Tales of horror from Kaduna

By Chioma Okezie -Okeh

Twenty–nine-year-old Zainab Mohammed can best be described as a cat with nine lives. She indeed deserves the description after escaping two successful terrorist attacks. She narrowly missed the Kaduna-bound train that was attacked on March 28, 2022 by suspected terrorists who first used explosives to immobilise the train before shooting at some of the passengers. They killed some and kidnapped many other passengers. 

The next day, she opted for road transport, assuming that the road would be safer since the attack just happened.  She joined three others who were already in a Toyota Corolla to Kaduna. She was among those who escaped when the terrorists in their numbers ambushed travellers and packed so many into the forest.

Her words: I was heading to Kaduna for a business meeting and I was to board the train. Unfortunately, we met a heavy traffic on the way and by the time I got to the railway station, I was five minutes late. I was disappointed and kept cursing my cousin who came late to drop me off. I was still planning how to get to Kaduna the next day when we got the news of the attack. Maybe by now I would be dead if I was in that train. Im grateful to God that I was advised by my family to go by road.  We thought that with the incident that happened, that those terrorists would stay away for a while. When I got to the park, I was unsettled so I decided to give alms. I changed the N1000 with me and shared N50 to everyone that was begging me for money. 

Barely one hour after we started the journey, I was already asleep, but I was woken up by gunshots. I saw a large crowd of young boys running towards us shooting at us and into the air. It was like cows that were unleashed on the road. There is no amount of police or military checkpoint that could save people on that road that day. They were shouting praises to Allah with long strings of AK47 magazines shooting. The two cars ahead refused to stop. The gunmen busted the tyres, brought out their drivers and shot them. Our driver immediately reversed and because so many cars were already behind us.  They shot at our car and the bullet pierced through the tyre, but we were able to cross the danger zone before the car was demobilised. Our driver stopped and all of us started running.  We started shouting at the upcoming cars to reverse and the bandits were still advancing on motorbikes and others running on barefoot.  The man who drove the car told us that more than five of their company drivers had been captured by the bandits and had yet to return. He said that he would rather die than allow those bandits to catch him. He told us that they beat up the men and also sodomise them. We ran for more than 20 minutes till we got to a military checkpoint. We informed the soldiers what was happening in front and they jumped into their operational vehicle and left. The direction that they followed was completely different. I wonder if they were running or following another route to attack those bandits.

I am grateful to God and disappointed that government cannot do anything about these bandits. The number of boys and the kind of weapons that they were carrying was too much. I refuse to believe that government does not know where to find them. They are in that bush and heavily armed.

Sex slaves

Also recounting the horrors she experienced in the kidnappers den, Aisha, another lady that was kidnapped in November, told Saturday Sun that the fact that she came out of the place alive was quite divine. I was heading back to school from Abuja and my parents advised me to board a public transport as bandits were targeting exotic cars. So I boarded a regular bus that had about 11 passengers in it. 

We were at Kajuru area when we started hearing gunshots. Our driver tried to reverse but they were both in front and behind, shooting into the air and at any car that refused to stop.  Our driver advised us to obey or be killed. When they realised that our driver was not making any attempt to run, they ordered us to come down. They were speaking Hausa and did not bother to cover their faces. They left our driver and one old man behind and dragged the rest of us along.

We walked for more than eight hours into the forest and while we were moving, I observed several camps and people tied to trees. I only prayed to God to save me and keep me alive because out of 14 of us that were taken that day, three were killed because they could no longer walk properly.

When we got there, the men were separated from the women. They started beating the men up with sticks and their rifles. They made sure all of them spilled blood before they stopped while they warned the women that they would be killed if they attempt to escape. 

The other women that we met welcomed us and warned us what would happen to us soon. Just like they said, all the women were brought out and ordered to remove their cloths. It was the most dehumanising experience of my life. Watching teenagers touch you one after the other. They were like hungry animals and if you refuse, they would kill you. At least ten of them every day had their way on all the women and forced the men to watch them do it. I was lucky to have spent only six days before my parents were able to pay for my release. They fed us with bread and water. Then early in the morning, the native women would bring one oily substance and ask us to rob on our private parts so the pains would not be much when those animals would eventually descend on us. 

This normally happens after they are done smoking heavily. There is one man that the leaders normally call Odogwu anytime he got to the camp. He was the one that normally supplied drugs for them and they would be hailing him as Odogwu. The women were allowed to move around a bit to help with cooking and attending to the wounded. They tied the men up except if they needed to go and defecate. It was hell and so many people were still there when we left.  I will not wish my enemy to go through what happened to me, she narrated. 

According to Aisha, most of the bandits that captured them were from mixed tribes. They were communicating in Hausa language but sometimes some of them would switch over to their local dialects. They even have boys from Niger and Chad. I asked one of them who seemed nice why he preferred that type of life and he told me that Allah chose that part for him. He told me he was from Kebbi State and that his father sent him to Kaduna to work. He was recruited by some boys and taken to the forest.