A Nigerian Law School student, David Obiora, who was abducted with others on the night of July 26, 2025, has clarified that their kidnappers were Tiv indigenes from Benue State and not Fulani, as widely speculated.
In an interview with Vanguard, Obiora refuted claims by the Nigerian Police that security operatives rescued him and five other students. He explained that they were only released after their families and friends paid ransoms.
Obiora, a student at the Yola campus of the Nigerian Law School, said the group was kidnapped along the Zakibiam–Mukari Expressway after boarding a company transport vehicle from Onitsha en route to Yola.
“We were six law students in the bus with the driver, three other passengers going to Cameroon, and a woman from Anambra heading to Yola for a holiday,” he recalled. “We were kidnapped around 9 p.m. between Zakibiam and Mukari, near a town called Jootar. About ten armed men, four with AK-47 rifles and others with machetes and daggers, took us 20 kilometres into the bush.”
According to Obiora, the kidnappers drove the bus until it got stuck, then called for reinforcements who arrived on motorcycles. The victims were moved deeper into the forest, where they met four other captives, including a Federal University Wukari staff member, a youth corps member named Dauda Wisdom, a pastor recovering from surgery, and an unidentified man. They were held for six days and each was freed only after paying N10 million.
“Let the record be clear,” Obiora stressed. “The Nigeria Police did not rescue us. The Law School did not rescue us. The Council of Legal Education did not rescue us. We were released after ransoms were paid.”
He identified the gang leader as “Matthew”, believed to be a dismissed or deserting soldier, and said most of the kidnappers spoke Tiv, with possibly one or two silent Fulani accomplices. “They are from the same community where we were held. Children as young as two or three years old were playing with guns in front of us. The bandits’ wives cooked and fetched muddy water for us, the same food and water they consumed themselves.”
Obiora said one gang member, also named David, boasted of being in the kidnapping business for over nine years, claiming to own two cars and support his family while remaining in hiding as a wanted man. Matthew, on the other hand, claimed to have a “juju” man in Kano who offered him spiritual protection against the army.
He described the abduction as terrifying, admitting that he initially thought the attackers were Fulani until their dialect and appearance revealed they were Tiv. Meeting earlier abductees who had been held for 22 days and assured him the captors did not kill hostages helped calm him, though the conditions remained dire.
“We ate only once a day, and the food was unhealthy. We drank muddy water you wouldn’t use to wash a car,” he said.
Following their release, the victims trekked for hours through dense bush paths from Benue into Taraba, eventually finding a restaurant near a motor park. They spent the night there before linking up with a transport company manager who assisted them in continuing their journey to Yola.
