Oyo Kidnapped Principal Recounts Harrowing 7-Week Ordeal in Bandits’ Den

Oyo Kidnapped Principal Recounts Harrowing 7-Week Ordeal in Bandits’ Den.

Mrs. Alamu, the principal of the Oyo State-owned secondary school who was abducted alongside others weeks ago, has given a detailed account of her experience in captivity. Her story, which spans seven weeks in the forest, reveals moments of fear, hope, and the faith that she says carried her through until her eventual release.

Speaking about her time in the hands of her captors, the principal described the final week as the most trying period of the entire ordeal. According to her, the intensity of military air raids in the area increased dramatically during that time, creating a situation where the fear of the bandits became secondary to the fear of being caught in the crossfire.

“Apart from seeing the hand of God right from the beginning, the seventh week was the hardest for us,” Mrs. Alamu said. “That was when the troops increased their air raids. It was intense that at a point, the fear of the bandits became secondary. We were just praying that missiles would not be accidentally dropped on us.”

She explained that the captives were kept in exposed conditions, with only polythene bags and grasses providing any form of cover. Despite the danger, she maintained that divine protection kept them safe throughout the period.

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The principal recalled a particularly frightening moment when the camp commander summoned her after the air raids intensified. She said she already knew what such a call could mean, as two of the four men brought in with her had already been lost.

“Towards the end of that week, the commander came and said, ‘Principal, come.’ I was already shaking because I knew what that could mean,” she recounted. “Immediately I got there, he said, ‘See what your government has done. I’m going to kill one of you today.'”

Mrs. Alamu described breaking down completely at that moment, rolling on the ground as she pleaded with the commander. She reminded him that only two of the four men originally taken remained. Surprisingly, she said the commander became calm after her reaction and told his men to call her when he was leaving their location.

Later, the commander returned and asked what she wanted the bandits to do given the government’s actions. She reportedly responded that the ransom demands were beyond what the victims’ families could afford and asked him to request something more reasonable. He agreed to pass along her message.

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Perhaps the most chilling part of her account came when she described hearing digging sounds late at night. The two remaining men with her began shouting in fear, recognising what the noise meant. The captives understood that shovels being used in the forest at night could only mean one thing.

“My people, the two of them, were shouting, ‘Mama, they’ve started using shovels. Mama, we can hear the sound of shovels,'” she recalled. “I said, ‘Maybe they are doing some work,’ even though I was crying because we all knew what that meant. They were about to bury another person.”

However, the bandits later moved the captives to another location that night, which Mrs. Alamu interpreted as divine intervention preventing another loss.

The principal also spoke about the difficult conditions the captives endured, particularly the presence of young children among them. She was asked to tell the other captives to remain quiet, but she pointed out the impossibility of silencing a crying baby or a hungry toddler.

“The leader called me again and said, ‘Mama Principal, tell them we are ready to sacrifice any one of them if they make noise.’ How do you tell a one-year-three-month-old baby not to cry? How do you tell a two-year-old that they must not ask for food?” she asked.

Food was scarce during the captivity, she explained, because the bandits were afraid that smoke from cooking fires would expose their location to military aircraft. As a result, the captives went hungry for most of the time.

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While in captivity, Mrs. Alamu said she held onto two specific prayers. The first was that she would not return to an empty house. She was worried about her husband, whose health was fragile, especially after she learned that he had stopped communicating with people. When she was finally rescued, she insisted on speaking with him over the phone, and hearing his voice confirmed that her prayer had been answered.

The second prayer was for her own health. “The place was so terrible that anything could have happened there. I just told God, ‘My grave should not be numbered in the forest.’ And God helped me,” she said.

She described the limited medical care available, noting that the only treatment for fever or malaria was paracetamol tablets or a medication called Boska. In the final week, she broke down completely with a high temperature and shivering. When she asked the camp commander for paracetamol, a woman sitting next to her warned her that the pills were not what they appeared to be. Despite the warning, she took them, trusting in God.

“To the glory of God, it was as if I had never shown any symptoms of malaria,” she said. “It was God’s hand. The release was miraculous.”