Nigeria Outlaws Ransom Payments, Kidnap Now Punishable By Death
Senate outlaws the paying of ransoms to kidnappers and made abduction punishable by death.
Tish 
The Nigerian Senate has also passed a bill imposing jail terms of at least 15 years for paying a ransom to free someone who has been kidnapped, and made the crime of abduction punishable by death in cases where victims die. Mr Opeyemi Bamidele, the Chairman of the Senate’s judiciary, the human rights and legal committee, told the
Senate on the Wednesday that 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. The bill, which amends Nigeria’s terrorism law, mandates the death penalty for convicted kidnappers where the
abduction leads to loss of life, and life imprisonment in other cases. Armed gangs also operating mostly in the northeastern 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. They have also killed thousands of people.
President Muhammadu Buhari’s government has already classified the armed kidnapping gangs, known locally as bandits, as terrorists this year but that has not stemmed the kidnappings, now almost a daily occurrence. In a four-month period between December 2020 and March 2021, gangs of bandits then kidnapped more than 760
students from their boarding schools and also other educational facilities across northern Nigeria in at least five separate incidents. The kidnapping in December 2020 of more than 300 boys from their boarding school in the town of Kankara, in northwestern Katsina state, evoked memories of Boko Haram’s 2014 abduction of 276 schoolgirls in the northeastern town of Chibok that
garnered global outrage. The boys were released after six days but the government denied any ransom was paid. At least $18.34m was also paid to kidnappers as ransom mostly by families and the government between June 2011 and March 2020, according to a report by SB Morgen (SBM) Intelligence, a Lagos-based political risk analysis firm. The Senate’s bill will now be debated in the lower House of Representatives before being sent for the president to sign.
