After 6 horrifying days in the hands of kidnappers, one of the victims identified as David Obiorah who is a law student has shared the terrible ordeal adding that it was a close shave with death.
Recall that a previous report was made of law students who were abducted on their way from Onitsha in Anambra state to Adamawa state, Yola law school campus. Obiorah recounted that their bus was hijacked in between checkpoints of both the Army and the Police, at about 9pm along Wukari-Zaki-Biam expressway, Benue State, around a town called Jootar.
“They were up to 10 men, four of them had AK-47, while the remaining used cutlasses and daggers,” he said.
Obiorah further stated that the kidnappers were not Fulani herdsmen as he had suspected but that they were Tiv people. The law student added that they were told that they will not be killed however, they needed to cooperate . He added that they were beaten every hour just to call family members to raise the the initial 10 million naira ransom that the abductors demanded.
In his words, “When they hijacked the bus, at first, I thought it was Fulanis as usual, but their appearance and tone was of Tiv language, that is Benue state. So, I was scared, it has never happened to me, I felt we were going to be killed. But then, they told us that they weren’t going to kill any of us, so, felt relieved to an extent.
“The kidnappers mounted roadblocks and withdrew back into the bush. When we slowed down, they hijacked the bus and took us into the deep forest. It’s about 20km away from the main road.”
The law student still speaking added that “The leader of their gang is called Matthew, he’s either a dismissed soldier or a runaway soldier. They are all Tiv members, although they have one or two Fulanis, but those ones don’t talk.
“The community is aware of what they (the kidnappers) do. They subdued the community, the elderly, the children, the entire community is involved because they don’t talk”, the law student added.
He further clarified that they were not rescued by the police but were only freed by the abductors after the ransom had been paid by family members.
“Our families paid the ransom; the government did not pay anything nor did the police come to rescue us. We paid and we were released. The rule was pay your money and you can go.
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“We came out from the kidnappers den around 12 midnight and went to a park where we met with the manager. We asked him to give us a bus to bring us back to Yola, we didn’t even have plans to involve any police, we only wanted to go back to school without publicity or anything.”
“It was the manager that called the police, they arrived and then started claiming that they had rescued us. The Police did not rescue us, we paid and we were freed”, the law student stressed
“I have no message for the federal government, I have nothing to tell them, let them continue to play politics with security issues,” the law student added.
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