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Armed men have reportedly abducted no fewer than 14 passengers, many of them believed to be candidates for the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination, UTME, organized by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, JAMB, along the Makurdi–Otukpo road in Benue State.
The victims were said to be travelling from Makurdi to Otukpo Local Government Area, LGA, on Wednesday evening for their scheduled examination when the incident occurred.
The ill-fated vehicle, an 18-seater Benue Links bus, was ambushed by the gunmen a few kilometres from Otukpo town at about 7 p.m.
A source in the area disclosed that the attackers stopped the bus on the highway and forced the passengers into a nearby forest.
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“The passengers were all marched into the forest. From what we gathered, most of them were students coming to Otukpo to write JAMB exams,” the source said.
He informed that the bus was fully loaded at the time of the attack, “but about four persons, including the driver, managed to escape.
“As we speak, the police and other security personnel have commenced a search operation to rescue the victims and track down the criminals,” he said.
Confirming the incident, the Benue State Commissioner of Police, Mr Ifeanyi Emenari, said he had mobilised tactical teams and Divisional Police Officers, DPOs, to the area to lead rescue efforts.
“I am in Otukpo now. All my team and DPOs are in the bush, and I am personally heading the operation,” he said.
“What happened was that a Benue Links bus carrying passengers to Otukpo was stopped and attacked by hoodlums. Fourteen passengers were kidnapped, while one managed to escape,” the commissioner added.
He, however, expressed concern over the circumstances surrounding the journey, noting that Benue Links does not operate night services.
“Benue Links, as a policy, does not usually travel at night. From the information I have, the company had already closed for the day, but the driver, for reasons we are still trying to ascertain, picked up passengers along the road. That is how the incident happened,” Emenari stated.
The commissioner assured that investigations were ongoing and reaffirmed the command’s commitment to ensuring the safe rescue of the abducted passengers.
Meanwhile, suspected terrorists abducted a school proprietor and four farmers in Odo-Ore community in Isin Local Government Area of Kwara State.
The attackers, said to be about 10 in number, stormed the community on Wednesday evening, firing sporadically before abducting five residents.
It was gathered that the community has no police station or security presence to repel the attack, which has left residents in fear. Sources said the incident marked the first time such an attack had occurred in the area.
According to findings, the gunmen went straight to the residence of Yusuf Yunusa, a prominent politician and school proprietor, at about 11 p.m.
They reportedly forced their way through the gate, broke the main door of the house, and abducted him at gunpoint while he was preparing to sleep. Yunusa, who also owns a private school in Lagos, had arrived in Odo-Ore earlier that day.
Four other victims, said to be Hausa farmers, were abducted by the attackers while they were leaving the community.
A resident, who spoke on condition of anonymity, alleged that the attack on Yunusa may have been aided by informants.
“The terrorists’ attack on Alhaji Yusuf can be attributed to informants because they went straight to his residence to abduct him.
“He was preparing to sleep around 11 p.m. when they forced their way through his gate, broke the main door of his house and took him away,” the source said.
A senior police officer at the Owu-Isin Divisional Headquarters confirmed the incident.
However, the Kwara State Police Command had yet to respond to the development as of press time, as calls to the Police Public Relations Officer, Ejire Adetoun Adeyemi, were not answered.
Nigerian Army troops killed scores of fighters linked to Bello Turji, the northwest’s most wanted bandit kingpin, in a coordinated offensive against his camps in Zamfara and Sokoto states on March 20, military sources said Monday — the latest in a sustained campaign against the armed network responsible for some of the most devastating mass kidnappings and community attacks in Nigeria’s volatile northwest over the past five years.
The operation, led by the 8 Division Strike Force of the Nigerian Army Sokoto, commenced at approximately 6:00 a.m. on March 20, targeting Turji’s camp deep inside Kagara Forest. The hideouts struck are located in Fakai community, straddling Shinkafi Local Government Area in Zamfara State and Isa Local Government Area in Sokoto State.
The two sites represent the geographic core of Turji’s operational base — a dense, cross-border forest terrain that has shielded his network from repeated security interventions and allowed it to range freely between the two states.
The operation did not proceed without cost or complication. During the advance into the forest, two combat support vehicles broke down near Maberaya village in Isa Local Government Area, temporarily halting troops’ forward movement. Bandits from Turji’s camp exploited the pause, launching an ambush from elevated positions and forest cover — a tactically sophisticated response that indicated a degree of advance intelligence or surveillance on the military column’s movement. Troops responded with superior firepower, engaging and neutralizing several bandits in the firefight. Three soldiers and one operative of the Department of State Services sustained injuries during the exchange and were evacuated to the 8 Division Military Hospital in Sokoto for treatment. The military did not confirm a specific death toll for the bandits killed, though multiple sources described the number as scores.
The operation also prompted military authorities to directly address a separate circulating claim. Reports had spread on Nigerian social media that more than 150 bandits drowned in a boat accident in the Sabon Gida area of Sokoto State — a narrative that military sources dismissed categorically. “The report alleging that over 150 bandits died in a boat accident is fake and should be disregarded,” a military source told the News Agency of Nigeria. The National Inland Waterways Authority’s area manager for Sokoto, Bello Bala, corroborated that dismissal, noting that the River Sabon Gida was not currently navigable and could not have been the scene of any waterborne event of the kind described.
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Bello Turji, whose full name is Turji Bello Jangebe, has occupied a singular position in the northwest’s security crisis for several years, operating from a base in the Fakai forests that straddles the Zamfara-Sokoto boundary and commanding a network estimated to number in the thousands. The Fakai-Kagara Forest axis has long been identified as a strategic enclave for bandit activity due to its dense terrain and proximity to multiple state boundaries — terrain features that make it resistant to conventional military clearance and allow fighters to evade across state lines when pressure intensifies in any single jurisdiction.
Turji’s trajectory within the northwest’s security landscape has followed a complicated and contested arc. He emerged as one of several prominent bandit commanders who engaged in peace dialogue with the Zamfara State government between 2021 and 2022 — a process that briefly reduced violence in some areas and produced his public appearance at a ceremony hosted by then-Governor Bello Matawalle. Those talks ultimately collapsed, and Turji subsequently resumed large-scale attacks that have included mass kidnappings of students, village raids, and the killing of soldiers and police officers across Zamfara, Sokoto, and Katsina states. He has been designated a global terrorist by the United States government, which imposed financial sanctions and travel bans on him in 2022 — a designation that has not constrained his operational capacity inside Nigeria.
Zamfara State has borne the heaviest cumulative toll of the northwest’s banditry crisis. Since 2011, thousands of civilians have been killed, tens of thousands displaced, and more than 35,000 people abducted for ransom across the state, according to estimates by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data project. Agricultural activity across large parts of the state has been effectively suspended, with farming communities unable to access their land due to persistent threats from armed groups that have transformed the economic and demographic character of the state’s rural zones.
