The Imo State Police Command has located a suspected hideout where 19 prospective National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) members abducted in the state are believed to be held.
However, security operatives have yet to storm the location due to intelligence reports that the camp may have been booby-trapped with improvised explosive devices.
The state Commissioner of Police, Audu Garba Bosso, disclosed this on Saturday during a media interview while providing an update on the ongoing search-and-rescue operation.
Bosso said security operatives tracked the abductors into the bush on Friday before deploying drones to establish the exact location of their hideout.
According to him, the aerial surveillance successfully identified the suspected camp, but the security agencies were unable to immediately advance to the location because of intelligence indicating that the area had been mined with IEDs.
He 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 explained that security forces were making preparations to enter the area with specialised equipment to minimise the risk to the victims and the operatives.
“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,” Bosso added.
The development followed the abduction of the prospective corps members who were travelling from Ibadan, Oyo State, to orientation camps in Abia and Akwa Ibom states.
The victims were travelling in two buses when gunmen attacked them along the Owerri-Onitsha Road in the Umunoha area of Imo State on Thursday.
The Managing Director of Uko Akwa Ibom Motors Nigeria Limited, Isiah Akpan, said the abductors took 19 passengers, all prospective corps members, into the bush.
According to him, the drivers managed to escape and alerted security personnel at a nearby checkpoint, leading to the commencement of a search operation.
The abductors have reportedly demanded N50m for each victim, bringing the total ransom demand to N950m. Some of the victims’ families were said to have been contacted through the phones of their abducted relatives.
One of the victims’ mothers, Mrs Oladosu, also said her family was contacted through her daughter’s phone and that some of the abducted persons were seen during a video call.
The Imo State Police Command had earlier announced that 10 victims were rescued, although the command’s spokesperson, Henry Okoye, said he could not immediately confirm whether those rescued were among the prospective corps members.
The latest development suggests that security operatives have now narrowed down the suspected location of the remaining victims as efforts intensify to secure their safe release.
