Gunmen have allegedly abducted a woman and her two children in Omu-Aran, Irepodun local government area of Kwara State.
The incident happened around 7pm on on Friday near a petrol station at Oko junction area in the ancient town.
The kidnapped woman, said to be the wife of the owner of the filing station, has a shop around the area, it was gathered.
The suspected gunmen were said to have invaded the area and fired gunshots sporadically into the air.
It was also gathered that stray bullets from the gunshots hit two commercial motorcycle riders in the process.
The wounded Okada riders said to have been rushed to an unknown hospital in the town, are recuperating.
As at the time of filing this report, it was not known if the alleged abductors of the woman and her two children had contacted the family for ransom payment.
Spokesperson of Kwara Command Ajayi Okasanmi told The Nation said: “I am not aware of the incident, but I will get back to you as soon as I am officially briefed of the development.”
A large group of Boko Haram terrorists have moved out of their base in North-East Nigeria to join forces with criminal gangs and bandits in the North-West where they are engaged in weapons training and kidnapping, military sources told Agence France Presse (AFP) on Friday.
Boko Haram’s Islamic State-allied rivals have been consolidating their grip on the North-East after the reported death of Boko Haram leader, Abubakar Shekau, this year, in a major shift in Nigeria’s 12-year insurgency.
Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) has been moving into Boko Haram’s territory, fighting Shekau loyalists, assimilating some or forcing others to surrender to the armed forces, security sources say.
Details of the Boko Haram fighters moving could be the latest sign of cooperation between jihadists and criminal armed groups in the northwest, who raid and loot villages and conduct mass abductions for ransom.
Two military sources said a faction loyal to Shekau based in Borno State had dispatched two commanders and 250 fighters to the Rijana forests in Kaduna State.
Bandits operating in the North-West
Both commanders are allied with Bakoura Buduma, a Boko Haram chief who remains loyal to Shekau and whose fighters are resisting ISWAP consolidation, according to security sources.
“They are the masterminds behind some of the abductions in the northwest,” one of the military sources said.
Both sources said Boko Haram militants were also training the gangs, known locally as bandits, in the use of anti-aircraft guns and explosives and other weapons.
A military spokesman could not immediately be reached for comment. Kaduna State officials also did not immediately reply to a request for confirmation.
A Nigerian security agency communique earlier this month had warned that a Boko Haram commander and foot soldiers were moving across the country from their base in Borno State to Kaduna State and other Nnorth-West states.
Analysts say there have been growing signs jihadists and bandit gangs are developing deeper ties where both stand to gain: Jihadists supply arms while profiting from criminal activity.
North-West Nigeria has long been plagued by the bandit groups, but this year, attacks and kidnappings have surged as the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic feeds criminality.
Criminal gangs have targetted schools in a series of high-profile mass abductions of students and pupils for ransom.
Attacks have also become more brazen. Last month armed criminals assaulted the country’s elite military college in Kaduna and kidnapped one officer while in June criminal gangs shot down an air force jet conducting operations on their camps.
Northwestern Zamfara State, neighbouring Kaduna, earlier this month began a military campaign against bandits and ordered a complete telecoms blackout in a bid to disrupt bandit communications.
Some farmers in Katsina State have decried the negative impact of banditry on farming activities in the state.
According to them, bandits have stopped them from going to their farms to cultivate food items.
The farmers, in an interview with Daily Trust, stated that bandits stormed their farms to either abduct them, kill them or tax them before they could even cultivate on their farms.
They further said every household in the Batsarin-Alhaji area had to pay N500 to the bandits from the last farming season.
Thereafter, the bandits demanded that the villagers supply them with fertilisers.
The villagers had to tax themselves to purchase the fertilisers.
A 65-year-old farmer, Sa’adu Nuhu Batsari, said he stopped tilling three of his farms of 20 hectares each for over two years due to insecurity, lamenting that the heightened banditry is driving both big and subsistence farmers out of farming.
“Once you’re on the farm these people would come and abduct, kill or harass you. I abandoned my farms that are deep inside the bush and now work on the one close to town that is only two hectares. The constant threat stopped me from going to the farm,” he said.
The Chairman of Batsari Local Development Association, Sani Muslim Batsari, lamented that he has been forced to stop cultivating his big farms in the bush in the last two years due to the worsening insecurity situation in Batsari.
“I was harvesting almost 300 bags, but now I harvest only 50 bags or less in my small farm that’s closer to the town.
“Bandits have taken over many forests and cleared them for farming. Some of them can harvest 3,000 bags of grains. Some villagers confided in us that these bandits have hijacked their farms without paying a kobo to them.
“Their activities are taking a toll on our well-being; they have led to a shortage of food and skyrocketing prices and lack of menial jobs for your youth as the large-scale farmers that employ hundreds of them have since abandoned the farms.
“President Buhari had, during the onset of the rainy season, assured us that we would go back to our farms this season. Alas, that has remained a mirage! I can categorically tell you that now more than 70 per cent of farmers in Batsari LG have stopped farming,” he lamented.
Another farmer in Nahuta village, Muhammed Auwal, said from the last farming season, farmers in his village were asked to pay tax to bandits to access their farms but that didn’t protect them from attacks by the bandits.
“They’d seize our cattle or motorbikes. This season, they asked our neighbouring village, Kasai, to contribute money and buy fertilizer for them which they did.
“Last season, every household in Nahuta had to pay N1,000 and we contributed more than N2 million as tax for the bandits which we delivered to them before they allowed us to farm. But this season, we’re lucky because they didn’t ask for tax from us maybe because soldiers have been deployed to our community. But villages surrounding us are still battling with these insecurity issues.”
50-year-old Dahiru Usman Wada, from Kurawa community, confirmed that bandits confiscated his two hectares farm and planted on it.
“They made ridges and planted crops; their motive is to kidnap me if I went there, so I had to leave the farm to them. I have now relocated to Batsari town and got a small farm close to the town” he said.
At least 20 soldiers have been killed and several others missing after an ambush by militants from the Islamic State-backed faction of Boko Haram, the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), formerly known as Jamā’at Ahl as-Sunnah lid-Da’wah wa’l-Jihād in the Marte area of Borno State.
A military source told SaharaReporters gathered that the attack took place in Marte town on Friday.
According to him, the soldiers were on their way to Maiduguri, the state capital before the terrorists struck.
He also stated, “There was another ambush again on Friday. Ambush is the most difficult fight. We lost 20 soldiers. The ambush happened to Marte.”
The source added that two gun trucks were burnt and two others were stolen by the militants during the attack.
He said, “Two gun trunks were burnt, while two other gun trucks were taken by Boko Haram militants.”
Boko Haram and its offshoot, Islamic State West Africa Province, have killed thousands and displaced millions in northeastern Nigeria.
The Nigerian military has repeatedly claimed that the insurgency has been largely defeated and frequently underplays any losses.
In the past months, soldiers have been targeted by the insurgents.
Hundreds of soldiers and officers have been reportedly killed since January 2021.
Some soldiers were killed during the year when two explosive-laden vehicles rammed into a military convoy in Wulgo.
The suicide bombers were identified as Abu Bakr al-Siddiq and Bana Jundullah. The group also claimed four military vehicles were destroyed.
In February, about 20 soldiers were also killed in Malari, Borno State by the insurgents.
SaharaReporters gathered that the soldiers were on patrol to clear some Boko Haram elements in the area following credible intelligence when they were ambushed by the group.
Bandits in Zamfara State, Thursday evening attacked Shinkafi town, including two police facilities, shooting sporadically in the process, Daily Trust Saturday gathered.
The attackers were said to have carted away arms from the ransacked police stations.
Details of the incident were sketchy at the time of going to press, as Shinkafi, like the rest of the state, is not reachable by phone due to the shutdown of telecommunication network earlier this month.
But a resident of the town who spoke from Sokoto confirmed the initial social media report on the attack, Friday morning.
He said the armed men arrived the town when residents were observing the magrib prayer at sunset and operated for over an hour.
The source stated that the attack came following a threat letter to the community earlier that day, where two bandits’ leaders near the community, Kachalla Turji and Halilu Sububu, announced a joint mission to attack Shinkafi and its environs.
Shinkafi is the last major town on the road linking Zamfara with the neighbouring Sokoto State. Bandits had in the past attacked the town at various times.
The Zamfara State police spokesperson could not be reached due to the telecom shutdown, while the spokesman of the Nigeria Police Force, CP Frank Mba, said he had no information about the attack.
The death of Dr. Obadiah Mailafia on September 19 touched me more deeply than I thought it would. He was an exceptionally smart, conciliatory, and gracious man who, in spite of appearances to the contrary, had no space for hate and grudges in his heart.
He and I publicly clashed on at least two occasions. On both occasions, it was he, a much older person, who privately initiated reconciliation with me.
Our first clash happened in 2016 at an online forum called the USAAfrica Dialogue Series where he expressed what I thought were unfair, conspiratorial, facts-free, anti-Muslim opinions. I challenged him with counter facts.
Dr Farouk Kperogi
Instead of responding to me on the forum, he reached out privately and admitted that said his thought-processes were probably distorted by the personal tragedies he had suffered in the hands of mass murderers who were Muslims.
He shared photos of his relatives who had been murdered but assured me that he had no animus toward Muslims or any ethnic group.
It was both touching and humbling.
Then in May 2018, he wrote a column that stereotyped Fulani people as inveterate aggressors whom no West African country wanted to allow into leadership positions. He made many other claims that had no basis in both historical and contemporary facts.
In my June 2, 2018 column titled “El-Rufai’s Hypocritical Xenophobia and Obadiah Mailafia’s Fulaniphobia,” I corrected his inaccuracies.
The column really incensed him, so he wrote a rejoinder that dripped with rage, which caused me to rejoin his rejoinder. Then he reached out to me privately again and, instead of anger, was full of overly flattering praises for me.
That took me aback. He said it was my associating him with El-Rufai that exasperated him and inspired his impassioned response.
He told me one of his younger brothers was a good friend of my friend Moses Ochonu and that he regretted that we had a public spat on the pages of a newspaper.
Ever since then, he would write to me to share his thoughts on my columns.
When he learned of my promotion to a full professor, he sent me one of the kindest, most delicately phrased messages of congratulations that I received from anyone. May his soul rest in peace
The United States prosecutors handling the case of Abba Kyari and co-conspirators in the multimillion-dollar fraud masterminded by Ramon ‘Hushpuppi’ Abbas have accused the disgraced police office of being at large.
Officials said they would proceed with the trial of three other co-conspirators in the international wire fraud and money laundering case that will commence in October and may last until May 2022.
Mr Kyari has been hiding behind Nigeria’s corrupt police system to obstruct his extradition to the U.S. to face trial after his indictment in July.
The police in Nigeria have set up three different panels to examine and reexamine the case filed by the FBI against Mr Kyari.
Last week, police minister Maigari Dingyadi said only President Muhammadu Buhari has the power to determine the disgraced deputy police commissioner’s case.
The minister’s comments quickly met rebuttal from legal experts, who said it was more of an attempt to help Mr Kyari escape justice because his extradition process could easily be handled by the attorney general’s office.
“Defendants Abdulrahman Imraam Juma, Kelly Chibuzo Vincent, and Abba Alhaji Kyari remain at large,” Tracy Wilkinson, a top American prosecutor in charge of the trial, told the trial Judge Otis Wright in a process filed on September 24, 2021, and seen by Peoples Gazette.
The prosecutors and the defence attorneys have agreed to proceed with the trial of Motunrayo Fashola, Bolatito Agbabiaka and Yusuf Anifowoshe, the three co-conspirators already arrested and released on bail.
