Boko Haram threatens to kill 400 hostages unless Nigeria pays ransom

The ultimatum was blunt and immediate: pay ₦5 billion, or Boko Haram said 416 women and children abducted in Borno State would be killed. In a video released on Sunday, April 19, the militants gave Nigeria 72 hours and warned that the captives, taken from Ngoshe community in Gwoza Local Government Area, would be moved to undisclosed locations and might never be seen again.

The threat sharpened an old national dilemma that has defined hostage crises across Nigeria’s northeast. Governments refuse to normalize ransom payments because they can finance more violence, yet every delay puts civilians in deeper danger. The latest video, delivered by masked and armed men in paramilitary-style clothing, was meant to intensify that pressure. The spokesman referred to the group by its full Arabic name and called the warning his “first and final message.”

For families in Borno, the threat landed in a region already worn down by years of insurgency, displacement and fear. The United Nations said in January that more than two million people remained displaced in northeast Nigeria, where the conflict that began in 2009 has since spread beyond its original theater. In communities closer to the fighting, civilians have lived with the constant risk of abduction, extortion and attacks by both jihadist militants and armed criminal groups.

The stakes are especially high because Boko Haram’s history is written in mass kidnappings. The group shocked the world in 2014 when it abducted 276 schoolgirls from Government Girls Secondary School Chibok, an episode that became a symbol of the state’s struggle to protect rural communities. Amnesty International said in April 2024 that 82 of those girls were still missing a decade later, a reminder that hostage crises in this war can stretch across years, not days.

The latest threat also came as violence in Borno surged again. On April 9, Boko Haram and Islamic State West Africa Province launched coordinated overnight attacks that killed an army general and several other soldiers, underscoring how fragile security remains even in areas where the military has spent years trying to push the insurgency back.

Nigeria now faces a narrow set of options, none of them clean. Paying ransom risks rewarding the tactics that have turned kidnapping into a weapon of war. Refusing to pay may preserve a policy line, but it leaves 416 women and children in the hands of militants who have already shown they are willing to turn captivity into leverage.