Sadiku Exposed: Inside the Terror Network Behind Kwara’s Woro Massacre
By: Abudu Olalekan
It started quietly. Too quietly.
A letter. Written in Hausa. Polite in tone. Almost reassuring.
That letter would later become the final warning Woro never survived.
Tuesday’s massacre in Woro, a remote farming community in Kaiama Local Government Area of Kwara State, was not chaos unfolding by chance. It was planned. Timed. Executed with chilling precision. By nightfall, the village had lost nearly everything — fathers, sons, neighbours. Over 170 lives gone. Some say more.
At the centre of it all is one man.
Abubakar Saidu. Known simply as Sadiku.
For years, his name floated around security briefings like a ghost story. Mentioned. Never caught. But investigations by Reportersroom show Sadiku is no myth. He is real. And his reach is deadly.
Once a trusted lieutenant of the late Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau, Sadiku has spent over a decade evolving. Learning. Moving. When military pressure tightened in the North-East, he didn’t disappear. He relocated. Westward. Into forests people barely patrol and roads no one watches closely.
By 2025, Sadiku had settled deep inside the Kainji Forest Reserve, straddling Niger and Kwara states. Security analysts now call the area Nigeria’s “new Sambisa.” Thick forest. Weak presence. Perfect cover.
From there, attacks multiplied. Farms abandoned. Villages emptied. Fear became routine.
His journey from Shekau’s foot soldier to a dominant terror figure in the North-Central was steady. At one point, Sadiku aligned with notorious bandit kingpin Dogo Gide. Guns were shared. Intelligence exchanged. Then ideology split them apart. The alliance collapsed violently. Fighters died. Camps burned.
Sadiku survived. He always does.
What followed was a shift. Less banditry. More extremism. Observers say this was the moment he stopped chasing money and started chasing control.
Security trackers have since linked Sadiku’s faction with Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), an Al-Qaeda affiliate operating across the Sahel. The connection is troubling. Woro sits less than four kilometres from Nuku, where JNIM claimed its first Nigerian attack in late 2025. Too close to ignore.
Patterns tell stories. And the pattern in Woro matched previous attacks in Papiri, Niger State — same tactics, same brutality, same silence afterward.
Then came January 8.
The warning letter.
Woro’s village head, Salihu Umar, confirmed it arrived weeks before the massacre. The message claimed the group wanted a “peaceful meeting” to preach. No harm promised. Umar did what he could. He forwarded copies to the emirate and security agencies. And waited.
On the day of the attack, the waiting ended.
Around 5pm, gunmen rode in on motorcycles. Hundreds of them. AK-47s. Explosives. They sealed the town. No exits. No mercy.
By 6pm, the emir’s palace was burning. Gunfire echoed everywhere. A helicopter hovered briefly overhead, witnesses said. Then it left. The killings continued.
Men were rounded up. Hands tied. Executed.
When a military aircraft later appeared, attackers melted into the bush. Residents thought it was over. They were wrong. Using the call to prayer as bait, the gunmen returned. More deaths. More screams. By 2am, they vanished again — this time with women and children.
Survivors speak in fragments now. Stories interrupted by tears. One man lost his boss, a doctor at the local health centre. Another lost his sick seven-year-old sister, dragged into the forest. Entire households gone.
Security officials admit the response failed. Explosives planted along access roads delayed troops. Distance didn’t help. Accountability, critics say, is still missing.
Experts warn this won’t stop. Not yet.
Unless forests like Kainji are reclaimed. Unless warnings are acted on. Unless terror leaders like Sadiku are hunted, not studied.
For Woro, the cost of delay is already written in graves.
