No fewer than 50 wedding guests travelling along the Sokoto-Zamfara road, have been abducted by armed gunmen otherwise known as Bandits.
Reports says the victims were abducted along the Tureta-Bakura road, in Gusau, around 6 PM on Saturday after attending a wedding of their colleague in Sokoto State.
The victims were in a Toyota coaster bus owned by the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), a Gusau Local Government Secretariat staff vehicle and two other private vehicles.
Narrating the incident to newsmen on Sunday, Secretary, Union of Communication, Zamfara State, Ashiru Zurmi, said one of the vehicles broke down in Sokoto which took about 40 minutes to be fixed.
“It happened that their motor developed fault at Tureta and they got a mechanic; for about 40 minutes, he assisted them and got the motor repaired; they started coming to Zamfara but within the Tureta and Bakura axis, the kidnappers ambushed them; over 50 people were abducted but Alhamdulilah over 20 people escaped,” Zurmi said.
“We have identified thirty members that are still in captive, luckily today they used phones of those captives (about five of our members) to call us; they only notified us that they are with them.”
Zurmi said he suspected that some persons might have informed the kidnappers about their movement on that road.
“Definitely something like that happened; we have that in our minds that there was an informant that gave the information to the bandits to attack them because it was just only them, other passenger cars were passing but they did not care about them, they only concentrated on the coaster bus that has Zamfara Government number.”
The Union secretary gave a 48-hour ultimatum for security agencies and government authorities to ensure the rescue of the abductees.
