On the morning of October 23, 2025, Gbolahan Olaniyi was settling into what seemed like another routine day on the farm he manages at Oke Ako Village at Ikole Local Government, Ekiti State, southwestern Nigeria.
From his small office, he worked through reports from the previous day’s harvest while, outside, more than 250 hectares of maize, soybeans, and cassava stretched toward the horizon. Workers moved across the fields, tractors rumbled along dusty tracks, as the harvest season was in full swing.
Then a tractor operator failed to return.
At first, it seemed like a minor delay. Olaniyi tried calling him, but the call would not connect. Concerned, he climbed onto his office-assigned motorcycle and headed into the fields to find out.
What he found was unsettling. The tractor stood at an odd angle, half-turned into the bush, as though it had been abandoned in a hurry. Olaniyi got off his bike, picked up a cutlass, and walked toward it. He called the driver’s name once. Then again.
Silence.
A whistle suddenly pierced the stillness.
Seven armed men emerged from the trees on either side of the path, AK-47 rifles in hand. The tractor driver had already been captured. He had been shot in the hand and tied to a tree. The abandoned tractor was bait. Olaniyi had walked straight into an ambush.
“The kidnappers took everything from me—my phone, face cap, nose mask and even my customised farm boots,” Olaniyi recalled. The boots, supplied through a state government programme, carried identifying marks. “They cut out the markings before wearing them themselves.”
Within minutes, the two men were being marched deeper into the forest.
“There were about 15 local vigilantes and security personnel assigned to the farm, yet the kidnappers still took us into the bush,” he said.
What followed was a 42-day ordeal through remote forests spanning multiple states. Olaniyi and other captives were forced to trek for hours, sleep in makeshift camps, and endure constant threats and the instant execution of four kidnapped victims who tried to run away from the heavily armed kidnappers.
In one case, Olaniyi said he was forced to dig a shallow grave to bury one of the victims. Throughout the ordeal, one thing stood out: the men holding them captive relied heavily on mobile phones.
They beat hostages while forcing them to speak to their families on video calls, using the scenes of violence to pressure relatives into paying ransoms. In one conversation with Olaniyi’s employer, the gang demanded ₦100 million ($73,566) for his release.
They constantly requested airtime and mobile data to keep their phones active. At one point, a kidnapper handed Olaniyi a phone and instructed him to buy ₦10,000 ($7.36) worth of data for two mobile numbers. For a fleeting moment, Olaniyi held something investigators often struggle to obtain: a direct line to one of the men holding him captive.
Yet even with phone numbers, calls, and other digital footprints, the kidnappers remained beyond the reach of authorities. No rescue came for Olaniyi or the other captives. Gbolahan’s mother and relations were forced to pay ₦30 million ($21,955) in ransom on the pretense of his release. After the ransom arrived in cash, the kidnappers refused and demanded more money.
Their freedom only arrived on December 2, 2025, when Olaniyi said he and four others escaped after a dispute over ransom proceeds prompted their guards to abandon their post.
“Once we were free, we avoided the front of the camp, where the kidnappers were sleeping, and slipped out through the back of the hill instead. Then we ran into the forest,” Olaniyi said. “We were incredibly fortunate that night because there was a bright full moon. It was December 2, and the moonlight helped us find our way as we escaped through the bush.”
That contradiction lies at the heart of one of Nigeria’s most enduring security puzzles. Kidnappers rely heavily on telecommunications networks to run their operations. They call victims’ families, negotiate ransoms, send messages, make video calls, buy airtime, and increasingly use digital payment channels. Each interaction generates data. Every call leaves a trace.
Yet despite this growing digital footprint, hundreds of kidnappings occur every year, and relatively few perpetrators are identified or prosecuted through telecommunications evidence alone.
Research firm SBM Intelligence recorded 7,568 people abducted in 1,130 kidnapping incidents between July 2023 and June 2024. The report estimated that kidnappers demanded about ₦10.9 billion ($7.98 million) in ransom during the period.
For many Nigerians, that reality is difficult to reconcile. In a country where SIM cards are linked to National Identification Numbers (NINs), telecom operators collect extensive subscriber data, and many people believe that security agencies have legal authority to access call records and location information, tracking kidnappers should seem straightforward.
The gap between what technology can theoretically enable and what happens on the ground is often far wider than it appears.
“Effective tracking relies heavily on seamless coordination between military intelligence, civil security agencies, and telecommunication providers, which can introduce bureaucratic or technical delays when time is of the essence,” Edward Buba, former Director of Defence Military Operations at Defence Headquarters, told TechCabal on the telephone.
The myth of the instantly traceable phone call
When kidnappers call victims’ families, many Nigerians assume security agencies can simply trace the number and locate them within minutes. Popular movies, crime dramas, and years of telecom expansion have reinforced the belief that every phone call leaves an immediate digital trail leading directly to a suspect’s location.
The reality is far more complicated.
The Tracking Circle Simulator
See exactly why a kidnapper’s phone call doesn’t hand security forces a neat GPS pin.
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