How Kidnappers Tore My Hijab, Kept Us For Two Days- Victim Narrates Ordeal

Hassana Umaru, a widow, and primary school teacher in Adamawa State, has narrated to THE WHISTLER how she and other passengers were kidnapped while traveling in a commercial bus from Yola to Ilorin two weeks ago.

She narrated in Hausa how Kidnappers stopped their vehicle at Akwanga in Nasarawa State around 12 midnight and took away all the 10 passengers in the bus.

“We thought it was a military checkpoint, but as soon as we stopped, we saw flashlights beamed heavily on us, and we got scared. All of us began apologising to them thinking they were military men.

“We say only three men who started smashing the bus windows and windscreen with machetes.

 “We did not know that some of them were lying low by the roadside, hiding behind the tall grasses. 

” They ordered us all to come down from the vehicle and as soon as the first people alighted, I heard the Kidnappers shouting: ‘let’s go! Move, move! They spoke Hausa language,” she narrated.

That was when it dawned on them that they were attacked by kidnappers in military uniforms.The  kidnappers pushed and marched them towards the mountain with some of the victims walking without shoes.

They were moved from one mountain to another, walking and shoving in the thick forest for nearly 4 hours in the middle of the night.

They eventually stopped at a location on a mountain.”They asked us to sleep there and at dawn, they removed my hijab, tore it and used it to blindfold the men, tied their hands and legs.

“They collected all our phones, except those who were lucky to have hidden theirs in the bus, later retrieved them.

“After that, they asked us to provide the contact numbers of our relatives. They were going to ask them for money, and once it was provided, they would release us all they promised.

“They began the business of calling our relatives one after the other, demanding for the ransom of N500,000 on each of us.”

The mother of three said they stayed for the period of two days without food or water in the mountain, as the kidnappers’ made calls to their relatives to negotiate for their release in exchange for ransom.

According to her, they only managed to get N200,000 from two of the first set of passengers they kidnapped from the first vehicle before their own.

She said it was while the kidnappers were negotiating on phone that she noticed they up to 10 in number.

Umaru narrated further how the kidnappers began to disagree among themselves on what to do with their victims, since the ransom was not coming as they expected.

“Some of them said we should be slaughtered, but one of them stood his ground that he didn’t see any reason why we should be kept in their custody, not to talk of killing us. His reasons were that we were on our way to serve Allah because we were traveling for a religious function in Ilorin.

“He even challenged them saying why should they even think of kidnapping people like us when we didn’t do anything to them but on a mission for a good course? What was even the need for it?

“Their argument continued for sometime until the rest of them got tired and left two people behind, one being the guy that said they shouldn’t kill us,”she narrated.

According to the widow, the two that stayed behind were friendly and started to discuss with them, and even apologized for keeping them two days without food. The two kidnappers also revealed they are Fulani.

Umaru said: “During the conversations, the same kidnapper that didn’t want us to be killed, asked us to please pray for them always. He said even before Allah, we, the victims, were on the truthful side.

“He said initially he was elsewhere when his colleagues called him to come and meet us and get his share, but he said he was disappointed in the calibre of people his colleagues kidnapped.

“The kidnapper said he started kidnapping in the first place because he was once arrested and detained in prison for a year, and when he came out, he declared that since he was wrongfully detained for a crime he didn’t commit, he will start kidnapping.

“He said: let me rather be killed in the process of kidnapping, since I was innocent and wrongfully accused.”‘

On the second day at midnight, the friendly kidnapper told them to get up and leave.

But when he noticed that they could not find their way in the dark, and they had no flashlights, he volunteered to walk them some distance down the mountain.

“This was around 1am or 2am, I think, and he asked us to sleep down the mountainside and that when it is 5am, we could find our ways.

“From where they dropped us, we could see vehicular movements from afar. And when it was daylight, before we could trek to where we were sighting those vehicles, it took us about two more hours. At the roadside, we got a car that took us to town where we made phone calls to relatives to come to our aid,” she stated.

She said the kidnappers did not beat them while in their custody, but beat one woman with the side of a cutlas because she could not stop talking. 

After escaping from the kidnappers den, Umaru said she has not been able to get over the nightmare.

“Despite the fact that there’s a huge distance between me and them now, I sometimes feel as if they will appear from nowhere to kidnap me again. I’m traumatised. There’s this constant fear that keeps hovering over me which makes it hard for me to forget about them.

“My prayer for them is that Allah should make them repent and that we shouldn’t cross paths in the near future.

“I’m also pleading with the law enforcement agencies to please look into some cases they handle, if this particular kidnapper is telling the truth that he was wrongfully accused of a kidnap which angered him into becoming a kidnapper today, I feel it’s inappropriate.

“Let there be proper investigations into cases before drawing conclusions to avoid sending innocent victims to jail,” Umaru pleaded.

She further urged the government to take note about the behavioural patterns of convicts in prison, ensuring that they come out reformed and not become a nuisances to the society.

“Let the government also have mercy on us, let it rise and wage war against kidnappers, as we pray for sanity in our dear country. Even the kidnappers themselves are not enjoying what they are doing I guess. They don’t sleep in their rooms, nor do they allow their victims too to enjoy the comfort of their rooms.”