One day we sat down in our compound, gisting with some guests in the house, when suddenly we heard people running helter-skelter. Unknown to us, it was bandits who invaded the community. I couldn’t run because I was thinking there was nowhere to go. They just barged into the house and asked us to move. We were walking and one of them was using a gun to beat us. We suffered a lot before we even reached their hideout.
They kidnapped seven of us and killed one person in the community before they left.
Almost everyone left me there, even those they kidnapped after us. I became the oldest person there. I spent five months with hunger, thirst, and severe punishment.
It reached the point where I couldn’t even walk because I was tied up. They asked people to wake me up and lie me down because I was severely sick.
Initially, it was my in-law and her two children who were abducted and they spent almost two months there before I joined them. The family was devastated. Even though they paid the ransom, we were still held in captivity.
They kept negotiating for the payment of another ransom. They freed only the children and kept the two of us.
That’s when the wahala started. There was always a new type of punishment, beating and insult. In fact, all my hands and legs were beaten up. They used guns and sticks to beat my fingers and both legs and hands.
The worst experience was when one of them sat down and asked me to open my mouth and he used a stick to keep beating my teeth until 10 of them fell out. I fainted. I cried so much and it was all during the rainy season. We were exposed to both sunlight and heavy rainfall.
I spent five months there and we could spend four to five days without eating anything. They wouldn’t even offer us water to drink. We slept there and eased ourselves in the same place. The whole of our bodies itched. My head swelled up due to my teeth being removed. I became critically ill there, with fingers and knees beaten up. They realised I was going to die there; that was when my in-law was allowed to boil water to apply to my head for the swelling and the bleeding in my nose and mouth. I never expected I would survive.
One day, my in-law was set free and before she left, she gave me her wrapper to wear because my own was soaked with blood. That was when they put my teeth in a nylon and gave her to deliver to my husband, just for him to know the situation I was in and bring money to them.
While delivering the teeth to him, she kept crying and pleading with him to do anything possible to ensure I was free because those people would surely kill me.
I don’t know how it ended, but one day, after two months, they asked me to go. I arrived home and nobody could even recognise me. I became extremely malnourished and had a different appearance.
I spent two months in the hospital and people were even going there to see me if they heard about my story. Many people brought food to me in the hospital, but I couldn’t eat. Even if I ate, diarrhoea and vomiting would come, but with time and God’s intervention, I started to eat small, small.
Initially, for the two children, 500,000 naira was paid. Later, for my in-law, one million naira was raised with difficulty. We had to sell our furniture because they promised to release two of us, but they only allowed her to go. She left crying, considering my situation, and I told her not to worry, that God was there with me. One of them replied, “Are you telling us there is God?” And I replied, “Yes, I know there is God.” And he said, “You will see the consequences.” And I said to him, “I already see a lot.”
Later, they asked for a motorcycle for my release, but I think it was an additional one million naira that was paid. And from there, I didn’t even go back to the community; we relocated to Kurfi, and I was admitted to the hospital.
As narrated by: Hinde Abubakar – 40-50 (Kurwa, Kurfi, Katsina).
This snippet is published as part of the series, What We Lost to the Bandits.
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