A rescued National Youth Service Corps member, David Ayodele, has narrated how kidnappers threatened to kill him and 20 other abductees after keeping them in captivity for one month in a forest in Kogi State.
Ayodele was among 15 NYSC members and six other Nigerians rescued from a kidnappers’ hideout in Ofu Local Government Area of the state.
The victims were abducted while travelling from Bayelsa State to Abuja after completing their NYSC orientation programme and being relocated.
Speaking after his rescue, Ayodele said the driver of the vehicle tried to escape when the kidnappers emerged, but the attackers eventually forced the occupants out at gunpoint.
He said the kidnappers fired several shots into the air as they marched the victims into the bush.
“Driver tried to escape, but he said, ‘Who’s the driver? Who’s the driver?’ And I held the driver, then they opened the door, and they started leading us to the bush while they were shooting rounds of bullets in the air,” he said.
According to Ayodele, the abductees were beaten, kicked and subjected to verbal abuse as they were taken deeper into the forest.
“We made our way to the bush with flogging and kicking and shouting and stuff,” he recounted.
He said the kidnappers later took the victims to a bushy location and warned them that they would remain there for a month before being killed.
“We reached one kind of bushy area; they asked us to sit down, they asked us who would drink water, that we would be here for one month, so they would kill all of us,” Ayodele said.
The threat, he added, made the victims too frightened to move without permission.
“They warned us that if anybody moved without permission that they will shoot the person, so none of us really attempted to move because of fear and stuff,” he said.
Ayodele said the victims were later forced to trek for a long distance through the forest before security operatives eventually reached them.
“So we moved a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot and then thank God the Nigerian Army came to meet us,” he said.
He praised the Nigerian Army, police, Department of State Services and local hunters for their roles in the rescue operation.
Ayodele said he had completed his orientation programme at the NYSC camp in Bayelsa State before being relocated
