A relative says the kidnappers holding about 20 graduates in Imo have cut their demand tenfold. Police say they’ve located the suspected camp and haven’t gone in.

Police in Imo say they’ve located the suspected camp. Drones pinpointed it on Friday, and Commissioner of Police Audu Bosso described the problem on Saturday. “With the intel we have, the camp is mined with IEDs,” he said. Police plan to go in with bulldozers and armoured vehicles.

On the same Saturday, in Ibadan, parents told the Olubadan, Oba Rashidi Ladoja, that the kidnappers had given them 24 hours to pay N50 million for each child. The deadline was due to run out on Sunday.

Then the number changed. On Sunday, Alhaja Alimot Akande told Tribune and Vanguard the kidnappers had come down. “They have come down to N5 million each,” she said. For 20 captives, Tribune put that at N100 million. She said she couldn’t say how much the families had raised. Relatives also told Vanguard the captives have been beaten since Saturday, an allegation police haven’t addressed in the reports cited here. “The police are telling us to still be buying time,” a relative said.

No report cited here explains why the demand fell, or says what happened when the deadline ran out. The latest reports are dated Sunday and early Monday.

The two buses left Samonda Park in Ibadan on Wednesday. Traffic near Benin slowed them, so they reached Onitsha late and the passengers slept in Oba, said Isiah Akpan, managing director of Uko Akwa Ibom Motors. They set off again around 5am. At about 6:30am on Thursday, police say, gunmen attacked both buses at Umunoha in Imo State. One was heading to Uyo and the other to Bende. The drivers escaped and alerted a nearby checkpoint, Akpan said.

Alhaja Akande was in touch with a family member on one of the buses on Wednesday night. She says she told her to sleep inside the bus because of the security situation. She learnt about the attack from a social media post by one of the passengers who got away. At the company’s terminal in Ibadan, she says, she asked for the passenger manifest and was refused. The Imo police had said on Thursday night that they were working with the NYSC Directorate to reach the families.

One parent said in a Facebook video that her daughter had been sharing her location with the family on WhatsApp. Then the daughter sent one word, “kidnapper”, and her phone became unreachable. Police haven’t confirmed that account.

Nobody agrees on how many were taken. Police first said 10 victims were rescued at the scene and that the number abducted was being verified. The Defence Headquarters later said 30 passengers were on the buses, 20 were abducted and 10 were rescued, eight of them prospective corps members. Parents say those 10 weren’t rescued. They say they escaped through the bush. Akpan puts the number taken at 19.

The ransom moves with the headcount. At the original N50 million a head, 19 was N950 million. Twenty was N1 billion.

Whether the 10 were rescued or escaped isn’t settled in the reports cited here. The Chief of Defence Staff, General Olufemi Oluyede, commended the troops, the Defence Headquarters said, and said the operation to rescue the remaining abductees continues.

Mrs Oladosu says the kidnappers phoned from her daughter Greatness’s number. The family saw her and other corps members sitting on the ground in the bush, crying, she said. A relative told Leadership the kidnappers let one graduate speak to his father, and allegedly use such calls to gauge whether a family can raise the money. One mother, who asked not to be named, said she was on a prayer mountain while her family ran “helter-skelter” to find it.

Police Deputy Inspector-General Shehu Nadada arrived in Imo on Friday with two commissioners of police, a police statement said. On Sunday, Oyo’s government said it was working with Imo’s government and the security agencies, and described the graduates as being of Oyo origin.

At the Olubadan’s home in Bodija, Alhaja Akande and Oyebola Akande spoke for the families. “There is no way we can raise such an amount at this period,” they said.

In August 2023, eight graduates from Akwa Ibom were taken in Zamfara on their way to a camp in Sokoto. Their families paid N13 million. The kidnappers then asked for N200 million more. Five months on, NYSC said it was still working to free the remaining four. The previous highway abduction of corps members, in Kogi on 26 August, ended in a rescue five days later, the presidency said.

“Don’t let them kill our children,” the Akandes told the Olubadan.