Three men charged in Abuja court over Oyo school mass kidnapping

The federal government has filed a 10-count terrorism and kidnapping charge against three men accused of orchestrating the mass abduction of schoolchildren and teachers in Oyo State.

The suspects—identified as Abdulrazak Umar, Yunusa Musa, and Shamsu Adamu Sani—were formally charged before the Federal High Court in Abuja on Friday.

The prosecution also linked the men to Ansaru, a banned terrorist group in Nigeria, alongside accusations of running a terrorist training cell on WhatsApp and engaging in illegal gold mining. All three defendants hail from Suleja in Niger State.

The charges in detail

According to court documents, the suspects allegedly conspired with three other masterminds currently at large to carry out the raid.

The 10-count charge details a network of terrorism and concealment:

• Aiding and abetting: The trio are accused of actively facilitating the abduction and hiding the identities of the main operational commanders.
• Terrorist membership: The defendants allegedly confessed to being members of Darul Salam, an affiliate of the proscribed terrorist organization Ansaru.
• WhatsApp radicalisation: The first defendant, Abdulrazak Umar (also known as Abu Khalifa), is separately charged with using a WhatsApp group named “The Oneness of Allah is the Foundation of Peace” to train and incite members to commit acts of terrorism.
• Illegal mining: Mr Umar faces an additional charge for running an illegal gold mining operation along streams in Suleja between 2024 and 2026.

A deadly 56-day ordeal

The charges stem from the May 15 assault that shocked the nation, when heavily armed gunmen stormed three schools across the Esiele and Yawota communities in the Oriire Local Government Area of Oyo State.

The raid resulted in the deaths of two educators. Joel Adesiyan, an assistant headmaster, was shot dead while trying to escape during the initial attack. Later, during the 56 days the hostages spent in captivity, a mathematics teacher, Michael Oyedokun, was brutally beheaded by the kidnappers.

The remaining 44 hostages were finally freed on July 10 following a high-stakes, intelligence-led military operation inside the Old Oyo National Park forest.

The presidency has maintained that the rescue was achieved through tactical pressure without paying any part of the ₦1 billion ($615,000) ransom initially demanded by the gang.