Kidnappers move off Kaduna highways into estates, residents say
- Gunmen abducted about six residents from Nuru Suraj Estate in Millennium City on October 27, with some later rescued by soldiers.
- Residents of several Chikun communities say kidnappings have become frequent, including an October 5 raid on Alrahus Estate.
- A columnist urges Governor Uba Sani to treat the estate attacks as an emergency, not just a highway problem.
Gunmen broke through the second gate of Nuru Suraj Estate in Millennium City, Chikun Local Government Area of Kaduna State, in the early hours of Tuesday, October 27, and abducted about six residents, including secondary school students, according to a Leadership column published on Sunday.
The military responded early and rescued some of the victims, the column said, but several were still in captivity as it was written. The Kaduna State Commissioner of Police, Muhammad Rabiu, visited the community afterwards.
The attack is one of a series that residents say has turned gated estates on the edge of the Kaduna metropolis into hunting grounds. In the night of October 5, gunmen reportedly stormed Alrahus Estate around 11.30pm and moved from house to house, taking Ahmed Abubakar Zakka, his wife, their six-month-old daughter Fatima and a pregnant woman. The family regained their freedom after nine days, the column said, after captors released a video with rifles pointed at their heads and demanded ₦300 million.
Five days before that, gunmen reportedly struck PW Babban Saura, killed a man and abducted his wife, his son and six others. Kyauta was hit in August, with more than a dozen people taken, and Danhonu II residents marched to the Millennium City Divisional Police Headquarters saying seven abducted neighbours were the 11th kidnapping in their community in a few months.
Why it matters to residents
The pattern matters to ordinary families because it shifts the danger from the highway to the doorstep. People who moved to estates like Millennium City for safety now describe running from one community to another, only to be followed. Landlords are counting empty flats and parents are pulling children out of schools that require an early morning walk, the column said.
Kidnapping, it argued, is a business. A ₦300 million demand signals that criminals are targeting the middle class in gated estates — civil servants, traders, bankers and lecturers — people who will sell land and empty savings to bring a child home. Every ransom paid, the column warned, finances the next operation.
The writer credited Governor Uba Sani with reducing killings in southern Kaduna and improving security on the Kaduna–Abuja highway and the Birnin Gwari axis, but said the same urgency has not reached Millennium City. The column called for a permanent joint security base there, working street lights and CCTV on Yakowa Road, a properly funded vigilance service tied to estate associations, and action on phone lines used for ransom calls.
It also urged estate associations to treat security levies as compulsory and to report strangers and suspicious movements rather than discuss them after prayers.
What happens next
The sources do not say what specific new measures the Kaduna State Government or the police plan for Millennium City. Residents are waiting to see whether the state follows the police commissioner's visit with a sustained deployment, and whether families still holding captives secure their release.
