Wedding party of 18 abducted in ambush meant for Niger Governor’s Chief of Staff

An ambush that appeared targeted at the Niger State Governor’s Chief of Staff (CoS), Mallam Ibrahim Balarabe, on Sunday appears to have gone awry with 18 passengers in a commercial bus taken in his stead.

The 18 were part of guests returning from a wedding ceremony in Rijau, Rijau Local Government Area (LGA).

Police spokesman in the state, Wasiu Abiodun, was not available for comments and did not respond to messages to his phone line.

The Niger State Transport Authority (NSTA) bus that appeared at a road block believed to have been put in place for Balarabe was stopped, its passengers, except a woman and her baby, were herded into the forest.

Balarabe’s convoy arrived to the sorry state of the woman, her baby, and an empty bus; picked up the woman; and is believed to have scrambled a security response to the unfortunate incident.

Sources said the bandits numbered about 40, based on information gathered from the nursingmother..

The CoS was on his way from Kagara, his hometown in Rafi LGA, where he had gone early Sunday morning to participate in the All Progressive Congress (APC) revalidation and registration exercise.

The late afternoon incident took place at Kundu village, less than a quarter of a kilometer from Zungeru Bridge on the Minna -Tegina road in Rafi LGA.

A top government official in the CoS entourage confirmed the incident, adding in a telephone interview, “The only thing I can tell you now is we have rescued the woman and her baby and she is in the vehicle with us and we are on our way to Minna. She told us that the bandits blocked the way and went away with other 18 passengers in the bus.

“No government official was among those kidnapped. I can’t give more than that for now because the woman is traumatised and we cannot be asking her too many questions for now.”