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By Shuaibu Sharifiah
It was almost 2 a.m. on April 21, 2026, when Isa Zakariyau Kehinde, a first-year Law student at Usmanu Danfodiyo University, Sokoto (UDUS), thought he was going to die on the way home. Armed men had stopped the vehicle he was traveling in somewhere along the dark stretch between Sokoto and his hometown, Ilorin, Kwara State. In the terror of that moment, he found himself silently making peace with the end.
“I whispered my last prayer and wish to myself,” he recalled, “because all I could think was that we would be kidnapped or killed.”
The attackers did not kill anyone that night. Instead, they stripped the passengers of everything, phones, power banks, money, every possession Kehinde had on him. When it was over, the fear gave way to something closer to despair.
“I felt hopeless,” he said. “They even collected our money. That journey was just terrible. I deeply regretted leaving Sokoto for my hometown. Had I known that would happen, I would not even have made the attempt.”
Four months later, the memory has not faded. The mention of a bandit attack anywhere is enough to bring back the traumatic experience , the darkness, the guns, the whispered prayer. Yet, the academic session ends soon and he is preparing to make the same journey again, carrying that trauma with him.
But Kehinde is hopeful this time will be different, because he made it back to school safely after the attack, he’s holding onto that as a fragile sign the road ahead might be kinder.
He is not alone in this calculus. Across Nigeria’s Northwest, where banditry and kidnapping have turned major highways into corridors of fear, students are increasingly forced to weigh the desire to see family against the risk of not making it home at all.
The violence is reshaping not just travel plans, but academic focus, mental health, family bonds, and the very shape of student life, with consequences that extend far beyond any single journey.
The anxiety had already reached Ganiyu Mustapha Oluwasegun’s family before it reached him. A fellow first-year Law student at UDUS, Oluwasegun has not experienced an attack himself. With the 2025/26 academic session ending soon, he should be thinking about exams. Instead, he is thinking about whether his parents will even let him take the road home to Kwara.
“My parents are not comfortable with me coming home because of insecurity,” he explained. He may have to stay back in school for the long holiday despite the economic hardship that would come with it, a decision inspired by fear.
This fear is not abstract. The state that hosts their university,Sokoto,has itself become a theatre of violence. On July 3, residents of Bodinga Local Government Area blocked the Sokoto–Jega–Yauri highway, a major route linking Sokoto with Kebbi and Niger states, after bandits attacked several villages, killing residents, abducting others, and displacing entire communities. Protesters set tyres and logs ablaze on the highway, disrupting traffic for hours. Some vehicles, including a bus belonging to the Kebbi State Transport Authority, were vandalised before security operatives restored order.
The Sokoto State Police Command confirmed the attacks. Its spokesperson, Ahmad Rufai, said security operatives conducted intensive operations from Thursday afternoon until 3 a.m. on Friday, and that reinforcements had been deployed. But for students like Oluwasegun, official assurances do not quiet the question of whether the road is safe enough to journey through.
The U.S. Department of State currently lists Sokoto among seven Nigerian states, Bauchi, Gombe, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Sokoto, and Zamfara, under its highest-level “Do Not Travel” advisory, citing unrest, crime, and kidnapping.
The pattern is consistent with what security analysts are documenting across the region. In a recent assessment, Dr. Kabir Adamu, Managing Director of Beacon Security and Innovations Limited, identified Sokoto as among the states worst affected by banditry and kidnapping in Nigeria’s Northwest, and called for stronger coordination between state governments and federal security agencies to address it. State-level measures, operational vehicles, community security initiatives, remain in place, but their impact is uneven.
Oluwasegun wants more. “The government should establish some forest security officers apart from police force and soldiers,” he insisted. “There should be security guards that will be monitoring the forest.” He added, with a student’s clarity: “If there’s no protection for the common man, definitely the welfare of the country will fall,”
For some students, the fear has curdled into something else, plain humor that masks the dread beneath. Hussein Alamin Adeiza, a 400-level UDUS Law student from Lagos State, should be looking forward to going home. Instead, his sisters are begging him to stay put in Sokoto, insisting that even though they miss him, it is better to see him next year than not at all.
Adeiza insists he will make the journey, but he knows the cost. He noted that traveling home is dreadful even without any specific news of insecurity on the road. This time, the fear will be heightened. He usually does not sleep while traveling through Niger State; now, he suspects no one on the bus will even try to close their eyes.
The jokes have changed too. Conversations about returning home used to be filled with stories of hugs and reunions, but they are now laced with dark humor about kidnappers.
“It’s either my dad pays 200k for a flight ticket or he pays 200 million as ransom because I’m going home regardless,” he said jokingly.
This situation is not unique to the Northwest. Students across Nigerian universities describe similar anxieties, constant calculations of when to travel, which roads to trust, what risks are worth taking for their studies.
A 2025 study published in the Journal of Ecohumanism on the impact of kidnapping and banditry on Nigerian students’ academic performance found that more than 65 percent of students surveyed reported concentration problems and disruptions to schoolwork, while 70 percent reported increased anxiety and fear.
That pattern continuously appears in the complaints of students interviewed in tertiary institutions across the country. Ajigeloye Omolara Blessing, a 100-level Computer Science Education student at Ekiti State University, said insecurity has disrupted more than her travel plans, it has delayed her industrial training placement and left her uncertain about her eventual NYSC posting. Her greatest fear, she admitted, is becoming a victim of kidnapping, robbery, or violent crime during ordinary daily activities, an anxiety she said actively undermines her ability to focus on her studies.
Alex Adejumo Inioluwa Adewale, a 200-level Microbiology student at the Federal University of Technology, Akure, said the fear has changed how he moves entirely, avoiding late-night journeys, tracking security updates before traveling between states, cancelling trips outright when a route feels unsafe.
He added that he has missed several seminars and conferences as a result, opportunities he believes could have shaped his education and career. “Students deserve a safe environment where they can study, travel and build their future without constant fear,” he insisted.
In an interview with Pen Press UDUS, the President of the National Association of Osun State Students (NAOS) the association that coordinated the journey that led to Kehinde’s April 21 attack, Yusuf Adeojo Babatunde, said his administration is working tirelessly to prevent such occurrence in the coming break.
He disclosed that adequate plans are already in place to ensure safe travel, which includes working closely with the school management and security agencies to monitor the buses conveying students among other security measures. Yusuf concluded by acknowledging Kehinde’s experience and the fear it has caused him and other victims. He further reinforces his commitment to supporting and ensuring the safety of the students.
For Kehinde, the fear is not founded upon a third party’s account. It is the after effect of a desperate prayer whispered in the dark, of watching armed men take everything he owned, and of the regret that followed.