Bandits in Niger threaten to marry off 21-year-old woman if parents fail to pay N1.7m ransom

Some gunmen in Niger state have threatened to marry off a 21-year-old woman abducted from a community in the state if her parents do not pay a ransom of N1.7 million.

On Saturday evening, an unconfirmed number of people were abducted along Tapila-Gwada road, an area located in Shiroro LGA of Niger.

The community is a 30-minute drive from Minna, Niger’s capital city.

During the raid on the community, some residents of Tapila were able to escape shortly after they were abducted by the bandits.

However, an unconfirmed number of people still remain in the custody of the bandits.

It was learnt that the bandits who initially demanded a ransom of N2 million, lowered their demand to N1.7 million after speaking with the girl’s parents on Tuesday night.

They asked the parents of Deborah, the abducted woman, to pay N1 million in cash and buy a motorcycle for N750,000 for them.

“These people are asking for N1 million ransom, buy a bike worth about 750,000 and pay the person that would come to collect the cash, or else they would marry her off to one of them,” Theresa, the woman’s aunt, told TheCable.

“For over an hour they were on the phone and my brother was begging them, he was crying.”

Commenting on the attack earlier, Wasiu Abiodun, spokesman of the police command in Niger, said they were able to repel the attack and restore normalcy to the community.

“However, details of the incident are still sketchy while reinforcement has been dispatched to Gwada and normalcy has been restored,” Abiodun had said.