Key Points

• Nigeria paid Boko Haram millions in ransom and freed two commanders to secure the release of 230 kidnapped St. Mary’s school children, intelligence sources say.
• The jihadist commander known as Sadiku masterminded the abduction and received the ransom by helicopter at Boko Haram’s Gwoza stronghold.
• Nigeria recorded 828 kidnappings last year, more than Mexico and Colombia combined.

The Nigerian government paid Boko Haram militants a ransom running into millions of dollars to secure the release of up to 230 children and staff abducted from a Catholic boarding school in November, four intelligence sources told AFP, directly contradicting official denials.

Two Boko Haram commanders were also freed as part of the agreement, the sources said, a deal that violates Nigeria’s own law banning payments to kidnappers and one that is likely to draw sharp criticism from Washington.

The ransom was flown by helicopter to Boko Haram’s Gwoza stronghold in northeastern Borno State, near the border with Cameroon, and delivered to militant commander Ali Ngulde, three sources told AFP.

Because communications coverage is thin in the remote area, Ngulde crossed into Cameroon to confirm receipt of the funds before the first group of 100 children was released.

The Nigerian government has denied any payment was made. Nigeria’s State Security Service was blunt in its rejection. “Government agents don’t pay ransoms,” a spokesperson said, though the same spokesperson acknowledged that families acting independently could not be stopped from paying.

National Security Adviser Nuhu Ribadu, who led two weeks of negotiations that preceded the releases, did not respond to multiple requests for comment from AFP.

The commander behind the abduction

The children and staff were snatched from St. Mary’s boarding school in Papiri, central Niger State, on Nov. 21. Close to 300 pupils and staff were taken. At least 50 later escaped on their own.

Boko Haram had not previously been publicly linked to the kidnapping, but sources told AFP that one of the group’s most feared commanders was responsible.

The militant known as Sadiku is also suspected of orchestrating the 2022 gun and bomb attack on a passenger train traveling between Abuja and Kaduna, a brazen assault that generated large ransom payments from scores of passengers that included bankers and government officials.

Vincent Foucher, a specialist on Nigerian conflicts with France’s National Centre for Scientific Research, said he confirmed Sadiku’s involvement through a source affiliated with the jihadists and a separate Nigerian government source.

“It makes total sense, given Sadiku’s history,” Foucher told AFP.

Sources said Sadiku’s faction had recently relocated from its longtime stronghold in Shiroro and needed funds to support the move.

“Their task has always been to get money” for Boko Haram’s leadership in the northeast, Foucher said.

The children were held at a camp in Borgu Local Government Area, roughly 370 kilometers from the Niger State capital, Minna.

As part of the deal, sources said Boko Haram also demanded that Nigerian military forces allow displaced residents of Audu Fari village in the Borgu area to return home.

The village had served as a supply corridor for Sadiku’s fighters and a transit point for families traveling between his camps and Boko Haram’s northeastern base areas.

How much was paid

Accounts of the ransom amount vary across sources. One put the figure at 40 million naira per hostage, which would place the total at roughly $7 million.

Another source gave a lower overall figure of two billion naira. Neither figure could be independently verified.

A state security spokesperson dismissed as “laughable” the account of cash being delivered by helicopter.

But an analyst based in the kidnap-afflicted northwestern state of Zamfara, who asked not to be identified, said the denials were a familiar pattern.

“There is no way bandits can keep releasing people they kidnapped to the government without getting payment in return,” the analyst said. “The government is denying what we all know.”

A kidnapping epidemic with industrial scale

The St. Mary’s abduction is not an isolated incident. It lands in a country where kidnapping has hardened into a structured criminal enterprise.

Nigeria recorded 828 abductions in the past year alone, many involving multiple victims, according to Armed Conflict Location and Event Data, a U.S.-based conflict monitor. That figure exceeds the combined total for Mexico and Colombia.

Only neighboring Cameroon and Myanmar, a country notorious for large-scale scam operations, recorded higher numbers, said ACLED senior Africa analyst Ladd Serwat.

A report by SBM Intelligence, a Lagos-based consultancy, estimated that armed groups and criminals extracted roughly $1.66 million from kidnapping operations between July 2024 and June 2025, describing the crisis as a “consolidated, profit-seeking industry.”

Nigeria passed a law in 2022 criminalizing ransom payments, with penalties of up to 15 years in prison. The law has done little to break the cycle.

Individual families continue to pay, security personnel sometimes act as go-betweens in delivering funds to kidnappers, and authorities have quietly paid out in other high-profile cases.

In December 2020, authorities in Katsina State paid 30 million naira, the equivalent of $78,000 at the time, to free 340 schoolchildren seized from a boarding school in Kankara.

Bandit chief Awwalun Daudawa later confirmed the payment in a leaked phone recording.

Ribadu’s office maintained that the national security adviser has secured the release of hostages on multiple occasions without any exchange of money.

Trump’s shadow over the crisis

The political backdrop adds another layer of sensitivity. The St. Mary’s abduction came at a moment when Nigeria was already under pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump, who had accused the country of persecuting Christians. On Christmas Day, Washington announced it killed multiple Islamic State militants in strikes in northwestern Nigeria.

Analysts and Nigerian authorities have pushed back against Trump’s framing of the country’s security situation, noting that Muslims make up the overwhelming majority of kidnapping victims across the country.

A deal involving millions in payments to Boko Haram, a group that sparked global outrage after abducting 276 mostly Christian girls in Chibok in 2014, is unlikely to ease those tensions.

Families without the means to pay ransoms have turned to crowdfunding. One recent online appeal featured a photograph of a traditional chief in ceremonial dress from southwestern Nigeria, kidnapped on New Year’s Eve. The appeal sought $11,400 to meet the kidnappers’ demand.