Bandits kidnap students from Federal University Gusau

When some of their classmates were abducted in Sabon-Gida and Damba in June, some university students from Zamfara State protested.

The Federal University of Gusau students were kidnapped in the early hours of Friday, again an undetermined number of them.

The Sabon-Gida hamlet in Zamfara State’s Bungudu Local Government Area was overrun by armed bandits in huge numbers.

Nazeer Sabon-Gida, a Sabon-Gida resident, told Channels Television that the gunmen entered the neighbourhood at around 3 am and began firing randomly.

He claimed that three student dorms had been robbed and that all of the occupants had been seized by the robbers.

He claimed, “They came into the town around three in the morning and began firing randomly.”

“The bandits broke into three hostels and abducted all the students there, so we haven’t been able to confirm the exact number of students taken.” Their numbers are now difficult to estimate.

Another source told Channels Television that although the robbers and Nigerian Army personnel were engaged in a bloody fire battle, it did not stop the bandits from fleeing with the abducted victims.

The bandits were “seriously engaged with the army troops, but the way these bandits operate, they will divide themselves into two, one group will move with the kidnapped victims while the other will stay behind to protect the first group,” he claimed.

In contrast to the second group, who engaged the soldiers in a gun fight, the first group had left with the students.

The wave of kidnappings involving their schoolmates in Sabon-Gida and Damba sparked protests from several university students in June.

20 km separate Sabon-Gida hamlet from Gusau, the state capital, which is located across from the main campus of the Federal University of Gusau.

The school’s spokesperson, Umar Usman, did not return many calls from our correspondent to the school’s administration, thus our attempts to contact them were unsuccessful.

In a similar vein, no remarks on the most recent incident have been made by the state’s police command.