The Intelligence Response Team (IRT), a special police unit tasked with combating kidnapping, has apprehended a woman who allegedly supplies women to bandits in the Galadimawa forest in Kaduna State's Giwa Local Government Area.
Maryam Abubakar, a housewife and resident of Rugar Hanwa in Sabon Gari Local Government, confessed to luring women, including her own daughters and nieces, to the bandits for sexual pleasure.
Maryam stated that her clients paid her N20,000 and that the women were transported to the forest on motorbikes.
Fatima Jibril, a girl from the Sakadadi area of Sabon Gari, was also arrested for supplying women to the bandits with the help of her boyfriend, Muslim Abubakar.
The syndicate was exposed when the girls they had previously obtained from criminals in the forest were unable to return.
Another woman, Jummai Ibrahim, was apprehended on suspicion of having an affair with the bandits' kingpin in the forest.
Ibrahim claimed she surrendered to the bandits' kingpin in order to protect her children and father from their wrath because the bandits threatened to kill them even after rustling the family's cattle.
Some of the women claimed to have only spent one night with the bandits.
According to one of them, the gunmen live alongside their wives, but they are housed in separate locations away from their families.
One of the girls said the gunmen had been inseparable from their guns round the clock and they were stockpiled with foodies.
The arrested women were, however, remorseful for being in romance with the bandits in the forest.
Most of the women said on Sunday that they, at least had secondary school education while some were making efforts to go to higher institutions.