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Kidnapping for ransom is a major problem in Nigeria, where gunmen have seized more than 250 school pupils in one of the largest mass abductions in years.
As the country grapples with security challenges on several fronts, hostage-taking has spiralled into a nationwide industry and become a favoured tactic of bandit gangs and jihadists.
The raid on Kuriga school in northwestern Kaduna State followed a kidnapping in the northeast last week, with over 100 people reported missing.
In the early 2000s, kidnappers targeted oil workers in the Niger Delta, but the issue escalated after a 2009 jihadist insurgency in the northeast.
Boko Haram and rival group Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) still regularly carry out abductions.
Anti-jihadist militia blamed ISWAP for the mass kidnapping in Ngala, Borno state last week that targeted women and children from camps for those displaced by the conflict in the northeast.
But with the rise of heavily armed gangs of criminals known as 'bandits', the northwest has become the region most affected by kidnappings.
The gangs have targeted schools and colleges in the past, but there had been a recent lull in such attacks.
Kidnap gangs also operate nationwide, going after everyone from schoolchildren to the families of traditional monarchs.
Some experts believe the country's economic crisis is now driving a rise in kidnappings as desperate Nigerians turn to crime for income.
"It's all about lack of money and poverty," said Emeka Okoro, an analyst with the Nigerian risk consultancy SBM Intelligence.
"The poverty level in the northwest is high," he told AFP. "Kidnapping is lucrative -- huge amounts of money have been paid in the past to rescue schoolchildren."
Data on kidnapping is notoriously unreliable because of under-reporting.
SBM said it had recorded 4,777 people abducted since President Bola Ahmed Tinubu took office in May last year.
The kidnapping of 276 schoolgirls from Chibok in northeastern Nigeria by Boko Haram jihadists made headlines around the world a decade ago, but daily abductions rarely gain global attention.
Families and entire communities often pool their savings to afford ransoms, but in 2022 a law was introduced that banned paying money to kidnappers.
Many families say they have little faith in the authorities and feel they have no choice.
Other methods the authorities have used include registering mobile phone SIM cards to help track kidnappers.
Police have deployed anti-kidnap units, but the forests where gangs hide are difficult to access and control.
In the northwest, authorities have tried to negotiate with bandits, strike amnesty deals and deploy vigilante groups -- but with little success.
President Tinubu has condemned the kidnappings in Kuriga and Ngala and ordered armed forces to rescue those abducted.
"I am confident that the victims will be rescued," he said on Friday.
Earlier this year, Tinubu promised to address the root causes of attacks through education following an outcry over the violent abduction of five young sisters near the capital Abuja.
But he has not outlined a precise strategy and critics say the kidnapping crisis is out of control.
