At last, the 23 remaining kidnapped passengers of the Kaduna train attack were on Wednesday released.
The Secretary of the Chief of Defence Staff Action Committee, Usman Yusuf, broke the news of their release in Abuja.
According to him, the hostages were released at 4:00pm on Wednesday.
Persecondnews recalls that on March 28, 2022, daredevil terrorists had attacked the AK9 Train on the Kaduna-Abuja route.
The insurgents had planted bomb on the rail track, thereby derailing it before shooting and killing at least eight passengers and abducting 60 others.
The terrorists had collected hundreds of millions of Naira before releasing the hostages in piecemeal with the last being on August 19, 2022.
Yusuf said the committee had taken the custody of the victims who were kidnapped by Boko Haram terrorists.
The Nigeria Railway Corporation (NRC) has yet to restore the suspended train service on the route.
President Muhammadu Buhari also directed security agencies to rescue the victims after he met their families.
The Minister of Transportation, Mu’azu Sambo, had said the Abuja-Kaduna rail line will not resume until all those kidnapped by bandits in March are rescued and reunited with their families.
A terrorist negotiator, Tukur Mamu, was on September 6, 2022 arrested in Cairo, Egypt while on his way to Saudi Arabia and returned to Nigeria the next day.
The Department of State Services had alleged that Mamu, who negotiated between terrorists and families of kidnap victims, was part of an international terrorist network and used the cover of journalism to perpetrate his deeds.
Popular Kaduna-based Islamic cleric, Sheikh Ahmad Gumi, to whom Mamu is an aide, had faulted the arrest of Mamu.
Gumi had asked the security agency to charge Mamu to court if it had any evidence against him, rather than keeping him in custody.
But the DSS, in its reaction, said it would not be distracted by some skewed media reports, adding that it is concentrating on the ongoing investigations.
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