[Photo: Reuters]
Nigeria’s Senate has passed a bill imposing jail terms of 15 years on anyone paying a ransom to free someone who has been kidnapped.
Critics say the move is unfair as it criminalizes people who are desperate to free their relatives.
The new law will also provide the death penalty or life in prison for anyone found guilty of kidnapping.
This comes as Nigeria struggles to deal with a deadly wave of kidnappings for ransom by armed groups.
Armed gangs operating mostly in northeastern and north-central states of Nigeria have for more than a decade spread terror through kidnappings for ransom, targeting students, villagers and motorists on highways.
They have also killed thousands of people.
President Muhammadu Buhari’s government has already classified the armed kidnapping gangs, known locally as ‘bandits’, as terrorists however that has not stemmed the kidnappings, which now occur almost daily.
In December 2020 more than 300 boys from their boarding school in the town of Kankara, in northwestern Katsina state, were kidnapped, evoking memories of Boko Haram’s 2014 abduction of 276 schoolgirls in the northeastern town of Chibok, that garnered global outrage.
At least $18.34m was paid to kidnappers as ransom mostly by families and the government to have the boys released.