Gunmen kidnapped four cocoa farmers from a government research institute. Two are still missing.

It happened at noon on Wednesday. At the Cocoa Research Institute of Nigeria in Idi-Ayunre, Ibadan.

Representatives from the Cocoa Farmers Association of Ogun State had come to submit their annual cocoa seedlings for the 2026 planting season. Official business. Government compound. Daylight. Six gunmen emerged from the bush, intercepted their vehicle on the way to the Nursing Section, and took four people.

A combined team of police, NSCDC, local vigilantes, and Amotekun responded. Two victims were rescued. Three suspects arrested. Two people are still missing.

Read that setting again. The Cocoa Research Institute is a federal facility. Farmers attending it were doing what the agricultural development system asks them to do. They came with seedlings. They left in somebody's hands.

This is what the spread of insecurity looks like in practice. It doesn't announce itself. It shows up inside official spaces, in southwest Nigeria, in the middle of the day, while people are doing paperwork.

The northwest has been burning for years. Katsina lost 18 people to a reprisal attack just this week. Borno buried 23 people on Sunday. Now Ibadan.

The distance between those places used to mean something. It's meaning less every month.

Two people are still in the bush as of this morning. The police say efforts are ongoing.