Suspected kidnappers have seized six mourners and abandoned the corpse they were escorting for burial along the Adoka Road in Benue State, in the latest assault on a funeral convoy travelling through one of the North Central region’s most dangerous corridors. The Benue State Police Command has confirmed the abduction, which occurred on Friday evening, and says its officers are working to rescue the victims.
The group had set out from Kano for Okpoga, headquarters of the Okpokwu Local Government Area, to bury a woman, according to accounts from relatives and the local authorities. Their vehicle was intercepted at about 8pm along the Adoka Road, and the six occupants were taken into the bush. The attackers left the woman’s remains on the road, where operatives of the Federal Road Safety Corps found them on Saturday. The body was later moved through a police station in Adoka and deposited at a morgue.
The Chairman of Otukpo Local Government Area, Maxwell Ogiri, who said the driver of the vehicle was his friend, confirmed that the abductors were demanding N15m for the release of the captives. He said security agencies were tracking the kidnappers while local vigilantes and youths joined the search. The police spokesperson in the state, DSP Peter Aondongu, also confirmed that the incident happened on Friday and that efforts to free the victims were under way. As of Monday, the six had not been released.
The attack fits a disturbing pattern that has taken hold across Benue and its border with Kogi this year, in which gunmen target vehicles carrying the dead. In July, a convoy conveying the body of a Deputy Corps Commander of the Federal Road Safety Corps, Augustine Ikwue, to Otukpo for burial was ambushed along the Ochadamu to Ejule road in Kogi State. Nine mourners, among them two FRSC personnel, were seized, and the abductors demanded N450m before the corpse was recovered and buried. Days later, three siblings transporting their late mother’s remains from Abuja were abducted along the Ogobia to Otukpo road in Ohimini.
The Adoka, Ogobia and Otukpo axes have become notorious for such attacks. On 13 October, gunmen abducted a Catholic priest, Reverend Father John Inalegwu Otache, and several others along the Ugbokolo to Ajegbe to Awume road near Ipiga village in the Ohimini Local Government Area. That case ended better than most. The Benue State Police Command said it rescued eight people, including the priest, and arrested two suspects within days, a reminder that security operations do sometimes succeed even as the broader threat grows.
The scale of the problem is laid out in official data. The National Bureau of Statistics, in its Crime Experience and Security Perception Survey, estimated that about 2.2 million kidnapping incidents were recorded nationwide between May 2023 and April 2024, with 65 per cent of affected households paying ransom. The average ransom in that period stood at roughly N2.7m, and the bureau put total payments at about N2.23 trillion. Measured against that average, the N15m demanded for the six Benue captives is steep.
More recent figures suggest the crisis is deepening rather than easing. Research by SBM Intelligence, cited in a shadow report by the Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre and Transparency International, recorded 7,825 people abducted in 1,713 incidents between July 2025 and June 2026, with at least 1,142 killed, a rise of about 66 per cent on the previous year. The North Central zone, which includes Benue, remains among the worst affected, and the report warned that Nigeria is falling short of its targets on reducing violence and organised crime.
For families along these roads, the statistics carry a familiar weight. The journey to bury a loved one has itself become a hazard, and a corpse abandoned on the tarmac has, this year, stopped being a shocking exception. Whether the six mourners seized on the Adoka Road will be freed, and whether the corridor can be made safe before the next convoy sets out, remains to be seen.