Residents of Patigi and neighbouring Edu Local Government Areas are in uproar after repeated helicopter landings deep within the vast Patigi Forest, fuelling suspicions that criminal syndicates are exploiting the canopy for arms and logistic drop.
Locals report seeing unmarked choppers touching down at odd hours—sometimes in the dead of night—yet security agencies have offered scant details, intensifying the air of conspiracy.
Eyewitness accounts suggest these aircraft are ferrying weapons, food and communications gear to kidnappers capitalising on the forest’s impenetrability.
“We just hear the sound of their landing…sometimes even at midnight. This has raised serious suspicion,” confessed Mohammed Bana, a vigilante leader, to Daily Trust—echoing fears that the forest is becoming a sanctuary for outlawed elements.
Nationally, kidnapping soared in the first quarter of 2025, with 537 abductions recorded and 1,420 fatalities—a 15 percent rise on the previous year—underscoring a grim trend in rural insecurity.
This is not Patigi’s first brush with forest-based violence. In June 2015, suspected Fulani militiamen—christened bandits by the immediate past administration, led by President Muhammadu Buhari, their kinsman—seized Motokun village.
They drove out residents and held dozens hostage before a military operation restored calm—yet the underlying vulnerabilities remain unaddressed.
More recently, troops from the 22 Armoured Brigade arrested eight suspected kidnappers and rescued two captives during a patrol in Patigi LGA, signalling an escalation in enforcement but also spotlighting how easily the militants slip through the net.
Despite these fears, Kwara State’s Commissioner of Police, Adekimi Ojo, maintains the choppers belong to government surveillance units tasked with monitoring the dense forest:
“Because of the vast nature of the Patigi forest, we need air surveillance to penetrate it…Some of these things that people are seeing are actually surveillance operations,” he insisted.
Yet transparency remains elusive. Barely weeks ago, two women suspected of ferrying an AK‑47 and 31 rounds of ammunition into the forest were apprehended—an incident that lends credence to theories of aerial supply lines that security chiefs have downplayed.
Adding a sinister twist, intelligence sources warn of the Mahmuda group—a Boko Haram splinter alleged to have settled in Kainji Lake National Park in 2020.
The Mahmuda group is now blamed for at least 24 deaths and suspected of linking with Fulani militants in the same forest for cross‑border operations.
As communities brace for further violence, elders are demanding full disclosure from Abuja and Ilorin.
They are urging a bolstered conventional security presence and satellite‑imaging oversight to dispel the murk of mystery and restore a semblance of safety to a people besieged by uncertainty.
