Gunmen have shot dead a bus driver and abducted his 16 passengers near Chikara village on the Abuja-Lokoja highway.

City & Crime learnt that the incident happened on Thursday around 12am when the gunmen opened fire on a Sharon bus at a bend near Yakwo Farms.

It was gathered the bus driver was killed instantly, while the occupants, including a nursing mother, were whisked away into the bush.

Another commercial bus driver, Saidu Ibrahim, said, "I was driving behind the bus that was shot at, but as God would have it, there was no vehicle coming from behind me and I applied brakes and reversed with speed and escaped."

A member of the Abaji branch of the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW), Danjuma Suleiman, also who confirmed the incident, said six among the kidnapped victims, including two women and a nursing mother, were later freed.

He said, "That night, six of the victims were freed as the abductors discovered that one of them, a nursing mother, was not strong enough to trek into the bush."

Suleiman further said that the victims were travelling from Delta State to Lafia, Nasarawa State.

Our reporter learnt that the remains of the bus driver was deposited at the Abaji General Hospital.

The spokesman of the Kogi State Police Command, SP Williams Ovey Ayah, did not pick calls or reply to a text message sent to him on the incident.