By The Federal Government has taken three men before the Federal High Court in Abuja on a 10-count charge sheet tied to the mass abduction of schoolchildren and teachers in Oriire Local Government Area of Oyo State earlier this year.
The defendants were named as Abdulrazak Umar (also known as Abu Khalifa or Abu Khalid), Yunusa Musa (also called Yunusa bin Musa), and Shamsu Adamu Sani (also known as Abu Itisar). All three are said to be from Suleja Local Government Area of Niger State, and the charges were filed on Friday.
The charges span terrorism, kidnapping, concealment, incitement, and illegal mining. According to the charge sheet, the trio is accused of conspiring between January and May with three other men, Muhammad Sani, Jibril Mohammed and Ibrahim Khabab, to carry out the kidnapping, and of directly assisting them in executing it, in violation of the Terrorism (Prevention and Prohibition) Act, 2022.
Two further counts accuse the men of knowing who masterminded the abduction and being aware it had taken place, yet failing to alert security operatives, an omission the charge sheet frames as concealment under the same Act.
All three are also accused of belonging to a group called Darul Salam, which the charge sheet describes as linked to Ansaru, a proscribed terrorist organisation in Nigeria.
Umar faces three additional counts on his own. He is accused of using a WhatsApp group to train and instruct others in terrorism-related activity, and of using the same platform to incite acts of terrorism, the latter charged under Nigeria’s cybercrime law. A separate charge accuses him of running an unlicensed gold mining operation in the Chaza area of Suleja between 2024 and 2026.
The charges stem from an attack on May 15, when armed men stormed three schools, Community Grammar School, Baptist Nursery and Primary School, and L.A. Primary School, in the Esiele and Yawota communities of Oriire. Officials initially put the number of victims at 46, made up of 39 pupils and seven teachers.
Two people were killed in connection with the attack: the assistant headmaster of one of the schools was reportedly killed while trying to escape during the raid, and a teacher was killed by his captors at some point during the 56 days that followed.
The captives were freed on July 10 following a military operation targeting the kidnappers’ hideouts inside the Old Oyo National Park. The Nigerian Army said 44 pupils and teachers were rescued and eight suspected members of the kidnap gang were arrested in the operation. The Presidency has maintained that no ransom was paid and no concessions were made, despite the kidnappers reportedly demanding N1 billion and the release of a detained commander.
This report is based on court filing details reported by Punch Newspapers (July 17, 2026).
