Sunday Igboho: Kidnappers release victims after two-hour ultimatum
By: Abudu Olalekan
It was chaos in Igboho, Oyo State yesterday.
The good kind.
People were out in the streets singing, dancing, shouting — you name it.
Why?
Because a kidnapped family had just been released. A pregnant woman, her children and her sibling. The same ones that had had the whole town holding its breath for days.
And it didn’t happen by chance.
It came barely two hours after Yoruba activist Sunday Adeyemo — better known as Sunday Igboho — gave suspected Fulani community leaders in the area an ultimatum to let them go.
Videos started flying round social media not long after and you could just see the relief. Crowds were going absolutely wild. Some were hugging strangers. Others were just screaming “they’re back!” like they’d won something.
Truth is, this didn’t come out of nowhere.
A few hours before that, Igboho had shown up at a meeting with community representatives and traditional rulers and he was fuming.
He’d had enough.
He accused some members of the Fulani community of being behind a string of kidnappings in the area and didn’t hold back as he reeled off what had happened. One case in particular had clearly got to him — a ransom was paid but the people behind it still killed the man who brought the money. Only one person was spared.
“The person who brought the ransom, you still killed him and spared only one person,” he said, his anger cutting through the air.
He told them he’d been keeping quiet up until then only because his fathers — the traditional rulers — had begged him to be calm. But that patience was running thin.
“I am Sunday Igboho. I am calm because my fathers asked me to be calm with you. Let this be the last time such a thing will happen,” he warned.
Then he dropped it.
Two hours.
Release the abducted victims in two hours or else. He didn’t go into every single thing he’d do, but he made it clear he was ready to move into suspected hideouts if they didn’t comply.
Well, two hours came and went.
And the family came back.
Nobody is really saying, for now, exactly what made it happen. Was it the threat? Pressure from elders? Something else entirely? Hard to tell at the time of this report.
But the people of Igboho weren’t waiting for all the fine details. Their own were home. Safe. Alive.
So they took to the streets and celebrated like it was a festival. Drums, songs, the works.
For a place that’s known far too much fear lately, it was one of those rare moments when the tension finally broke.
Now folks are just hoping it’s the last time they’ll ever have to go through something like this again.
