ABUJA, Nigeria — The Federal High Court in Abuja has sentenced the mother and sister of the recently eliminated terrorist kingpin, Kachallah Ibrahim Battujo, to 40 years in prison for actively aiding, abetting, and concealing critical operational details regarding his cross-regional banditry network.
The landmark judicial verdict was delivered on Friday, June 19, 2026, by Justice Hauwa Joseph Yilwa following a fast-tracked prosecution by the Department of State Services (DSS) and federal lawyers.
Okay News reports that the convicts, Safiya Salihu (mother) and Halima Abdullahi (sister), were apprehended by intelligence operatives shortly before security forces ambushed and killed Battujo on June 10, 2026, in a forest near Iluke in the Kabba/Bunu Local Government Area of Kogi State. The two women pleaded guilty to three out of five terrorism-related counts filed by the Office of the Attorney General of the Federation, confessing to using encrypted cellular lines to feed intelligence to the bandit cell and shielding the kingpin from ongoing security tracking operations.
The women escaped convictions on separate counts bordering on sponsoring a holy pilgrimage and receiving ₦490,300 in illicit cash transfers after the Director of Public Prosecutions, Oyedepo Rotimi, SAN, explicitly requested the court to strike out the financial counts to focus on the core logistics violations. According to court records for Count 2, the duo directly violated Section 26 of the Terrorism (Prevention and Prohibition) Act, 2022. While the mother confessed to general concealment of her son’s camp locations, the sister admitted to withholding information regarding stockpiled automated weapons she witnessed during visits to his forest base. While the statutory penalty carries 20 years per count, Justice Yilwa ordered the sentences to run concurrently, after which both convicts will enter state-backed deradicalization and rehabilitation programs.
