I read this news yesterday but I was tired I couldn't post it in time. I was not even surprised to have read about this yesterday because I have read about many of these abduction in the past. Some people were kidnapped by Boko Haram, some by bandits while some were kidnapped by normal kidnappers. Kidnapping in Nigeria has been turned into a job now to the extent even Kings were among people that were abducted. Some celebrities like the formal president of Nigeria, Olusegun Obasanjo has once said money should not be paid to terrorists (Boko Haram) and bandits because of obvious reasons that is not the focus of this thread.

After the abduction, especially bandits and normal kidnappers, it will be less than a day or two days they will demand for ransom. It is not common that bandits will enter girl schools and abduct some of the students and demand for ransom, while also kings were abducted.

The Central Bank of Nigeria present said before that cryptocurrencies are illegitimate, some even will say Bitcoin is demanded for in many cases by such attackers for ransom. But in the case of Nigeria, this is different. Although, fiat can be traceable, but it is only when it is in digital form, not traceable in p2p physical exchange it transfer. The attackers know about this, they will likely prefer to collect their money in Nigerian Naira and yet in cash.

I believe non has used Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrencies to demand for ransom that was known, because if Bitcoin or any other crypto was demand for as random, Nigerian government would have taken this to news. The government do not speak bad of fiat which resulted to ransom by bandits but if Bitcoin or crypto is demanded for, it would have been included in the news by now.

https://punchng.com/2371-people-abducted-in-nigeria-in-first-half-of-2021-report/

I am curious about the Kings that you are talking about, are there royalties in Nigeria? I think that the only scary thing about here is the kidnapping itself and not the fact that they aren't using cryptocurrencies for payments in the ransom.

Yes, there are many kings in Nigeria, but they are stronger than one another in power and influence. The last king that was abducted that I read about was not even quite long, the king of Kajuru.

What I am thinking is that many of these bad actors do not even know much about Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, and they know that collecting money physically can be an easy means no government or anybody can be able to track the payment. The payment that can be completely annonymous is physical payment of fiat which is an effective tools many bad actors are using.

Well, this is true, especially for annonymous currencies like Monero, but let us now focus this on Bitcoin. Bitcoin's blockchain is completely transparent and available to the public, many malacious transactions were tracked while many have been recovered. Abductors will not later like to make use of Bitcoin because of the transparent design. This makes me to think Bitcoin will only later result to abductors not to use it because of its transparent blockchain which physical fiat (cash) can not provide.

Yes they are Kings in Nigeria. Nigeria is a diverse with different culture and tribes coming together to form a nation. Every tribe has a King or supreme ruler even though there is a political governor that handles the affairs of the state. Over time because of politics, majority of kings have little power.
The level of insecurity sweeping across the country is alarming. The government need to swing into action to fight insurgency and crime. I don't think I have heard of ransom being paid in crypto yet but we might see that happening soon

Oh, so basically these Kings are like tribe leaders of some sort or are they different? Because I find it hard to believe that a nation has a lot of kings. How are these kidnapped people though, did they all come back safe or some of them have been killed?

this is very inhumane what the criminal did with his crime, then the police must immediately intervene to solve the problem, because this should not happen in any country including Nigeria, then they must be as fast as possible to catch the perpetrators so that they can be punished according to the rules in force in the country, what's more, this is a major crime and can cause the loss of human life

What is really important to note here is that this happenings in Nigeria are NOT because Bitcoin was available. Again this is a convenient ignoring of the root cause of problems, and existing threats.

Just like Israel says Bitcoin is helping Hamas. All these groups existed before and thanks to evils in the past of the government oppressing people,,, and now Bitcoin the evil? This distracts from the real picture.

For record purpose Nigeria government did not ban cryptocurrency because of terrorism, the main purpose of the ban was to protect the NGN fiat and the banking system.
We do not operate state policing we only have federal police, they take orders from the federal government, now tell me how do you expect the police to fully function when the people in charge of the police sector are the same people sponsoring the terrorism? Highly respected Iman are being used as the third party between the government and the terrorist, they collect the ransom from the government and pay it to the kidnappers. The problem is not the police but the system. The current government has failed the people that's just the simple term, bad government is just everywhere not only in Nigeria.

I guess that the Nigerian government's problem with cryptocurrency is not really about kidnappers and bandits demanding the payment of a ransom in crypto. They may be using that as an excuse to justify their reason for trying to shut it down.

However, the main reason is that many people used crypto to contribute to the funding of the demonstration against police brutality in October of 2020. The Nigerian government was able to trace and block the bank account of those that used fiat to make their contribution. On the other hand, they could not trace or block the wallets of those that used bitcoin to contribute.