By Olayemi Esan,
At 12:45 a.m., the bush outside Cibiya village stirred.
First, a woman appeared—barefoot, clutching a toddler whose head rested heavily on her shoulder. Then a man emerged, limping, his shirt torn, eyes scanning the darkness. One by one, shadows took human shape. No cries. No celebration. Just quiet, exhausted steps toward freedom.
Eighty-eight worshippers had just walked out of captivity.
Hours earlier, under the cover of night, operatives of the Department of State Services, working with the Office of the National Security Adviser and backed by the Nigerian Army, had slipped out of Kaduna city in a convoy that left no trail of noise or bravado—only purpose.
The victims were survivors of a January 18 nightmare in Kurmin Wali, where gunmen stormed three churches and dragged 167 worshippers into the forest. Eighty regained freedom on February 1. The rest waited—through hunger, fear, and uncertainty—until this night
“This one wasn’t about guns,” a member of the rescue team said quietly afterward. “It was about timing, trust, and pressure.”
By 11:00 p.m., the team had reached the Kajuru–Kachia axis, navigating narrow roads and villages long familiar with fear. They met local intermediaries—men who sit uneasily between communities and criminal gangs. There was no bargaining over pleasantries.
“We told them straight: we are here for the victims. Nothing else.”
Then came the wait.
For ninety minutes, the operatives lay low in hostile terrain, unsure if the night would end in relief or tragedy. “Those minutes felt like a lifetime,” the operative recalled. “You don’t know if you’ll hear footsteps—or gunshots.”
Instead, footsteps came.
From different corners of the thicket, the captives emerged—men and women weakened by weeks in the bush, two toddlers carried by mothers who had learned to hush their cries to survive. There were no sirens to mark the moment. Freedom arrived softly.
Even the journey back tested resolve. A vehicle suffered a flat tyre in Maro village. No one panicked. Passengers were redistributed. The convoy pressed on.
At about 3:30 a.m., the rescued worshippers were handed over at DSS headquarters for profiling and care. Another long night was over.
Kajuru Local Government Area has long been a pressure point on Kaduna’s security map—its forests, poor access roads, and proximity to Kachia and Niger State making it a haven for kidnappers. But beyond the terrain, this rescue tells a deeper story.
It marks a shift from loud, risky assaults to quiet, intelligence-driven coordination—where agencies blend roles, reduce civilian harm, and deny kidnappers the chaos they thrive on.
For the families who waited weeks for a phone call that never came, strategy matters less than outcome. What matters is that, in the early hours of Thursday, their loved ones walked out of the dark—alive.
And sometimes, in Nigeria’s long fight against insecurity, silence saves more lives than gunfire.
