My menstrual period prevented kidnappers from raping me — Osun kidnap victim

Bola Bamigbola

For Kabirat (surname withheld), a lady in her early 20s seeking admission to study Microbiology at the University of Abuja, last Sunday was a day she would never forget in a hurry.

It was a day she and four other passengers travelling to Osogbo from Abuja were abducted by kidnappers at Ajeoku Village, Obokun Local Government Area of Osun State.

The captives spent about 20 agonising hours facing death in the hands of seven men who were armed with weapons. The kidnappers were also said to have contacted some of the captives’ relatives and commenced negotiations for ransom.

Kabirat in a chat with Saturday PUNCH said she wanted to postpone the homeward trip to Osogbo till another day after she had successfully concluded her post-Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination in Abuja the previous week.

She later changed her mind. That also altered her story. At about 9 am, she eventually boarded a bus travelling down South at Nyanya Motor Park, Abuja.

The journey was smooth, to say the least, until the 18-passenger bus Kabirat was travelling in was stopped by armed gunmen, who were later identified as Fulani, at a bad portion on the road at Ajeoku junction.

She explained that before the bus she was travelling in arrived at the point where the gunmen laid an ambush, a car had already been stopped by the kidnappers and the four occupants had been abducted.

She said the car had left Imesi-Ile, a neighbouring town and was travelling to Osogbo a few minutes earlier and that the gunmen ordered all occupants to come out and they carefully selected eight people that they marched into the Olua Forest, where some of them spent almost 20 hours without food or water.

According to her, a nursing mother and children were not selected among those that were abducted by the gunmen, adding that three underage persons that were picked alongside five others, were returned to the point they were abducted by the kidnappers.

Kabirat said when they were abducted, her phone fell into the bus and after they had been marched into the bush, one of her relations called her mobile phone to inquire about the trip, only to be told by the nursing mother that was left in the bus that they had been kidnapped.

Kabirat said, “I can’t explain how I survived it. I was the only lady among those abducted and our abductors were seven Fulani men, six of whom carried AK-47 rifles, cutlasses and charms. They told us they were Boko Haram members from Maiduguri (Borno State) and that they wanted money.”

She added, “If I recall properly, the incident occurred around 6.30 pm on Sunday. We left Abuja around 9.30 am. Before our bus arrived at the point where we were abducted, a car had already been stopped at gunpoint.

“We did not see the occupants of the first car stopped by the abductors. They had been marched into the bush. There was no way our bus could escape. That portion of the road was bad and the point is like a road traversing the middle of a valley.

“If any attempt had been made to make a run, we would have fallen into a ditch. We had to stop as the men were shooting sporadically. The man that sat next to me was hit by a bullet when they stopped us. The man did not die, though. After selecting those to be abducted, our abductors marched us into the bush.

“Inside the bush, we met the man kidnapped in the car that had been stopped before our bus arrived at the scene. The man, though not an indigene of Imesi-Ile, but we were told many people in the town loved him. The man said he left Imesi-Ile less than 30 minutes before he was abducted alongside his two sons and one other passenger. We were all eight that were held.

“I believe the hunters in Imesi-Ile got wind of his abduction and rushed to the scene. We had not been taken too far into the bush when the hunters arrived and fired several shots.

“I could have been raped, but I was having menstruation, so the men left me alone. They later led us to one mountain and asked all of us to lie down. That was where we spent the night. At daybreak, we could even hear calls for Sallat prayer from Imesi-Ile. They prepared rice and served only me, but I rejected the food.

“After others ate, our abductors started screening us again. When it was my turn, they asked for money and I told them I did not have any money on me. They slapped me and told me to give them my wristwatch and I gave it to them.

“The other four men that were abducted were mercilessly beaten up. A corps member from Kogi State was among the four. Later, they collected our driver’s phone and told us to use it to call our relations to inform them we had been abducted. I also spoke to my uncle with the phone. They later collected the phone and switched it off.

“Few minutes after, we started hearing gunshots not far away from where we were held. That situation put pressure on them and they decided to attack those coming to rescue us. The corps member told us he heard our abductors saying they were going home, so they left us. But I guess they probably did not have enough bullets to prolong the exchange of gunshots with the police and local hunters that were involved in the rescue operation.

“One hour after they had left us, we still lied down there. We later stood up. We could see the kidnappers on a mountain not too far away from us. We decided to take another route to avoid running into them. With that decision, we started trekking in the opposite direction to where we last saw them.

“The man that was abducted in a car led us because he was familiar with the area. And after some hours of trekking, we got to a farm and we kept trekking. We got to a river and drank. As we were leaving the area, we ran into one of the kidnappers. We all ran in different directions.

“I eventually found myself with two others and we continued looking for our way out of the bush. Around 2 pm on Monday, we got to the main road.

“It took time before the police and hunters could find the corps member among us. When he heard our rescuers calling him, he thought it was the abductors.”

The visibly terrified Kabirat, who said the rescue operation was frustrated by the topography of the area, noted that their abductors could see all parts of the forest from where they positioned themselves on the hill.

Commenting on how the rescue operation was carried out, the spokesperson for the Osun Police Command, Ms Folasade Odoro, said a hunter and one police officer sustained injuries. She commended the local hunters in Imesi-Ile and members of the Oodua Peoples Congress for collaborating with the police to secure the release of the captives.

Credit Punch News