No fewer than nineteen (19) persons, including children were killed by herdsmen in some communities in the Gwer west local government area of Benue State.
Communities attacked includes, Tse Amgbem Udam near Aondoana and Agbanu Seghev/Ukuse all in the Gwer West LGA of the State.
Similarly, the leader of the bandits Sani Jalingo , who abducted 17 students from the Green Field University, Kaduna, have threatened to kill the remaining students in their custody, if the ransom of ₦100 million is not paid on or before Tuesday (today).
Jalingo issued the threat, in an interview with Hausa Service of the Voice Of America; demanded a sum of ₦100 million and ten motorcycles.
He warned that failure for Kaduna State government or the students families to meet the demands on Tuesday, would lead to the killings of the remaining students.
He said about seventeen (17) abducted students, including fifteen (15) females and two (2) males were in their custody. Jalingo disclosed that the families of the remaining students had so far paid ₦55 million. He said the latter money was used to feed the abductees.
Subsequently, on April 20, about twenty-three (23) students and a member of the staff of Green Field University, located along Kaduna/Abuja highway was kidnapped. Few days later, five of the students were killed by the bandits.
Meanwhile, groups, including the Arewa Consultative Forum, Middle Belt Forum, the Southernn Kaduna People’s Union and a Tiv group, condemned the killings in Benue State and the threats by bandits to kill students of the Greenfield University, Kaduna State.
The Middle Belt Forum, while reacting to the threats by the bandits, described the threat as unfortunate that some people had chosen to take the law into their own hands under the guise of banditry, while the government whose responsibility is to protect the citizens from such develish acts watched helplessly, without doing anything.
Arewa Consultative Forum, through its National Publicity Secretary, Emmanuel Yare, in an interview with Punch, lamented that government lacked the capacity to stop the horror.
He stated, “We in Nigeria are unlucky to be visited by this percular kind of wickedness. You captured students, kept them in a remote place, and just shoot them one by one before the eyes of traumatized citizens, and a government that lacks the capacity to stop the horror? We never knew things would get to this.”
Ijeoma Njoku reporting, Obinwannem News
