How 2 teenage students escaped ritual murder in Gboko

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A 13-year-old Junior Secondary II student of Government Secondary School Gboko, Dooyum Moar, and another female student of Gkoko High School, narrowly escaped being beheaded by a ritualist after being kidnapped by a commercial vehicle operator in Makurdi.

Vanguard gathered from an elated father of one of the victims, Mr. Ephraim Maor, that he had on Monday morning taken his son to the Wurukum motor park in Makurdi, where he boarded a vehicle to Gboko to resume school.

He said: “I had put him in the commercial vehicle which had other passengers and was heading to Gboko, a trip that was less than 80 kilometres from Makurdi.
“I gathered from my son that when they were less than five kilometres to Gboko town, at Yandev, the driver said his vehicle developed a fault.

“He said, at that point, most of the passengers opted to board other vehicles, but the driver urged my son and another female student of Gboko High School to wait for another vehicle he contacted to take them to their destination.

“Few minutes later, a Toyota Hilux van came and the two of them were asked to board the vehicle, but on getting to their destination, the driver of the van refused to stop. The occupants of the van tied up the children and blindfolded them.

“My son said they were taken to a forest in Gboko where the kids were tied to the ground and presented before an aged woman in a shrine who wanted to behead them for rituals, but later changed her mind.
“At this time, my son said they were crying and begging for mercy, then the woman handed a machete to one of the kidnappers, instructing that they should be killed on their way back.

“However, by divine intervention, the kidnappers did not kill them as instructed, but dumped them at Apir on the outskirts of Makurdi, where a good Samaritan picked them up.”
The elated father said he had already reported the matter to the police while the second victim was handed over to the police in Makurdi, where her parents picked her up.