The released managing director of the Nigerian Bank of Agriculture, Mr. Alwan Hassan, has urged with the federal government to reach out to leaders of the terrorist group that attacked an Abuja-Kaduna train so that their captives could be saved.
Hassan, alongside others, was abducted on Monday, March 28, 2022 when marauders planted explosives on the rail track and immobilised a Kaduna bound train.
Eight passengers were said to have been killed and several others were abducted by the bandits.
In a one-minute twenty-one seconds video clip, Hassan was seen standing in front of a damaged armoured personnel carrier vehicle, sandwiched by four bandits in military camouflage with Assault rifles.
The video, which has a burnt armoured personnel carrier in its background, appeared to have been shot at the scene of the reported attack on a military base in Birnin-Gwari where vehicles were reportedly burnt after they killed some soldiers.
“Peace be upon you all. I want you to know that the bandits have sympathised with me considering my age but I also want you to know that I’ve left a lot of people behind (bandits’ camp) and they need urgent help for them to leave this place. I hope that government should reach out to the leaders of these people so that they can discuss and have the captives released in time,” Hassan said.
One of the terrorists who spoke in the video explained that the managing director was released because of his age and for Ramadan fasting.
“We are the people who abducted some people on a train some days back and you can see them. This one here (pointing at Hassan) has been begging us to release him and considering his age and also because of the Ramadan fast, we decided to release him to his relatives.
“But this government should know what it’s doing. It’s nothing. We just decided to let him go. We’ll now let him speak if he has anything to add,” he said.
Also speaking, another terrorist said they did not attack the Kaduna-bound train because of ransom but to press home a particular demand from the government.
He threatened that the remainder of the captives would be killed should the government fail to hasten up in meeting their demands.
“You (government) should know that this is just the beginning of what we’re going to do…..
“This government should know what they are into. This is nothing to us; we just pitied him (BOA MD).
“The summary of what we are saying is that either you quickly look for us or we kill them because killing them is nothing to us.
“You should also know that it is not your money that we want. If it is because of money, we won’t do what we did.
“We don’t want your money and you know what we want. So, it is either you hurry or we do what we want to do. Killing them is not a big deal to us.
So, it’s left to you to hasten and do what we need from you if not, we’ll do what we want to do to them. This is our message. This is our message,” he said.
