By Abdulraheem Kawthar Adenike | Fact Frontier.
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The afternoon of Thursday, April 23, 2026, began like any other in the agrarian settlement of Innayin. Farmers tended their crops under a steady sun, and the surrounding forest that had long coexisted peacefully with the village offered only the familiar sounds of birdsong. At exactly 3:30 p.m., that calm was annihilated. A deep, guttural trumpet ripped through the air, and a fully grown wild elephant burst from the treeline, charging directly into the heart of the community.
Witnesses described a scene of instantaneous chaos. The elephant, agitated and disoriented, crashed through farm partitions and flattened cassava mounds as it advanced with alarming speed. Ibrahim Tijani, a 45-year-old farmer working a plot on the settlement’s edge, was among the first to see the colossal animal bearing down on him. There was no time to reach safety. Eyewitnesses recounted how the elephant closed the distance in seconds, seized Tijani with its trunk, hurled him violently to the ground, and then trampled him repeatedly. The brutal force left the farmer with massive crush injuries as fellow villagers watched in helpless horror, too terrified to move.
Almost simultaneously, panic swallowed another resident. Alhaji Muhammadu Bingin, aged 50, had been near the same area when the elephant emerged. As the animal rampaged, Bingin attempted to flee, darting into a dense thicket that bordered the farm track. He vanished from sight while the elephant, still enraged, continued its rampage through a cluster of farm huts, flattening crops and destroying property. Terrified residents scattered, with some climbing trees and others sprinting into the open bush, their shouts lost in the cracking of branches and the elephant’s thunderous footfalls. The rampage lasted only minutes. As suddenly as it had appeared, the elephant wheeled around and retreated into the forest corridor toward the national park boundary, leaving a trail of destruction and a community stunned into silence.
A distress call went out within the hour, and a combined response team of police officers, National Park Service rangers, and local hunters arrived at Innayin. With the elephant no longer in sight, the team’s priority was to search for victims in the overgrown terrain where the two men were last seen. The search party followed the broken vegetation and massive footprints for roughly 200 metres from the village clearing. There, in a shallow depression choked with shrubs, they discovered the lifeless body of Ibrahim Tijani. His corpse bore the unmistakable marks of a fatal animal encounter: fractured limbs, deep lacerations, and a crushed chest cavity. The police later confirmed that the injuries were “consistent with an animal attack.” Tijani’s remains were carefully evacuated and transported to the General Hospital in Iwere-Ile, where a medical examination was conducted before his family was informed.
Yet Alhaji Muhammadu Bingin remained unaccounted for. The search grid was widened immediately. Rangers and hunters pressed deeper into the forest, looking for any trace — a piece of torn clothing, a sandal, a sign of struggle. They called his name into the bush and paused to listen for a response, but only the echo of their own voices returned. Dense undergrowth and fading daylight made the search increasingly difficult, and as night fell, the operation was suspended with heavy hearts.
The search resumed at first light on Friday, with extra rangers deployed to track the elephant’s movements while simultaneously hunting for any sign of the missing man. DSP Ayanlade Olayinka, spokesperson for the Oyo State Police Command, provided an official account of how the tragedy unfolded: “On 23/04/2026 at about 1530HRS, a wild elephant came into Innayin Community. Unfortunately, one Ibrahim Tijani, male, aged 45 years, was attacked and killed, while one Alhaji Muhammadu Bingin, male, aged 50 years, is still missing.”
As the hours stretch on, the elephant remains at large and the question of what exactly became of Bingin hangs painfully over the village. The community that once considered the forest a quiet neighbour now trembles at its edge, haunted by those few, vicious minutes when a massive grey silhouette charged out of the green and changed everything.
