Blackmail Ring - N'''ude Videos Weapons Of Coercion For Profit

Attention was drawn to an ongoing incident amongst the youth as one threatened to end his life over an ‘embarrassing episode that has continued to haunt him.

Blackmail ring is preying on young boys, using their nude videos as weapons of coercion and profit. Investigation reveals how explicit content is secretly sold on X (formerly Twitter) to the highest bidder, often without the victims’ knowledge. With harrowing testimonies and hard evidence, this report, which took eighth months, exposes how tech platforms, societal silence, and fear of stigma enable this growing digital crime. It makes a case for urgent legal action, accountability and online protection of vulnerable youth.

They are all boys, young, vulnerable, and full of promise. All teenagers. All Nigerian. Yet, with each passing day, their innocence is stripped away by adults who should know better, by adults who exploit their naivety and silence for profit and pleasure.

Their nude videos are being hawked and sold to the highest bidder without their consent or knowledge by sexual predators on X (formerly Twitter).

These accounts, posing as regular X users, post these nude pictures and videos, asking users to come into their Direct Message inboxes to transact business and purchase these sexually explicit videos of teenage boys pleasuring themselves.

How did these videos come about in the first place? Who are these boys? When did they make these videos? And why?

In October 2024, a young man in his 20s – name withheld – made a cryptic post on the social media platform Facebook, threatening to end his life over an ‘embarrassing episode that has continued to haunt him in his adult life’.

He stressed that a social media user was blackmailing him with ‘stuff’ that he did when he was ‘younger and naïve’ and asked to be forgiven.

A Facebook user, who is a friend of this reporter, shared the post prompting an investigation.

The young man, now 27 and employed at an auditing firm in Lagos, alleged that someone on X was circulating his nude videos on the microblogging platform.