotion examination and demanded an outrageously large ransom for their release. The men and women tasked with safeguarding our nation became, in a single violent stroke, its most visible victims.
These incidents are not isolated outrages. Since the 2014 Chibok abduction that captured global attention, more than a thousand schoolchildren have been seized in recurring mass kidnappings across Nigeria's northwest and north-central states like Kaduna, Zamfara, Niger and Katsina; some estimates put the toll above 1,500. The pattern is now depressingly familiar: pre-dawn raids on boarding schools, groups of heavily armed men on motorcycles, ransom demands, and the terrified scramble of security forces who often arrive too late.
These incessant and brazen abductions of vulnerable schoolchildren, high-ranking civil servants to everyday Nigerians raise urgent and uncomfortable questions: How did we come to this? And how does Nigeria overcome the triple horrors of insurgency, terrorism, and banditry that prey on its citizens?
Nigeria's security crisis is shaped by a tangled web of violent actors whose origins and motives have increasingly converged. Bandit groups in the northwest grew largely out of communal clashes, cattle-ranching disputes, criminal enterprises, and a generation of young men alienated by poverty. In contrast, Boko Haram and its splinters in the northeast sprang from militant Islamist ideology. For years, these were distinct threats. But recently, the boundaries have blurred. Tactical alliances, competition for territory, and the spread of combat skills have enabled bandit groups to adopt jihadist rhetoric and methods, while jihadist factions tap into bandit networks for logistics, shelter, and fighters.
This fusion has created hybrid groups -- part criminal, part ideological -- far more difficult to deter or dismantle with conventional law-enforcement approaches. As these actors overlap, their violence has become more coordinated and more destructive. Bandit gangs now vary widely in size and sophistication: some remain local criminal outfits, while others have evolved into heavily armed networks capable of mass kidnappings, large-scale village attacks, ambushes, and targeted assaults on state institutions. Between 2011 and 2021, crimes linked to banditry were blamed for more than 10,000 deaths across northern Nigeria, and the toll continues to rise.
The consequences for ordinary Nigerians have been devastating. Chronic insecurity has eroded confidence in education and restricted access to it. Thousands of schools have closed or been abandoned for safety reasons, and many families, especially those with girls, are increasingly afraid to send their children to class. The forests and ungoverned spaces that once sheltered cattle rustlers and small criminal groups have become sanctuaries for extremist cells and hybrid gangs who move seamlessly between ideological and economic violence.
This convergence of threats demands that we stop treating each attack as either purely criminal or purely ideological. The reality is more complex: many of today's perpetrators straddle both worlds. That is what makes the latest incidents so alarming and symptomatic of a security environment that has mutated beyond old labels, and of a state struggling to contain forces that now operate with alarming reach, confidence, and impunity.
The challenges are multi-layered and so must be the response. There is no single solution, but there are strategies for Nigeria to turn the tide.
First, intelligence and coordination must be strengthened. An integrated civil-military intelligence framework bringing together the military, police, community informants and traditional leaders should map high-risk zones such as schools, highways and forest corridors, and deploy preventive patrols and rapid-response teams. Community-based early-warning systems, including SMS alerts and trained community watchers, can help detect threats before they escalate.
Second, schools and other vulnerable institutions must be secured. Simple improvements like access roads, perimeter fencing, lighting, and safer dormitories can significantly reduce risk. Local vigilantes and community security groups should be trained and integrated with formal forces as first responders. Since many attacks occur in transit, secure transportation must be provided for students, teachers and civil servants travelling through high-risk areas.
Third, strengthening local administration, justice systems and service delivery is essential. Rebuilding trust requires inclusive governance, especially in areas where the state is weak. Social investment must address the root causes of radicalisation including poverty, religious extremism, unemployment and lack of education.
Fourth, accountability and the rule of law are equally critical. The police and military need professionalisation, human-rights training and stronger civilian oversight. Arrested kidnappers must be prosecuted transparently, with full support for victims. Civil society monitoring committees in vulnerable communities can help ensure security operations are accountable and responsive.
Finally, Nigeria needs deeper regional and international cooperation. Bandit, extremist and terrorist networks operate across borders, making intelligence sharing with neighbouring countries essential. Security assistance from international partners must come with clear conditions that strengthen capacity and accountability.
If Nigeria fails to act, the consequences will be devastating. More abductions will occur, and families will continue to live in fear. Public trust in the state will collapse, allowing armed groups to fill the vacuum. Insecurity will keep driving capital flight, school closures and market instability. Above all, impunity will embolden perpetrators. When attackers believe they can strike without consequence, violence becomes self-sustaining.
Kidnapping in Nigeria, whether for profit or for political ends, operates on a clear business model. Ransoms fund operations: they pay for weapons, fuel, logistics, and loyalty. Every successful ransom, even when unacknowledged, strengthens the market. This is why a strategy that focuses only on attacking hideouts, without addressing the economic incentives behind banditry, or the fundamentalist ideologies behind insurgency will always fall short.
Disrupting the "kidnap economy" demands coordinated law-enforcement action to follow money trails, tighten financial controls, and prosecute ransom financiers, intermediaries, and laundering networks. Criminal proceeds must be traced, frozen, and redirected into victim rehabilitation and compensation. At the same time, low-level fighters often driven by poverty, exclusion, and lack of opportunity, need credible pathways for reintegration tied to education, skills, and reconciliation mechanisms.
Nigeria must also revisit its "no ransom" stance. A blanket policy, strictly enforced without viable rescue alternatives, can cost innocent lives. The priority should be improving intelligence, strengthening rescue capabilities, and steadily reducing the profitability of kidnapping so the industry collapses under pressure.
These relentless attacks are a stark indictment of Nigeria's security architecture. They show a state still struggling to guarantee safety on highways, in homes, and inside classrooms. Yet they also offer a moment of reckoning. Confronting this menace means treating insurgency, terrorism, and banditry not as separate crises but as intertwined threats feeding off the same vacuum of governance, justice, and economic security.
If Nigeria is to move from prey to power, it must build institutions that protect its people, restore trust, and close the space in which violence thrives.