I heard students shouting ‘bandits, bandits’: Oriire survivor narrates dramatic capture

By Matilda Ikediobi

Tales of students being abducted from schools have become all too common in Nigeria, but 

until recently, nothing of the sort had ever been recorded in Oriire Local Government Area of 

Oyo State. That changed on the fateful morning of May 15, when gunmen stormed Community High School, Ahoro-Esinle, and Yawota Baptist Nursery and Primary School, abducting 39 pupils and seven teachers. As the attackers descended on the schools, pupils writing their tests screamed: “Bandits, bandits.” In this interview with Nigeria Info FM, one of the abducted teachers, Olatunde Zacheus, recounts the dramatic attack, their capture and the harrowing 56 days they spent in the terrorists’ den. Excerpts:

What happened on that day? How did the terrorists come, take you and your colleagues away?

That day, I slept over in that community. I do come to school from Ogbomoso, but I stayed in the community that day. When I went to school, the students started arriving. When they came, I was the only staff in school. So, I took the students in Junior Secondary School, JSS, one to three to the school hall to conduct tests for them without waiting for my other colleagues to arrive because I know the difficulties we do encounter when coming to school. It could be a flat tyre, mechanical fault, technical fault and others. I divided the students and started conducting the test with the hope that other staff would join. When the others started arriving, including a junior colleague and another on my level, I told them to invigilate the Senior Secondary School, SSS one and two classes.

Later on, our principal arrived. When she arrived, another younger staff member came to greet me, whom I told to go and monitor JSS2 while I monitored JSS one and three. Myself and the junior colleague were at the back of the school. We were not in front. So, we didn’t know much about what happened. However, we heard the movement of a bike. Immediately, we heard the shot of guns. They were shooting sporadically. We heard our students shouting bandits, bandits. Prior to that time, I had arthritis on my left leg. So, I was unable to walk. If it was a self-owned work, I would not have gone to school that week. The next thing I saw were students jumping from the window, including the junior staff with me. They ran into the bush. So, I also jumped through the window. 

However, when I wanted to land, I landed with the left leg, where I had arthritis. Immediately, I was unable to walk. All the other students who flew through the window were there with me and we moved together. I only managed to move until we got to a spot and I was unable to move again. So, I told them to please go and not worry about me. I was sure the abductors would not capture me. The cloth I wore that day was green. The colour of the cloth was the same in the grass where I hid. So, I laid down inside the grass, hid there and used one of the thick leaves to cover my leg. Immediately, I saw another student coming towards me. She took pity on me and shouted: “master.” I told her to go and not feel pity for me because I knew what to do. The colour of our uniform is white and brown, and I knew that it would sell us out easily. I told her to move, but she did not listen. She stayed in my front. When their commander came, he didn’t see me. He passed by me without knowing. When he got to the student, he armpited the student and the student smiled. When the student smiled and looked at the position I was, their commander also looked towards that direction and saw me. Initially, he was not sure. So, he opened his mask and told me to stand up. That was how I was captured.

How is your leg and overall health?

When we were going to where we were held captive, it was miraculous. The leg I had tried to treat in many hospitals, bought many medicines and used suddenly relieved me. When I got there and complained to our abductors, they gave me one drug. When I took it, the arthritis disappeared.

You were in captivity for 56 days. Have you had any such incident in the community before that incident?

This is between the fifth and sixth year that I have been working in that school. Although we heard things about bandit attacks, this is the first one that pertained to coming to school to abduct staff and students.

What kind of support have you received?

The utmost support for now should be health. Governor Seyi Makinde has tried his best. We have all been discharged from the hospital except for maybe two or three kids. In terms of financial support, we don’t know what government is doing. The governor said he would support the families. One person supported us while we were in Ibadan. He gave us envelopes. For our principal, we heard she has been given two or three cars, but I don’t know how sure it is.

How did you survive for 56 days? Were you being fed by these terrorists?

When we were there, we were blinded, not blindfolded. We didn’t know if we were in another country because we didn’t know anything. We didn’t know what was happening around us or maybe government had forgotten us, but all I can say is that God answered everyone’s prayers on our behalf. In terms of our feeding, those people really tried for us. Right from the day we were abducted, they told us that if we cooperate and government cooperates, there would be no problem.

In what language did they speak to you? 

They were speaking Hausa. Some spoke English and Yoruba. They were speaking Yoruba, but they were not Yoruba people.

How were you rescued?

It was miraculous. It was people’s prayer and God’s help. Let me put it that way. After spending so many days, they came to us. When we got there, they told us that we should not pray. But after a month, they told us that we could pray. However, we should not call the name of Jesus out. When it got to an extent, they told us to pray. We were praying inside until the last day when their commander came and they were smiling. They said we should thank God that we had been freed. They told us to open our eyes. We, the two men who came out alive, were blindfolded. We were handcuffed. Our legs were chained. That day, they removed the clothes from our eyes, removed the chains and handcuffs. They said they were not Boko Haram and not bandits. They referred to themselves as ISWAP.

Where did they take you to before releasing you?

I was the last person that was released in that bush. Myself and another colleague shared a handcuff. There was a particular day they wanted to lose the handcuff when we wanted to eat, and the key broke. So, the teacher was with me till the day they released us. There was no key to open the handcuff. When they released us, everybody had gone. They said we could not carry the handcuff home and they would look for a way to remove it. One of them said maybe they should cut off my hand. The other disagreed. He looked for one tiny rope, which he used to remove the handcuff. That was how I was also released. However, my people had gone far and I didn’t know the route they took. I heard their sound and ran towards the direction. Their commander called me again and pointed a gun at me. I was afraid and thought I would be killed.

Their commander asked where I was going, and I told him I didn’t know, but I thought my people passed that route. He directed me to the direction where my people were and followed me a bit. As I was running, I looked behind to see if they were not trying to shoot me. I finally caught up with them. We trekked from that place to a distance of about 40 minutes to one hour where they provided a motorcycle that took us from that bush to the nearest village. They said they couldn’t go further again. That was where they stopped and told us to move with our legs. We walked for about an hour and 30 minutes, including the principal, other staff and the pupils, before we got to where those people who government sent to rescue us were. We trekked for about one hour plus before we got to that nearest village called Alawusa. They told us we were going to meet two rivers. 

We met the two rivers. So, when we got to the second river. There were two or three children that couldn’t walk. Despite all that we went through, I carried one, Testimony. When we got to that river, nobody was able to cross, and they were crying saying: “is this the way they would die?” I was brought up in Ondo. So, I went directly inside the river. Before I got inside the river, I took one stick to check the depth. I carried most of those little kids through the river to the other side. Even some of those elderly ones couldn’t go through the river. I assisted them too. There was a little boy who almost got submerged, and I quickly took him out of the river. When everybody crossed the river, we told our secondary school students to lead. When those girls were going, let me say two minutes, they ran back, saying they saw two buses. Prior to our release, they told us in the bush that if government refused to dialogue with them, they were going to kill all the elders. They would take the pupils and do all manner of things to them. 

So, we thought we had gone from frying pan to fire when we saw those two buses. The teachers were using kinesis, body language to communicate among ourselves until we saw those people sent to rescue us. We told them that they should show us their identity cards and we saw that they were the DSS that came to rescue us. They now smiled. What made us even more afraid was that they were speaking in the Hausa language. So, we said: “God scaled us through some Hausa people. We have now fallen into the hands of another Hausa people again.” However, they said we should calm down and put our mind at rest. However, I look at the vehicle’s number plate. I told my principal that I was scared because the motor had no number plate and it was in tinted glass. When the DSS saw that we were afraid, they called a number. The person said in English that we should not be afraid and that government had come to our rescue. That was how they rescued us back to our school, and from that place, we were taken to Ibadan.

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