Earlier this year, an employee of a large company in Nigeria was abducted by armed gunmen while travelling along the Abuja-Kaduna highway.

The company’s security team handled the negotiations through intermediaries, as it often does when employees are kidnapped on what has quickly become the most notorious stretch of highway in Africa’s most populous country.

It was a delicate process. The team had to decide whether to involve the police, knowing that officers are sometimes in cahoots with bandits. It had to know when to give into the abductors’ demands and when to let them sweat — for instance, it gave them phone credit, as bandits often demand, but in charge card form, so it can be traced, rather than via bank transfer (some also reportedly demand payment in bitcoin). It had to bring the ransom demand down from nearly $30,000 to the roughly $500 that was ultimately paid.

“It’s the biggest security risk that faces any person or company or family presently operating or moving around Nigeria,” says a senior executive at another company, who did not wish to be named for fear that it could drive up ransoms for its employees. “Today really anyone or everyone is at risk of being kidnapped — whether you’re a big oga [boss] or a small boy.”

Nigeria has the highest rate of kidnaps for ransom of both locals and foreigners in all of Africa, according to the global risk consultancy Control Risks, with kidnappers operating in each of its 36 states. It is usually in the top 10 countries in the world for kidnapped foreign nationals in the bimonthly Kidnap and Ransom insight report from Constellis, the US-based security consultancy.

The oil-rich Niger Delta has long been a hotbed of kidnapping, with militants using it to extort both the government and international oil companies. But in recent years, the tactic has increasingly been used by criminals in the Fulani nomadic communities of the country’s north. The governors of two northwestern states at the heart of the banditry crisis have gone so far as to negotiate with leaders of the armed groups, who live in the thick forest and say they have been neglected by the state.


The impact of armed banditry on both commerce and daily life has been devastating with thousands killed and tens of thousands displaced in the north-west, according to the UN.

The Abuja-Kaduna highway — one of the country’s most important commercial thoroughfares, leading from the capital to the vast northern market — has become Ground Zero for the scourge of kidnapping.

The spread of kidnapping has thrown up an additional security challenge for businesses in a country with no shortage of them, as they seek to move goods from the ports and commercial centre of Lagos to the north.

“Some of my clients are in the logistics space and part of what they do is move goods to different states — most of them have had to re-strategise and completely avoid those hotspot routes that [bandits] ply,” says Tanwa Ashiru, founder of Lagos-based risk consultancy Bulwark Intelligence. “It is a problem and it is obviously affecting the ease of goods moving across Nigeria.”

While foreign workers are seized for their perceived high value — and the ability of their employers to pay — bandits indiscriminately target everyone from the poor up to politically connected wealthy Nigerians, and locals are by far the most affected.

Still, there have been a number of high-profile kidnappings of foreign workers in recent years. In July, four Turkish construction workers were abducted from a bar in Kwara state, a few months after two senior Shell workers were taken in the Niger Delta. As in many such cases, the armed police that accompanied the Shell employees, as they do with many expatriate staff in Nigeria, were killed.

Bandits use fake checkpoints and roadblocks on the country’s shoddy road network, by which the vast majority of goods are transported. The administration of President Buhari has prioritised upgrading the country’s road infrastructure, but the task is immense, and bandits are aided by the potholes that plague nearly every Nigerian road.

“For most businesses, the greatest risk to their employees is while they are travelling,” says Tom Griffin, senior partner for Africa and the Middle East at Control Risks. “Almost half of all kidnaps in Nigeria recorded by Control Risks occur during road travel, with kidnappers often selecting targets based on perceived wealth during roadside ambushes, roadblocks or attacks in traffic congestion.”

Beyond kidnapping, commercial truckers are subject to regular shakedowns in every corner of the country by bandits who know that long-haul drivers carry cash advances for provisions along the way.

Kobo360, a logistics start-up that announced earlier this year that it had raised $30m in debt and equity in a funding round led by Goldman Sachs, exists in part to solve that problem.

It is using an “Uber for logistics” model to connect drivers and fleets to companies — crucially, in a cashless, mobile money-enabled way that allows drivers to move about without too much loose cash. This is one of many ways businesses are being forced to innovate in the absence of any action by the government.

“The government has to sit down and figure out how to effectively police the highways,” says Ms Ashiru. “The private sector on the other hand understands what needs to be done.”

https://www.ft.com/content/99d6aaea-e394-11e9-9743-db5a370481bc