Oyo rescue: How security agents forced abductors’ hands by arresting their wives, mothers- Ex-DSS operative
Fresh, stunning tactical details have emerged from a former Department of State Services (DSS) operative, Dr Seyi Adetayo, regarding the unconditional release of the 44 surviving pupils and academic staff in Oyo State.
Security forces reportedly turned the tables on the abductors by tracking down and arresting the terrorists’ wives, mothers, and close relatives across several states.
Adetayo made the revelation on Friday night during a TVC News interview.
According to him, the multi-agency rescue operation completely bypassed traditional ransom pipelines or prisoner-swap agreements by exploiting the terrorists’ own internal vulnerabilities.
Operatives reportedly recorded videos of the captured family members and sent the footage directly to the kingpins in the forest, effectively forcing an unconditional surrender.
Seyi Adetayo unravels the asymmetric counter-strategy
The 56-day hostage crisis began on May 15, 2026, when an Al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorist faction invaded three rural schools in the Oriire Local Government Area of Oyo State.
The terrorists held 39 students and seven teachers hostage in the thick canopy of the Old Oyo National Park, demanding that the Federal Government release a high-ranking detained terror commander in exchange for the victims’ lives.
When President Bola Tinubu’s administration firmly refused to negotiate or release the detained commander, joint security squads—including the DSS, the Special Operations Squad of the Nigerian Navy, and elite teams from the Air Force and Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA)—shifted to an offensive strategy.
“This is not an operation where you can just go guns blazing, enter the forest and start shooting,” Adetayo explained. “What they did was use technology to identify those involved… They began to identify associates of those people, their mothers, children, wives, and people close to them.”
By taking the terrorists’ support systems into custody and dismantling their informant networks across regional borders, the intelligence community paralysed the cell’s logistical baseline, Seyi Adetayo said.
The Nigerian Army, through 2 Division spokesperson Major Jonah Danjuma, corroborated the massive impact of the arrests. He noted that the coordinated multi-state sweeps completely disorganised the cell and exerted overwhelming pressure on the field commanders, forcing them to release the remaining hostages unconditionally.
Six months of professional planning
The former DSS operative also dismissed political narratives surrounding the timeline of the mass abduction. He specifically countered assertions by Oyo State Governor Seyi Makinde, who had subtly linked the school raid to his presidential declaration a day prior.
“International terrorist organizations don’t plan operations within a day or two; it can take them up to six months,” Adetayo clarified. “These are professionals, and it’s something they’ve been doing for years.”
Adetayo revealed that the highly sophisticated syndicate had spent months planning a major leverage operation after failed 2025 attempts to break into the high-security Wawa military detention facility in Niger State to free their leader.
They intentionally moved their tactical radar to the South-West, knowing an attack on vulnerable school children in Oyo State would generate the massive media pressure required to bend the federal government.
However, swift encirclement by ground forces prevented the cell from moving the children out of Oyo into their primary operational base in the Kainji forest, averting a long-term “Chibok-style” scenario.
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