About 18 students of Gamji College of Health Technology, Sokoto State, have reportedly been abducted while travelling to their home towns in Oyo State.
The incident happened within the past 48 hours along the route to Oyo State. The bus driver was reportedly killed during the attack.
A youth leader from Oke-Ogun confirmed the incident to SaharaReporters, correcting an earlier report that the victims were students of Usmanu Danfodiyo University (UDUS).
He said the students were travelling in a chartered bus arranged by Gamji College of Health Technology from Sokoto to Oke-Ogun, specifically Igboho.
“Sadly, the unfortunate incident is being confirmed by me because I’m from Oke-Ogun too, and our people have confirmed that it truly happened in the past 48 hours.
“But it wasn’t a bus conveying UDUS students. It was a bus taking students from Gamji College of Health Technology, Sokoto, to Oke-Ogun, Igboho to be precise.
“The driver was killed and all the students were kidnapped. They have reached the Mokwa side,” the youth leader said.
He added that the driver’s remains were buried on Saturday. Other sources said as many as 18 students were taken away after the driver was killed.
The report has raised concern because of previous attacks along the Mokwa axis.
The incident comes days after 19 corps members were kidnapped in Imo State. The victims were travelling from Ibadan to orientation camps in Abia and Akwa Ibom when gunmen attacked their buses on Owerri-Onitsha Road.
Isiah Akpan of Uko Akwa Ibom Motors said kidnappers demanded N50 million per victim, totalling N950 million.
Omoyele Sowore said the incident showed that NYSC had “outlived its usefulness in its present form.”
“You cannot force young Nigerians to ‘serve their fatherland’ when the same country cannot guarantee their safety while they travel to their places of service,” he wrote.
He called for the scheme’s immediate suspension and eventual abolition, while proposing that corps members temporarily serve in their states of origin.
