Bandits identified with notorious kingpin, Dankarami, have killed eight of the 10 men they kidnapped in Zurmi in Zamfara State for the failure of their relatives to pay a N6m ransom, residents of the town have said.
The bandits abducted the victims on September 1, last year after a failed attempt to attack the local government headquarters.
Having failed to access the town, residents said the bandits laid siege and abducted the 10 people in the early morning of the following day.
Zamfara, like many states in the Nigerian Northwest, is beleaguered by security threats, especially kidnapping and banditry. The crime has become rampant and the bandits are seemingly irrepressible.
Thousands of people have been killed or kidnapped in the North-west and Niger State since 2021. In the first three weeks of 2022, at least 486 people were killed by non-state actors across Nigeria, over half of them by bandits in the North-west and Niger State.
Two escaped
A youth leader in the Zurmi, Abdullahi Muhammad, told PREMIUM TIMES over the phone that two weeks after the abduction, two of the 10 victims escaped from the bandits’ hideout not far from Zurmi town.
“I was among those who received them (victims) at the local government secretariat after they escaped. They told us that the bandits were torturing them for their refusal to give them the numbers of their relatives to discuss ransom,” he said.
He said the bandits later got the numbers of some of the relatives of those still being held and started communicating with them.
Eight killed
According to Mr Muhammad, the bandits kept changing the ransoms and how to deliver the money, which delayed the response from the relatives.
“Only those two who escaped made it, the other eight were tortured to death by the bandits. First, they said N50 million but changed it to N20 million the following money. After those two phone calls, they didn’t call for close to 10 days, then called back again,” he said.
According to the youth leader, the bandits kept threatening that they would kill the victims if the families did not respond to their demands, “but the dilemma of the families was that they (bandits) were not even straightforward in their demands.”
It was gathered that the eight slain victims were all men.
They were named as: Idi Mijin Hajia, Malam Zubairu, Murtala Nagoma, Umar Muhammad, Siddi Na umara, Habibu DanBala, Yahaya Attah and Zayyanu Nagoma.
Efforts by PREMIUM TIMES to speak with any of the relatives of those killed failed. But another resident of Zurmi, Usman Kabiru, said he was part of the initial negotiations through Idris Nagoma family.
The family lost two members, Murtala and Zayyanu.
“Even when they called to announce the death of the victims, I was there also. We felt they wanted to kill them because they were not straightforward in the dealings from the beginning,” he said
On how the bandits finally settled for N6 million, Mr Kabiru said the relatives of those killed came together to accept the final ransom by the bandits.
“We pleaded with the bandits during the negotiations and we were happy that they accepted the N6m ransom but they later called to say that the victims had all died. They even told us that they tortured them to death because we were not serious in the ransom negotiations and that some of the victims tried running away,” he said over the phone.
The Zamfara police command spokesperson, Mohammed Shehu, did not respond to calls and SMS sent to him on the issue.