Saturday, 29 May 2021: The Kaduna State Government has confirmed that some persons were unaccounted for after bandits blocked the Abuja-Kaduna highway on Friday.

However, the government said “reports that the bandits kidnapped scores of people” had not been confirmed by security officials.

The government said some gunmen blocked the highway at about 3:30 p.m. “but security agents responded swiftly to distress calls and checked their operation”.

A former senator, Shehu Sani, had raised an alarm on his twitter handle that he received a distress call from a traveller that “the bandits blocked the road between Jere and Katari at about 4 p.m.”

“I have just got a call that bandits have blocked the Kaduna-Abuja road, in between Jere and Katari village in this broad daylight. Scores of people were kidnapped while many have made a fast u-turn in the face of gunshots,” Sani wrote on his Twitter handle.

Also, a traveller @jpjohnson61, said ”he was caught up in the whole thing.”

“I have never been this scared in my life. Situation is calm now. A joint military operation just cleared the road, we literally drove into them, GOD IS GREAT,” he wrote in reply to Sani’s tweet.

A driver who plies the road every day also told CEOAFRICA that “he saw many cars turning back with their car headlights on, and many were parked at a distance for everything to calm.”

Kaduna govt responds

Kaduna State Commissioner of Internal Security and Home Affairs, Samuel Aruwan, in a statement late Friday, said security agencies had not confirmed the number of those possibly abducted on the highway.