Bandit-terrorists Demand $66,000 Ransom for 14 Children, 2 adults
By Luka Binniyat and Mike Odeh
(Kaduna) – It’s a Nigerian parent’s worst nightmare. Two days after vicious criminals have kidnapped your five children, the cell phone rings: the raspy voice of the kidnapper coughs out a demand for a king’s ransom, and in the background, you hear your five children screaming from pain. But that is the reality for thousands of Nigerian parents every year.
Armed kidnappers who stormed three Christian homes in a suburb of Kaduna city, Northwest Nigeria, Saturday night (Sept. 7), are torturing 14 Christian children and two adults. They demand a ransom of $66,000 by Monday, Sept. 16, Truth Nigeria can confirm. The kidnappers typically beat their hostages with wooden rods daily and often videotape the torture to drive home their demands.
Armed men, said to be bandits of the Fulani ethnic group on Saturday night raided a town called Mining Village, 5 miles southeast of Kaduna city center. They snatched 14 school children, a mother of three and a householder, all Christians.
Solomon Kish 54, father of six of the children, spoke to Truth Nigeria, Wednesday, Sept. 11.
Kish said that the kidnappers had contacted him on Monday and said that they wanted N300 million Naira ($200,000 dollars) but later dropped the amount to N100 million Naira ($65,000 dollars) Tuesday. Kish spoke to Truth Nigeria in front of his residence at Mining Village, Chikun County, Kaduna State.
A peaceful night interrupted by terror
Explaining how the kidnapping took place, Kish, a high school teacher, said: “It was around 11:30 pm on Saturday night and it was gently drizzling.
“The night was cold, and most homes were deeply sleeping,” he told Truth Nigeria by the gate of his empty house which he has put up for sale.
“It was dark because the power company wasn’t supplying power at that time of the night. My son, Ezra, who is 20 years and a student at Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria, had one of his classmates who came to visit him. They were all sleeping in one room with my four other children who are aged between 18 and 7 years,” he said with weary eyes that has seen little or no sleep for four days.
He said that while trying to break into the house, he made an escape from the rear door hoping to get help to ward off the terrorists.
“I started running through the streets screaming for help. I was calling on residents and our vigilante (civilian volunteer guards) to come out and help, but I got no response,” he said.
“They broke into the compound of one man who is a sailor and comes home only after six months in the sea. He was not around. So, they carried his wife and two children.
“They went and captured another man, his wife and six children,” he added
Soldiers arrived late and left
They gathered them and took them down that marshland through that sugar cane farm,” he said, pointing at the farm holding tall sugarcane crops looking like giant bamboo trees.
The soldiers arrived one hour after the kidnappers had disappeared, he added.
That was when the residents started coming out of their homes, he said.
After a census of those kidnapped was done, 14 children, one man and two women were missing.
Kidnapped woman returned
“Strangely, around 6 a.m., one of the abducted women came back, according to him.
“She was too fat, and she had a knee problem, so they dumped her and went with her husband and six children,” he said.
After a tense two days’ wait, the kidnapper finally placed a call to Kish on Monday morning.
“When I picked the call, I heard the sound of whipping, and I heard my children screaming for help,” Kish said. “Then a voice now spoke in Hausa. He said that the children, a man and woman were in their custody. He said that they would be whipped to death if a ransom of N300 million Naira ($200,000 dollars) was not paid within 48 hours. I pleaded for mercy, telling them that I was just a school teacher with a salary that’s less than N80,000 ($53 dollars) per month.
Ransom now $65,000
“Yesterday, they called and said that they have reduced the ransom to N100 million Naira ($65,000 dollars) which we must pay within four days,” he added. (The deadline later was changed to Monday, Sept. 16.)
“I have placed my house for sale. My church members, friends and family members are sending in their contributions. I am still begging them to bring down the ramson. Since these criminals can keep calling me and the police and soldiers cannot track them, I have lost faith in the Nigerian state,” he said.
Kaduna State Police Command Spokesman of Kaduna State Police Command, (ASP) Mansir Hassan did not respond to inquiries by Truth Nigeria at the time of filing this report.
Mining village is less than a mile west of Mahuta suburb of Kaduna where bandits abducted Magistrate Janet Musa and her four children in June this year and killed her eldest son before they were ‘rescued.”
According to a report from Zenit, a Vatican-supported website, 11,185 Christians have been kidnapped in Nigeria, compared to 7, 899 Muslims. Zenit references a new report titled “Countering the Myth of Religious Indifference in Nigerian Terrorism,” released recently by the Observatory for Religious Freedom in Africa (ORFA). The four-year study reveals the genocidal killings and kidnappings that have taken place in Nigeria from October 2019 to September, 2023, covering the end of the tenure of President Muhammadu Buhari and the first half of the Administration of President Bola Tinubu.
Luka Binniyat and Mike Odeh James are conflict reporters for TruthNigeria.
