. Security agents plan to storm forest with bulldozers, APCs to rescue victims unhurt
Police in Imo State have located the kidnappers’ camp where 19 prospective National Youth Service Corps members abducted on the highway in the state are being kept.
But fears that Improvised Explosive Devices might have been planted in the camp have delayed security operatives’ plan to storm their den.
Imo State Commissioner of Police, Audu Garba Bosso, disclosed this on Saturday while giving an update on the command’s ongoing search-and-rescue operation.
Bosso said on Friday, police drones located the suspected kidnappers’ camp after security operatives trailed the abductors into the forest.
But the police commissioner said the operatives exercised caution because intelligence indicated that the camp had been mined with IEDs.
Bosso said, “Any moment, we’ll still move into the bush. Yesterday, we were in the bush, we trailed them up to a particular location.
“But at that point in time, we couldn’t move in to where the coordinate showed us where they are because we ran drones yesterday. And the drone actually showed us exactly their location.
“But our predicament is that with the intel we have, the IED is—the camp is mined with IEDs.”
The police commissioner added that security agencies were preparing to move into the area with heavy equipment, including bulldozers and armoured personnel carriers, in an effort to rescue the victims safely.
“We are moving in there with high, you know, high-velocity vehicles, that is, bulldozers, we’re moving in with bulldozers and APCs to see how we’re going to rescue these victims unhurt.”
The police action is coming two days after gunmen abducted prospective corps members travelling from Ibadan, Oyo State, to orientation camps in Abia and Akwa Ibom states.
The corps members were travelling in two buses when the gunmen waylaid them along the Owerri-Onitsha Road in the Umunoha area of Imo State on Thursday.
According to the Managing Director of Uko Akwa Ibom Motors Nigeria Limited, Isiah Akpan, the gunmen took all the 19 prospective corps members and other passengers travelling in the buses into the bush.
Akpan said the drivers escaped and alerted security personnel at a nearby checkpoint, prompting security agencies to immediately begin to comb the area.
However, the kidnappers have reportedly demanded N50m ransom for each of the 19 victims, amounting to N950m.
Some family members of the victims were contacted through the phones of their abducted relatives.
One of the victims’ mothers, Mrs Oladosu, said the kidnappers contacted her family through her daughter’s phone, adding that the family saw some of the victims during a video call.
Earlier, police in Imo had said 10 victims were rescued, although its spokesperson, Henry Okoye, could not confirm whether the rescued persons were among the abducted prospective corps members.
