The Nigerian Senate took a decisive stand against kidnapping on Tuesday, December 2, 2025, by approving amendments to the 2022 Terrorism (Prevention and Prohibition) Act that impose the death penalty on every individual involved in kidnapping crimes.
This sweeping legislation targets not only the kidnappers themselves but also financiers, informants, logistics providers, harbourers, transporters, and anyone who knowingly supports or aids these criminal acts.
Sponsored by Senate Leader Senator Opeyemi Bamidele, the bill reclassifies kidnapping, hostage-taking, and related offences as acts of terrorism nationwide.
This designation empowers security agencies with enhanced tools to investigate illicit funding, disrupt criminal supply chains, and carry out intelligence-led counter-terrorism efforts.
Under the leadership of Senate President Godswill Akpabio during extensive plenary debates, the amendment earned strong bipartisan backing as a bold strategy to confront Nigeria’s escalating kidnapping epidemic.
Akpabio has referred the bill to the Judiciary, Human Rights and Legal Matters, National Security and Intelligence, and Interior committees, charging them to hold public hearings and report their findings within the next two weeks.
Bamidele, leading the debate, said kidnapping in Nigeria had transformed into “coordinated, commercialised and militarised violence” that now mirrored terrorism in organisation and brutality.
He said families were being impoverished by ransom payments, communities paralysed by fear, and entire regions destabilised by rampant abductions.
“This is no longer an ordinary crime. The patterns of operation and the sheer ruthlessness now carry all the characteristics of terrorism,” he stated.
He stressed that the amendment targeted only violent offenders and their networks, not innocent communities, adding that prosecutions would fully comply with constitutional safeguards.
Chairman of Committee on Interior, Senator Adams Oshiomhole, backed the bill, but dismissed the country’s de-radicalisation programme as ineffective.
Oshiomhole said, “Some of these guys go back to their crimes. Enough is enough. If you are convicted for terrorism, the penalty should be death. Even the Bible and Quran affirm that he who kills has no right to live.”
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