Borgu Residents Demand Release of Hundreds Abducted in Nigeria Attacks

Youths blocked the Mokwa–New Bussa road at the Bussa roundabout from half past five on the morning of Monday, September 21, 2026. Rain fell as they held the entry point into Borgu. Commuters travelling to New Bussa and Agwara from the Mokwa axis were left stranded where the road stopped. In New Bussa, headquarters of Borgu Local Government Area in Niger State, markets and shops stayed shut on a scheduled market day. Hanifa Konkoso, a 26-year-old shopkeeper, was among those whose commerce stopped with the stalls.

The demonstration at the local government headquarters had been organised by the Borgu Youth Development Association and joined by a Board of Trustees member of the Federation of Borgu Youth. Residents were demanding the rescue of people taken into the forest. Abdullahi Yahaya Sadauki, the association’s president, spoke to Yanpura Media in Hausa while it continued. “There are many reasons. But the main reason is the insecurity we are facing. In Bargo, the insecurity has taken different forms. People are being killed every day, people are being slaughtered, and people are being kidnapped. Eventually, what happened recently became the final trigger that angered and frustrated us.”

That trigger reached back to Friday, August 21, 2026, when armed men attacked the Jumaat mosques in Dekara, Gbezhin, Sabon-Gida and Kpenya during prayers. Worshippers from several villages had gathered in Dekara land. “In Dekara, in Dekara land, more than 500 people were rounded up on a Friday. The Friday prayer in Dekara was not attended by people from Dekara alone. There were people from Gbenzi, Kaya, and Gasuwan Garuwa. People from different villages gathered there for Friday prayers,” Sadauki said. “More than 500 people were taken away from that location, and some were killed. Others barely managed to escape. We are not even sure whether the number reached 500. But we know our villages, and we know how many people live there.”

A month later, residents put the number still captive at 600 to nearly 700, mostly women, children and the elderly. Reuters could not independently verify the figure. What the communities already knew was that some of those taken had been killed, and the bodies had been left for the living to claim. Families were asked to retrieve and bury the bodies of thirty abductees who had been slaughtered and beheaded. The dead were evacuated from where they had been dumped and buried. Some families could not identify their loved ones because the heads had been taken away. Some of the bodies were identifiable only by physique.

Sadauki estimated that seventy to eighty percent of those killed were youths. “People are being slaughtered, and we are being made to witness it. If we remain silent, they could be killed one after another until we lose all of them. That is why we had to come out and protest. We had to come out and cry out so that the world would hear us.”

Aliyu Abdulmajeed, auditor of the Borgu Youth Federation, said two local government areas—Borgu and Agwara—were taking part. He pointed to an alleged remark by Niger State Governor Mohammed Umaru Bago that only thirty people had been kidnapped. “The governor does not get the right information of happenings in our communities,” Abdulmajeed said. “Who informed the governor that only 30 people were kidnapped?”

Frustration had also settled on a bridge that connects the Borgu Local Government headquarters to the Ningi area and other villages in that direction, as well as Agwara Local Government Area. “That bridge has been broken for almost a year,” Sadauki said. “Nothing has been done about it. We have repeatedly raised the issue, hoping that someone would listen and take action. We do not know whether it is the state government or the federal government that is responsible. As a result, we feel that we are being taken for granted. We were told that transport operators had requested to raise money to repair the bridge. They were asked to return the money, and then the matter was abandoned.” He identified the Mokwa road as the major entry route into Borgu and said it stood in deteriorated condition. The protesters demanded that the bridge be repaired and that the roads connecting the area to other parts of the country be rehabilitated.

A month after the mosque attacks, those taken into the forest had still not been found. President Bola Tinubu ordered an immediate rescue after August 21. Niger State Commissioner for Information Obed Nuhu Nana told Reuters that security agencies had been mobilised. “Security agencies have been mobilised, but we are yet to get any response from them. The government is definitely making efforts to rescue the people,” he said. Mohammed Nasir Abdullahi, the chairman of Borgu Local Government Area, said adequate security personnel had been deployed after the state government appealed to the federal government. He said no new incidents had been recorded since the mosque attacks and dismissed a circulated video as fake, adding that traditional rulers in the affected areas had denied the claims it showed. Abdulmutallib Dindey, a youth-association member who took part in the march, said the insecurity had restricted residents’ access to markets and healthcare.

Borgu lies roughly 300 kilometers, or 186 miles, from Minna, the Niger State capital, along the border with the Republic of Benin. An attempt the previous day to register and verify the number of people from the villages had left the communities without a settled figure of how many were gone. “Yesterday, there was an attempt to register and verify the number of people from those villages, but we do not yet know the actual figure. We will go there ourselves to find out what happened,” Sadauki said. He called for a count of residents in the villages to determine whether the estimate of those still held captive was accurate. Local authorities promised collaboration with federal agencies on a village headcount in the affected villages to test the captivity claim. The protesters supported that headcount as the way to confirm the exact number of missing civilians.

They demanded the release of those still held in the forest. Monday was a scheduled market day in Borgu, yet the markets and the shops remained shut through the day. The Mokwa–New Bussa road was stopped at the Bussa roundabout.