DSS has warned of a planned mass abduction of schoolchildren in Edo State, revealing an intercepted plot targeting Edo North schools.
The DSS raised the alarm of this planned mass abduction via an internal memo that suspected bandits had already begun reconnaissance operations targeting schools in the Edo North Senatorial District.
The memo, marked with reference number S.66/A/3972 and dated June 5, 2026, was signed by one B. Agada on behalf of the Director of Security and addressed to the State Commandant of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps. The intelligence, it stated, was intercepted from a phone conversation between two suspected bandits.
The suspects have names. One is identified only as BAWA, suspected to be of Fulani extraction from Zamfara State. The other goes by NUHU.
The DSS memo was not merely theoretical. A 25-year-old suspect was arrested on June 4 while allegedly conducting surveillance around Makeke Secondary School in the Makeke community, one of the schools subsequently shut by the government. His name: Emmanuel Momidu. His mission, according to the DSS, was to scout the target before the operation launched.
The Edo State Ministry of Education acted swiftly, citing security advisories from relevant agencies warning of credible threats to students, teachers, and surrounding communities. The Permanent Secretary confirmed that all academic and non-academic activities in the affected schools had been suspended until further notice. Candidates sitting for the ongoing West African Senior School Certificate Examination, however, will continue to access examination centres under strict security arrangements.
The DSS has called for immediate action on the ground. The agency advised that countermeasures be deployed around schools across the state, with a particular focus on Edo North Senatorial District. Recommendations include the deployment of personnel to vulnerable schools and communities in collaboration with the Edo State Security Council and local vigilantes and hunters, as well as intensified security patrols to enhance surveillance.
This is not the first time Edo North has felt the heat. Earlier in January, the Edo State Government suspended second-term school resumption across the entire Edo Central Senatorial District following incessant kidnappings in the Esan West Local Government Area. The pattern is visible to anyone paying attention: bandits probing further south, testing new communities, and recalibrating when one area tightens up.
The Edo State Police Command, for its part, has not been idle. Commissioner of Police Monday Agbonika revealed in May that the Command arrested 119 suspects in three months, including individuals linked to kidnapping, cultism, armed robbery, and murder. The command deployed advanced tools, including combat drones, digital tracking systems, and surveillance gadgets, with a focus on curbing kidnapping in Edo Central and Edo North Senatorial Districts.
Governor Monday Okpebholo has also weighed in. The governor called on those behind recent abductions across the country to release their victims immediately and unconditionally, declaring that no political party can attain power through kidnapping, banditry, or other forms of criminality. His government had pledged at the start of the year that it would not allow kidnapping to thrive in Edo in 2026. The DSS memo makes clear that the pledge is now being tested.
The threat to schoolchildren in Edo State sits inside a broader national emergency. President Tinubu declared a nationwide security emergency last November and formally designated bandits as terrorists, a designation meant to unlock harsher legal and military responses. Whether that designation translates to boots on the ground at Makeke Secondary School, at dawn, before the next school day, is the only question that matters right now.
Parents in Akoko Edo LGA are not waiting for policy pronouncements. Many kept their children home Tuesday. School gates stood quiet along the Makeke road. The threat in that memo, reference number S.66/A/3972, dated June 5, 2026, is real. The children it describes are real. The clock is running.
