ABUBAKAR Sanusi, 22, still trembles. He is also at a loss for words, a month after being abducted in his village in Sokoto, North-west Nigeria, by a group of terrorists known as “bandits”. Anytime he recounts the long thirteen days he spent with the group in captivity, he shudders as beads of sweat settle on his forehead.

The time was 11:30 pm, on the last Friday of August. Goronyo was in its usual quietness until the moment the terror group attacked the village. They came riding motorcycles, shooting sporadically into the air. Sanusi, in his room with three other friends, heard a  bang on the door. But he was unmoved but became furious.

His anger, however, thawed the moment one of his friends, Faruk Jibo, 25, dashed back into the room, gasping for words to relay the horror he saw when he peeked through the window.

“We all heard that someone was at the door, and Faruk went to check through the window only to find out that someone dressed as an armed robber, holding a torchlight, was outside. He then rushed back and locked the door,” Sanusi recalled while speaking with CAMPUS REPORTER, adding that their heavy grunts alerted the terror group who forced their way into the room.

“Lie down and face the ground,” one of the men ordered the startled friends. His face wore a menacing scowl. “If anyone tried to stand or make any move to escape, he would be shot dead,” he declared and went to invade the next room, Sanusi narrated.

Kidnapping for ransom has been on the rise in Nigeria’s Northwest lately. Early in the year, abducted kidnapped a total of 2,944 victims across the country. Sanusi was kidnapped alongside his aged father, three friends and a neighbour.

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Theatre of fear, blood and death

That night marked the beginning of Sanusi’s horrific ordeal at the hands of the armed men. When they began the journey, he said the terror group covered their faces with rags so they could not recognise them and then walked them into the forest where they passed the night.

“We walked for about four hours before we got to a hill where they stopped us. They tied our hands and legs and covered our faces before asking us to sleep.  Later, I heard their boss saying to one of them to bring him water to gargle his mouth; then we realised it was daybreak. They  untied our hands and legs.”

But it wasn’t their final stop.  The bandits moved for another long hour and stopped at a shade to rest. There, they asked his father, Abubakar Danjuma, 65, the amount he could afford to secure their release. “₦1 million ($2,430),” he replied.

This response infuriated their abductors, who claimed the old man was lying because their ‘informant’ had told them the 65-year old man had just purchased a car worth ₦7 million ($17,000). They said: “he has houses in places like Abuja, Sokoto and Minna and that they can get huge amounts of money from him,” Sanusi recalled, his voice breaking intermittently. He said their abductors became impatient and started torturing them. His father and Nafiu Seidu, their neighbour, eventually agreed to pay a ransom fee of ₦50 million ($121,533) altogether.

“They told our neighbour they were aware that he was in charge of salary disbursement to security operatives in both Sokoto and Zamfara. So for that reason, he is to pay the sum of ₦40 million ($97,226) for ransom while my father would pay the sum of ₦10 million ($24,300).”

The armed men asked them to contact their relatives and gave an ultimatum of two days to pay the amount. However, the families were only able to gather ₦2.5 million ($6,076). The gunmen would not bulge. “They said if our people are not ready to have us, they should let them know so that they can kill us and move on.”

They had spent the twelfth night in the bush with the terror group, feeding on two meals per day. They also got them water to drink. When the kidnappers eventually removed the hood on their face, Sanusi discovered they were already in Kalgo, Zamfara state. The family continued haggling with the abductors until the terror group finally settled for ₦3 million ($7,293). They, however, killed his friends, Faruk Jibo, 25 and one other because “the amount was too small” compared to what they had demanded.

Sanusi’s experience is similar to several others’  in villages across the  Northwest as armed groups continue the reign of terror in the region unrestrained. The groups' activities have forced more than 80,000 civilians to flee their communities and find refuge in the Niger Republic. More than 8,000 people have been killed since 2011.

Last month, the governments of the northwestern states of Sokoto, Katsina, Zamfara, and Kaduna, took stringent measures to end terrorism and banditry in the region finally. These include the shutdown of telecom services, ban on weekly markets, among other measures.

Even at that, the region has continued to record unprecedented attacks on civilians and military formations. In Sokoto, most villages in the eastern flank have become strongholds of the terror groups.

READ MORE HERE: https://www.icirnigeria.org/with-n3500-sokoto-residents-buy-locally-made-guns-as-insecurity-spikes-in-nigerias-northwest/

This has gone way out of hand!!!

Damn niggar.

R

That's why i love my people....we don't cry to deaf ears for help, we don't depend on the military or police late show up. our governor don't travel to Abuja to take photographs and then return grinning like all is Ight

we fight with sticks, iron, Tagomashi, anything

if there's no bullet we resolve to broken bottles and Garri

we don't wait for em to attack first, Yan sakai looks for em in their forests

We are no weaklings, the South should learn from us and grow from being chicken hearted to having men's heart

Harrowing experience to go through. May his two friends RIP. These ar some of the issues plaguing Nigeria

al-qaeda people's Congress, can not offer less

tyup:
[s]That's why i love my people....we don't cry to deaf ears for help, we don't depend on the military or police late up. our governor don't travel to Abuja to take photographs and then return grinning like all is Ight

we fight with sticks, iron, Tagomashi, anything

if there's no bullet we resolve to broken bottles and Garri

we don't wait for em to attack first, Yan sakai looks for em in their forests

We are no weaklings, the South should learn from us and grow from being chicken hearted to having men's heart [/s]

Trash.

All these things yet bandits, fulani terrorists and bokoharam are suyanizing your people everyday

Bantu10:


Trash.

All these things yet bandits, fulani terrorists and bokoharam are suyanizing your people everyday

if half of what's happening here happened in the South, each an every LG in the South would have IDP camps on hectares of land

Would rather get a pistol of 70K...
This metal I see won't do any good...