•By Halimah Olamide
There are reports that about 45 passengers in three fully loaded 15-seater commercial buses have been kidnapped by gun men in Orokam, along the Otukpo-Enugu Road in Ogbadigbo Local Government Area, LGA, of Benue state.
Vanguard News gathered from an eyewitness and driver of one of the commercial transportation companies in Makurdi, who narrowly escaped the ambush with his passengers, that the incident occurred at about 3:30pm on Thursday.
The heavily armed men were reported to have ambushed the ill-fated commercial vehicles when they sprang from the nearby forests in Orokam and forced their drivers at gunpoint to pull over.
According to him, “it was easy for the armed men to stop the vehicles because that portion of the road is very bad.
“The first person that came out of the bush was a heavily built young man who came out carrying an automatic rifle and a chain of bullets round his body. I saw three of them come out of the bush with guns, this was at about 3:30pm on Thursday in broad daylight.
“Their target was obviously commercial buses, maybe because of the number of passengers that could harvest ransom for them. In this particular instance, they took passengers in three-loaded buses that were heading toward Otukpo.
“My saving grace was that a J-5 articulated vehicle was in my front. So when we were all stopped, before they got to my vehicle, I jumped out and ran into the bush, and all my passengers also followed.
“Luckily, none of my passengers were caught by the armed men.”
Meanwhile, in recent days, there has been multiple reports of kidnapping cases across the country.