With quivering lips and eyes brimming with tears, Aisha Mohammed (not her real name), a 35-year-old survivor of captivity, sat under a neem tree at a safe house in one of the villages in the Dutsin-ma Local Government Area of Katsina State.
Her voice trembled as she recounted her three-month ordeal in the forest hideout of ruthless bandits who snuffed life out of her newborn twins — feeding them to dogs.
“They said my babies cried too much… that their cries could attract soldiers. They told me, ‘Your twins are a risk. We’re ending the problem today.’ The next thing I saw was blood,” she told SaharaReporters in an exclusive chat, wiping a steady stream of tears with the hem of her scarf.
“They killed them and… and gave them to dogs. My babies…”
Her haunting story, one of several unreported; began around 2am on a quiet night in Dutsin-ma, Katsina State. Bandits, on April 18, 2025 stormed her community in a hail of gunfire, abducting her and several others.
Her husband, a local vigilante, confronted them and was gunned down alongside other defenders.
“I didn’t even know he was dead until after I was released. For weeks I had been praying he’d rescue me… not knowing he died that night,” she said, her voice breaking.
In the bandits’ forest camp, hell became her daily reality. She went into labour without aid or mercy. There were no midwives, no medical assistance — just the cold ground, pain, and fear. She birthed her twin boys assisted by other female captives in the dark, surrounded by armed men, and nursed them under constant threat.
“I begged them — I pleaded. I said I would take them deeper into the bush so they wouldn’t cry loud. But they didn’t care. They said my babies were disturbing their peace.”
One week after their birth, the twins were murdered in front of her and other abductees. The killers dismembered the tiny corpses and tossed them to dogs.
“I watched with my eyes. My hands were tied. I fainted… I died and came back. Nothing hurts more.”
Food was barely enough to survive. Captives were fed once daily with tuwon dawa, a coarse dough made from guinea corn, served with a soured, salty gruel made from the same ingredient.
“We ate it every day. Just once a day. And if you refused, you’d starve,” she said.
Worse than the hunger was the constant sexual violence.
“Some of us were raped daily,” Aisha whispered. “Sometimes, even in front of others. If you cried, they laughed. If you resisted, they beat you,” she recounted while sobbing.
She also gave rare insight into the staggering wealth the bandits were hoarding.
“They stored Nigeria’s N1000 notes in sacks like rice. I saw it with my eyes. When they ran out of papers to wrap their weed, they’d tear the notes and roll marijuana with it. The money there… it’s not millions, it’s hundreds of millions,” she said.
Even more disturbing were the terror plans she overheard.
“They talked about attacking the Federal University in Dutsin-ma. They said the government would pay more ransom for professors and students. They planned to kidnap in dozens and use the ransom to buy anti-aircraft guns and launch more attacks,” she disclosed.
“They also said Sabon Gari Safana village would be next — that they would ‘clear it out’ because the residents were providing intelligence to security operatives.”
She and five others escaped one night when the bandits carelessly slept on duty — a month after the twins were killed.
But her story raises painful, urgent questions about the state of Nigeria’s internal security and intelligence capabilities. How do armed groups — often deep in the forest — continue to coordinate elaborate kidnappings, move with military precision, and collect multimillion-naira ransoms using high-grade telecoms infrastructure without interception?
With reports like Aisha’s painting a picture of terror groups possessing hundreds of millions in cash, military-grade weapons, and plans to attack strategic institutions, the failure of Nigeria’s surveillance, counterterrorism, and ransom-monitoring systems becomes more glaring. The bandits she described used modern smartphones to communicate, track news, and even access YouTube tutorials on weaponry. Yet, they move and operate for months — even years — without disruption.
“They used new phones and always had network. They’d say, ‘Government no fit track us here.’ And truly, no one ever came… until the day we escaped,” Aisha said.
Her survival — as miraculous as it is — only underscores a brutal reality: countless others are still held in such camps, lost in the wilderness of failed intelligence, failed governance, and forgotten humanity.
Aisha — we’ve given her this pseudonym to protect her identity — is now under trauma care, struggling to piece together a life shattered by unimaginable horror. Her testimony sheds crucial light on the growing menace of armed banditry in northern Nigeria, where human life is daily reduced to ashes under the boots of terror.
