The kidnap for ransom business is booming across northern Nigeria, and schoolchildren are its hottest commodity.  

Just before midnight on March 11 gunmen barged into a school around 300 yards from a military training college in Kaduna state and seized dozens of students from their dormitories. It took less than 12 hours for the captors to issue a now familiar demand, through a grainy video posted on Facebook.  

“Kidnap for ransom has become so normalized and institutionalized that it now bears the mark of legal enterprise,” said Bulama Bukarti, a security analyst and columnist with Daily Trust, northern Nigeria’s leading daily. It is even more lucrative, “especially when it comes to children,” he said. From the Wall Street Journal.