The Minister of Defence Mohammed Badaru Abubakar has expressed concern over persistent payment of ransom by Nigerians, particularly the increasing cases of crowd-funding on social media platforms, saying that such action fuels kidnappings in the country.
The minister said this while fielding questions from State House correspondents at the end of the weekly Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting chaired by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
He said raising huge money to free abductees in the hands of kidnappers is not only against the law but counter productive.
“In FCT, these kidnappings happen around the suburbs, and around locations that are bordering Kaduna and Niger states. And this is as a result of the current operations going on in the northwest and some parts of northcentral.
“The bandits are fleeing and they are getting shelters around these areas and the security agencies are working very hard to push them out, block their movements and finish this thing once and for all.
“The president has given us the marching order and all the support that we need and what the security agencies need to end this thing.
“On crowd-funding, we all know there’s an existing law against payment of ransom. So, it is very sad for people to go over the internet, radio asking for donations to pay ransom. This will only worsen the situation, it will not help the situation at all as you have seen.
“Initially, they asked for N60 million and now because of this funding and I learnt somebody has raised N50 million already through friends and media, they jacked up the ransom.
“We believe we have to stop it, as painful as it is. We have to stop responding to payment of ransom. If we stop, over time, the kidnapping will not be profitable and they will stop.
“It is not easy though but that is the law. So we want to call on the people to manage the kidnapping situation intelligently and very quietly, because talking too much about it, most especially raising funds through the public media is not productive at all and should be discontinued.”
The statement by the minister follow a series of tragic kidnappings on the outskirts of Abuja. In one of these episodes, the captors, who initially seized ten individuals from Sagwari Layout, Dutse, Abuja on January 7, 2024, escalated their ransom demands from N60 million to N100 million for each of the seven remaining hostages, in response to public efforts to raise funds through social media.
Tragically, three hostages have lost their lives, attributed to delays in ransom payments by their families.
The situation gained further complexity when the former Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Professor Isa Ali Ibrahim Pantami, endorsed the crowdfunding approach after an anonymous associate contributed N50 million towards the ransom.
This development has sparked heightened concern on social media platforms, as many worry that resorting to public fundraising for ransom payments might encourage similar incidents in the future.
