The Head of Woro Village, in Kwara State, Umar Salihu, has blamed inadequate security for the deadly bandit attack that reportedly claimed over 200 lives in the community, saying the assailants operated for nearly 10 hours without resistance.
Salihu disclosed that the attackers had earlier sent a letter to the community, claiming they were coming to preach before launching the deadly assault.
According to the village head, the letter was delivered on January 10, 2026, through a traditional leader from a neighbouring village who had allegedly been abducted and forced to deliver the message.
“I received the notification on the 10th of January around 7.45 from a man who came; he is the Hakimi of one small village about four kilometres from my community,” Daily Post quoted Salihu saying over the weekend.
“According to him, they abducted him and forced him to bring the letter or else they would kill him and that is why he brought the letter to me.”
He said he immediately reported the matter to security agencies and traditional authorities.
The village head said, “When the letter got to me, I went to the DSS in our local government headquarters and the following day I took the letter to the Emirate council and they wrote a letter in that respect to the various appropriate quarters.”
Salihu explained that the letter did not specify a date or time for the planned visit.
“The content of the letter said they were coming down to preach but there was no date and time, they just said they were coming down to preach,” he added.
The village head said the attackers eventually struck and operated freely for several hours, killing scores of residents and destroying property.
He attributed the scale of the attack to the absence of security personnel in the area.
“We have soldiers staying there but the bandits came over the night and there was gun exchange between the army and bandits; since then, they took away the soldiers and that place has remained open.
“There is no security presence and that is why they came and spent almost 10 hours,” he said.
Salihu described the incident as devastating, revealing that many victims were burned alive in churches and inside their homes.
“There are some that are buried according to Christian rites, there are some that have been affected and do not belong to the community and have to take their corpses to a different location.
“There are some that were burned down in the church. Some, they locked them inside their rooms and set them on fire. Those that were burned inside the church, we cannot identify some; we can’t count the number of people burnt down,” he lamented.
The community leader called for urgent security intervention to prevent further attacks and protect residents from continued threats by bandits.
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