Families of victims and survivors have expressed gratitude to the secret police for re-arresting and expediting the trial of Abdulmalik Abdulazeez Obadaki, the suspected mastermind of the 2012 gun attack on a Deeper Life Bible Church in Otite, near Okene, Kogi State, which killed over 19 worshippers. Obadaki was recently arraigned by the Department of State Security (DSS).
While reaffirming their faith in the court’s ability to administer justice, the victims, their families, survivors, and townspeople expressed delight with what they described as the speed and vigor with which the new DSS leadership is prosecuting Obadaki.
According to Saturday Independent, three guys with AK-47 assault rifles opened fire on a Bible study session at the Deeper Life Bible Church in Otite early on August 7, 2012.
Fifteen worshippers were slain by the conclusion of the onslaught. Later, four more people passed away from wounds they received during the assault. The incident, which is thought to have been carried out by the terrorist organization Ansaru, injured many dozen more people.
Obadaki allegedly commanded a gang that invaded five commercial banks in Uromi, Edo State, following the Okene church attack. The gang killed multiple people and took large quantities of cash.
However, he was apprehended and detained by security personnel and placed under custody at the Kuje Prison. Shortly after, he managed to flee during the July 2022 jailbreak at the Kuje Custodial Center.
The DSS declared that it had apprehended the elusive Ansaru leader on November 15, 2025.
Six days later, Obadaki was charged with six counts by the secret police, including conspiracy, supporting attacks, terrorism, concealing information, and escaping from lawful custody. He was arraigned before Justice Joyce Abdulmalik of the Federal High Court in Abuja. Obadaki only entered a guilty plea to count six, which deals with fleeing from lawful custody, after the charges were read.
The defendant should be in the DSS’s custody until the next hearing, Justice Abdulmalik said as he postponed the case until January 26, 2026.
Otite residents expressed their satisfaction with the DSS’s decision to re-arrest the Ansaru leader and the speed at which the secret police arraigned him, claiming that the actions demonstrated that “the DSS has indeed changed.”
“In fact, before now, we had given up on ever getting justice,” a community leader stated. You won’t blame us either. They attacked banks in Uromi after assaulting the Deeper Life Church in our town. Thus, we were pleased to learn that he had been taken into custody.
We started to harbor doubts because of the many years this Obadaki lived without experiencing any hardship. Our Deeper Life Bible Church was targeted by terrorists, as you can see if you Google Otite today. The wounds from that incident are still there in our lives. The neighborhood elder added, “The next thing we heard in 2022 was that he escaped during the Kuje jail break.”
We learned in mid-November that he had been apprehended again by the DSS, which came as a shock.
Our cautious optimism has since given way to renewed faith and hope that real change has arrived in light of everything we have learned about the new DSS leadership and how swiftly they arraigned him. We think that this time, somehow, things will be different and that our courts will provide us with justice,” he confirmed.
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