A teacher who spent 56 days in captivity says he and other abductees were released by their captors before security personnel reached them, recounting blindfolds, harsh conditions, fear, and their emotional journey to freedom.
“It is difficult to say on air, but I will just say what I can. When we were there, we were blindfolded, not an ordinary blindfold. We didn’t even know if we were in Nigeria or another country. We were just there. We were saying maybe the government had even forgotten us.
They said they are not B0k0 Haram. They said they are ISWAP. I was the last person who was c@ptured in the school and I was the last person that was released.”
All I can say is that God answered all the prayers that people were praying for us.
“In terms of feeding, we were fed twice a day, morning and evening. We ate only rice, little beans, onions, margarine and salt. Throughout our stay there, we did not taste pepper.”
For the 56 days, we the teachers did not bathe. We did not wash our clothes.
“When we got there, they told us not to pray. After about a month, they allowed us to pray, but they warned us not to mention the name of Jesus and not to pray aloud.
Until the last day when their commander came and was smiling and laughing and said we should thank God that we had been freed.
The next thing they said was that we should open our eyes.
When they released us, everybody had gone. They said I could not carry the handcuff home because the key had broken. One of them suggested they should cut 0ff my hand, but another said no. They later used a small rope to remove the handcuff.
“Their commander called me back. He pointed a g¥n at me and said, ‘Come.’ I thought I was going to di£ because I was the only one left in the bush. He asked where I was going, and when I said I didn’t know, he showed me the right route and told me to follow where the others had passed.
“We trekked for about 40 minutes to one hour before they provided motorcycles that took us close to the nearest village. They later stopped and told us they could not go further, so we trekked for another one and a half hours before we got to where the government people who came to rescue us were.”
“When we saw the buses, we were afraid because the people were speaking Hausa. We even asked them to show us their identity cards. They kept assuring us that the government sent them.
“The buses had no number plates and had Arabic inscriptions. We were afraid they wanted to take us somewhere else.”
“There were some children that could not walk. I carried one little girl on my neck. At the river, I used a stick to check the depth before helping the children and some adults cross safely.”
“I had arthritis on my left leg and couldn’t run. I hid under the grass because my clothes blended with it. A student who refused to leave me looked in my direction, and that was how their commander noticed me and ordered me to stand up.
The leg that I had spent so much money treating got better after they gave me one drug.
The utmost support for now should be for my school…” - One of the teachers who spent 56 days in kidn@ppers’ custody in Oyo State has claimed that he and other c@ptives were released by their abd¥ctors before security personnel arrived to take them home.
