Nigerian police have launched a man-hunt for armed men who attacked buses conveying some travellers in the southern part of the country, whisking away a large number of them.
The incident occured near Ifon, a town along the Benin-Owo expressway in the southwestern state of Ondo. A team of police officers rescued some victims of the accident on Sunday. This information was recieved from the spokeswoman for the police in Ondo, Funmilayo Ibukun Odunlami.
Odunlami stated, “I can confirm that some of the victims were rescued during an operation by the police on Sunday afternoon. But I cannot give the exact figure of those rescued because our men are still working to rescue the others,” .
According to her, the number of travellers abducted by the armed men was yet to be authenticated, as the rescue operation was still in progress.
The gunmen emerged from a bush in Ifon on Saturday evening, just as two fully loaded buses from the neighbouring Edo state to Ondo were travelling along that route. According to the reports of the sources, adding at least 32 travellers, who were returning after attending a funeral in Edo, had been abducted.
A similar altercation took place in the North West region of Nigeria on Friday, September 2, where armed individuals had abducted worshippers while they were observing the jamu’at prayers. The abduction incident took place at the Jumu’at Central Mosque in the Gummi local government.
According to the statements from eye-witnesses, the attackers were disguised as worshippers. They had hidden their weapons in their clothes until they had the chance to infiltrate the mosque, following which they fired sporadically, terrorizing the victims and herded a number of the victims into a nearby forest.
Armed gangs have been terrorizing areas of north-west and central Nigeria for years. recently, the violence has even spread to the southeast, where separatist group Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) has mainly been blamed for causing unrest.
