Nigeria faces a surge in mass abductions amid a wider security crisis stretching across its vast, diverse nation. Criminal “bandit” gangs mostly young, mobile kidnappers in the north-west operate without ideology, driven by ransom profits and emboldened by the spread of weapons since Libya’s collapse.
In the north-east, Boko Haram’s long-running jihadist insurgency, infamous for the Chibok schoolgirl abductions, persists despite internal splits and weakened capacity. With ethnic tensions, land clashes, and separatist unrest elsewhere, Nigeria’s overstretched security forces struggle to contain multiple, overlapping threats affecting all communities.
