The head of Woro community in Kwara State, Umar Bio Salihu, said armed bandits operated in the area for about 10 hours before security forces arrived, resulting in dozens of deaths and the destruction of several villages.
Speaking on ARISE Television on Thursday, Salihu said the attackers struck around 5pm, but soldiers only arrived at about 3am the following day. “The military did not attack them. The bandits had gone when the military came,” he said, adding that there was no air interdiction during the assault.
He explained that the community had been left vulnerable after a military base previously stationed there was withdrawn following an earlier attack on the soldiers. Salihu identified the attackers as members of the Mamuda terrorist group and said the assault followed the community’s rejection of the group’s ideology.
Dismissing claims of religious motives, Salihu said most of the victims were Muslims. At least 75 people have been buried, with the death toll expected to rise as bodies are still being recovered. Several villages, including Salihu’s own house, were razed during the attack.
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The Kwara State Governor, AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq, visited the affected communities and ordered the deployment of security personnel. President Bola Tinubu on Wednesday approved the immediate deployment of an Army battalion to the area under a new counter-offensive operation.
The attacks are part of a wider wave of violence across north-central and north-west Nigeria, where rural communities have faced repeated assaults by bandits and extremist groups despite ongoing military operations. In the past four weeks alone, hundreds of people have reportedly been killed or abducted in Niger, Kaduna, Kwara, Katsina, Sokoto, and Zamfara states.