Tension in Ondo over hijack of school bus, gunmen seize vehicle
The Ondo State Police Command has described the attack on the school bus of a private school by some hoodlums as a robbery and not kidnapping as being insinuated in some quarters.
The gunmen, around 6.45am on Thursday, hijacked the school bus in Oba Ile town, in the Akure North Local Government Area of Ondo State and abducted one of the staff of the private school, Omolayo Ojo.
A source in the school explained that the bandits attacked the school bus on motorcycles, forcing the driver to stop.
According to the source, they dragged the driver out, hijacked the bus and drove it to an unknown destination with Ojo inside it.
A few hours after the incident, the abducted worker was, however, released unharmed, while the school bus had yet to be released as of the time of filing this report.
Speaking on the development, the state Commissioner of Police, Mr Bolaji Salami, described the incident as a robbery.
Salami said, “It is a pure case of robbery. They (robbers) were not after the pupils. We will recover the bus from them. They may want to use it for another crime. We have told our men to be on the alert.”
Narrating her ordeal, the abducted worker, Ojo, said the bandits brought out a gun and an axe and crossed their bus on their way to pick the pupils, after which they abducted her.
She said, “I saw one of them bringing out a gun and the other bringing out an axe. The driver was dragged out; they pressed my neck to face down in the bus so I didn’t know the route they took.
“As we were going, they started asking me questions about my name; I told them. When they got into the bush, they brought me down and asked me to run without looking back. Later, I saw an old woman who showed me the way to Ilara Mokin. On getting there, I shouted for help and I saw an Okada rider, who gave me N500 and showed me the road where I took a transport back to school.”
The Principal of the school, Mrs Bolatito Akindemowo, said the bus driver narrated to her what happened at the police station where he was still being interrogated.
She stressed that none of the school’s pupils was kidnapped or hurt, adding that such an incident had never happened in the school before.
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