Eight hundred million nairas was paid to the terrorists holding captives seized from the AK9 train service attacked on the Abuja–Kaduna route before the additional seven victims were released on Saturday, some families of the victims and other sources knowledgeable of the deal told Daily Trust exclusively on Sunday.
The released victims were among the dozens of passengers abducted on March 28 by gunmen who derailed the moving train.
No organization has yet claimed responsibility for the attack but security sources and researchers attributed the daring attack to remnants of Boko Haram working in cahoots with members of the Darul Salam, another group mostly populated by Fulani youths dislodged from Niger and Nasarawa States at different times.
Some however attributed the attack to the Islamic State West Africa (ISWAP) though, atypical of the group, they have not publicly laid claim to it.
The release of the seven victims came amid heightened fears that the terrorists would kill all those in their custody over the alleged failure of the federal government to respond to their demands.
On Tuesday, Daily Trust reported that the captors of the train passengers had sent an audio clip to victims’ families threatening to kill the captives if the families were unwilling to strike a deal with them.
It was reliably gathered that the families of each of the six Nigerian victims paid N100 million while the captors pegged the ransom for the Pakistani at N200 million which was also paid.
Our sources said the terrorists collected the ransom in naira and US dollars.
“Only N200 million was collected in naira, the remaining N600 million was paid in the equivalent of US dollars,” one of our sources said.
