A harrowing video obtained by SaharaReporters on 31 July 2025 shows terrorists mercilessly flogging a Point-of-Sale (POS) attendant and two young children in a wooded hideout deep within Kwara State.
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In the footage, the victims—emaciated and bruised—cry out in agony as a gunman wields a stick, administering blow after blow, while demanding a crippling ransom of ₦50 million from their desperate families.
This brutal episode is symptomatic of a nationwide kidnapping surge.
According to the National Bureau of Statistics’ Crime Experience and Security Perception Survey (CESPS) 2024, Nigeria recorded an estimated 2,235,954 kidnapping incidents between May 2023 and April 2024—an average of over 6,100 abductions per day.
During the same period, Nigerian families paid out a staggering ₦2.23 trillion in ransoms, with the average payment per incident reaching ₦2,670,693.
Kwara North has been besieged by a wave of abductions since late June 2025. Among the captives is Yman, a popular POS agent seized alongside two children.
Held for over a month, they languish under inhumane conditions deep in the forest, their pleas for mercy and government intervention ignored by security agencies (Sahara Reporters, Sahara Reporters)
The gunmen’s demand—₦50 million per victim—has forced relatives to liquidate lands and possessions, even distributing flyers to solicit public donations.
“We have sold lands and all valuable properties to raise this money,” one mourner told Atlantic Post, lamenting that “the government and security operatives are not doing anything to rescue them”.
Their despair deepens as each video surfaces, inflicting fresh psychological torment.
Compounding the horror, the abductors commandeered Yman’s TikTok and WhatsApp accounts, broadcasting torture clips to family members and the public alike.
In one clip, Yman is seen begging for food, his captor nonchalantly filming and posting directly from the forest hideout.
“He has been using Yman’s phone number to call us,” a relative revealed. “Now they’ve hijacked his TikTok and are confidently uploading videos”.
The brazen online activity—complete with an identifiable, unmasked perpetrator—lays bare the impotence of Nigeria’s security agencies.
“The bandit is not even covering his face,” another family member fumed. “He is doing this because he knows the Nigerian Government and security operatives cannot track him. This country is finished”.
This latest atrocity recalls previous mass kidnappings—from the 2014 Chibok schoolgirls to the 2020 Kankara abduction of schoolboys—yet the scale has ballooned.
In 2024 alone, at least 580 civilians—primarily women and children—were abducted across Nigeria by extremist groups like Boko Haram and allied bandits.
The Factbox compiled by Reuters highlights over half a dozen major kidnapping sprees in northern Nigeria in 2024, with scores of victims taken in each wave.
As families scrape together life-shattering sums, the federal and state governments must face mounting criticism for their failure to stem the tide of kidnappings.
With ransom payments now a multi-trillion-naira drain on Nigeria’s economy and psyche, President Bola Tinubu’s administration is under pressure to implement decisive security reforms, from upgrading intelligence gathering to establishing rapid-response rescue units.
Without such measures, Nigerian citizens—especially the vulnerable in rural and border communities—remain prey to terrorists’ merciless extortion.
Nigeria stands at a crossroads: either confront its security collapse head-on or watch as more innocent lives become fodder for a ruthless ransom racket.
