LAFIA, Nigeria — September 4, 2026
The Nasarawa State Police Command says it has rescued a kidnapped woman and arrested eleven suspected armed robbers, including two minors, in two separate operations carried out within the same month — the latest in a string of anti-crime successes the command has recorded this year.
The Commissioner of Police, Nasarawa State Command, CP Shetima Jauro Mohammed, disclosed the operations in a statement issued Thursday by the command’s spokesman, SP Ramhan Nansel, describing them as evidence of the force’s “sustained intelligence-led operations and effective community partnership” against crime in the state.
According to the statement, Favour Innocent, a woman from Ajyga Village, was abducted from her residence on August 3 at about 9 p.m. Police, working with local hunters and youths from the community, traced her to the Nunku Forest Area of Akwanga Local Government Area and rescued her the next morning, August 4, at around 8 a.m.
She was taken to the Primary Health Centre in Andaha, where she was treated and discharged in good condition, and has since been reunited with her family. Police say the suspects fled the scene and that investigations to track them down are continuing.
In the second operation, police said armed robbers invaded a guest house in Area One, Masaka, at about 2 a.m. on September 4, robbing lodgers of cash and mobile phones. The Commissioner of Police ordered a patrol team to the scene, and its arrival forced the suspects to flee on foot. Officers pursued the group to a hideout, where eleven suspects — nine adults and two minors — were arrested.
Police identified the adult suspects as Auwal Yunusa, 20; Saltsu Kabiru, 20; Umar Saleh, 22; Abubakar Hassan, 26; Musa Yahaya, 20; Seth Aaron, 20; Victor Hyelanpali, 19; Gift Ezra, 20; and Suleiman Abdullahi, 18. The two minors were named as James Ayuba, 16, and Fahad Abubakar, 15.
Officers recovered a locally fabricated revolver, four cutlasses, an additional fabricated cutlass, two knives, two bedsheets, eight SIM cards, three head-warmer caps, two pairs of scissors, counterfeit foreign currency, and identification documents belonging to a Kabiru Abubakar, the statement said. Police said efforts to arrest other suspects who fled and to recover the remaining stolen items were ongoing.
CP Shetima has directed the Divisional Police Officer for Masaka to trace the parents of the two minor suspects or bring them before the appropriate Juvenile Court, in line with Nigerian law protecting minors in the criminal justice system. The nine adult suspects have been transferred to the State Criminal Investigation Department (SCID) in Lafia for further investigation and prosecution.
In the statement, the commissioner commended police personnel, local hunters and community youths for their cooperation, particularly in the rescue of the kidnap victim, and urged residents to keep sharing “timely and credible information” with police to help prevent crime and apprehend offenders.
Thursday’s announcement echoes an operation earlier this year that followed a similar script. In January, the same command — also ⅞ CP Shetima and spokesman SP Nansel — reported that officers from the Assakio Division, working with local vigilantes, had raided kidnappers’ hideouts in Angara and Fadaman Bauna villages in Lafia East, arresting six suspects and rescuing three victims unharmed, according to a report carried by AllAfrica. As in Thursday’s case, the rescued victims were treated and reunited with their families, and the suspects were handed to the SCID for prosecution.
CP Shetima, who took charge of the Nasarawa command in December 2024 after moving from a previous posting, has more recently overseen a heavy security presence across the state ahead of political campaigns, including a multi-district “show of force” operation in August that Vanguard and other outlets reported was intended to reassure residents rather than respond to a specific threat.
The Nasarawa command’s latest results also fit a broader pattern of operational claims made under Inspector-General of Police Olatunji Rilwan Disu, who was sworn in as Nigeria’s 23rd IGP on February 24, 2026, succeeding Kayode Egbetokun.
At a monthly conference with senior officers in Abuja in July, IGP Disu said police commands nationwide had arrested 1,198 suspects and rescued 166 kidnap victims in a two-week span between June 9 and June 21, 2026 — figures he said reflected the “commitment and sacrifices” of officers across the country, according to Voice of Nigeria’s report on the briefing.
Similar claims have come from individual state commands. In Kano, the state Commissioner of Police told a security lecture in June that a sustained campaign against armed robbery, kidnapping, thuggery, drug abuse and vehicle theft since the start of 2026 had led to the arrest and prosecution of 1,357 suspects, a figure IGP Disu’s office used to press officers to “take the battle straight to the criminals,” according to The Guardian.
Analysts and commentators tracking Disu’s seven months in office have pointed to a series of institutional changes accompanying the arrest figures. Tribune Online has reported on the introduction of the “Handshake Patrols Initiative,” a scheme for joint interstate patrols intended to stop criminal networks from exploiting the administrative boundaries between police commands. The IGP has also pushed field commands to make greater use of data analytics and digital forensics to map crime hotspots, according to remarks by a Force headquarters deputy inspector-general at the Kano lecture, and has said publicly that officers found engaging in misconduct will face discipline regardless of rank, according to a report by the Nigerian Observer on a visit to the Edo State command in May.
Independent commentary, including a Guardian opinion piece published in July, has credited the changes with improving “operational efficiency, intelligence-led policing… and stronger collaboration with other security agencies,” while cautioning that translating arrest statistics into lasting public trust remains an ongoing challenge for the Force.
For Nasarawa State, Thursday’s rescue and arrests are being presented by local police leadership as the latest local evidence of that national push — though, as with January’s operation in Lafia East, several suspects connected to the incidents remain at large, and the two most recent cases have not yet gone to trial.
