A female student of Obafemi
Awolowo University has told a story
of what happened after she was
taken hostage and released inside a
jungle.
Saturday, July 23, 2016, was one day
that will always give 18-year-old
Praise Adelakin nightmares. That day,
a journey from Ile-Ife, Osun State, to
Ibadan, Oyo State, that was supposed
to take her about two hours only,
almost turned out to be a journey of
no return.
A 300 Level Law student of Obafemi
Awolowo University, Praise had gone
to the school in the morning of that
day to check whether her things were
still intact in her hostel before
resumption after some weeks of strike
by lecturers in the institution.
Around 4pm, when she ensured she
had put everything in place, she left
for the Mayfair Motor Park in the
town to board a bus going to Ibadan,
where her family resides.
All things being equal, she should
have been back in Ibadan by around
6pm on the same day, but by 12
midnight of the following day, she
found herself in Ilorin, Kwara State.
Narrating the incident to our
correspondent in Ibadan on Tuesday,
she said, “We’ve been on strike for
some weeks. Meanwhile, freshers had
resumed three weeks before the strike,
but due to the action, they were also
sent back home. On July 23, I decided
to go to school to check if my things
were still intact and probably whether
they had allocated my space (at
Moremi Hall) to someone else. I got
there and saw that my things had
been scattered; my mattress had also
been taken away with my buckets and
other things, so I had to go round the
rooms to gather them together. When
I did that, I put them in my locker
and locked them up.
“When I finished all that, I decided to
return home and that was around
4pm. I had arrived in school by
11am. So I went to the Mayfair Motor
Park in Ife to get a bus back to
Ibadan. It’s a popular motor park in
the town because it’s a public one.
When I got there, there were only two
passengers in the bus and the driver
was hanging around somewhere. All
the same, I entered the bus to wait
until we had enough passengers to
take off. As of 7pm, we were only
nine in the 18-seater white Mazda
bus. It was getting dark, so everyone
started complaining. We begged the
driver to take off and told him that
while on the way, it was possible he
would get more passengers. He agreed
and we took off.”
Praise and other passengers were
happy the driver heeded their pleas.
Nothing in the driver’s appearance or
the look of the bus suggested anything
sinister. After all, they boarded the
bus in a motor park, Praise thought.
The journey proceeded normally until
the driver swerved off the major
road. He told them it was a short-cut
to Ibadan. But the path turned out to
be a ‘long-cut.’
She continued, “There is a university
outside Ife town called Oduduwa
University. A few minutes drive past
it, our driver said he wanted to pass
through a short-cut. He said because
it was weekend, there was traffic in
front. So he took us through the
route. When we turned to pass
through the so-called short-cut, we
saw a bus in front of us and there was
another bus behind us. It was a bushy
path, but we were not so afraid
because of the other two buses which
were also taking the route. We
thought it was a route which would
take us to Ibadan faster.
“As we were going through the path,
we got to a junction where we saw
that the bus which was in front of us
was already parked. The passengers
had disembarked. As we got there, we
were also flagged down by a group of
about five men; our driver stopped
and he himself ordered us to get
down. Everyone was shocked and we
wondered what was happening, but
nobody talked. We were all just
looking. The bus behind us was also
stopped and all of us passengers in the
three buses were up to 40. They asked
us to lie face down. At that point, I
became afraid as I knew something
was wrong. As I lay down, I quickly
sent a message on my phone to my
dad, reading, ‘Dad, I am held hostage
and I don’t even know where we are.
I think I am in danger. Please pray
for me.’ I could use my phone to send
the message because when they
ordered us to lie down, the men went
for a meeting at a nearby bush,
together with our driver. My dad
called me back after a few minutes,
but I couldn’t pick it. The phone rang
out. When they heard that my phone
rang, they came back and collected
my phone and others’. After collecting
our phones, they went back to their
meeting.
“After a while, they returned and
surprisingly, they asked the
passengers in my driver’s bus to get
back in. They instructed our driver to
go and ‘dismiss’ us off. I was afraid. I
thought ‘dismissing us’ meant ‘killing
us.’ Our driver looked disappointed,
so he shouted at us to get in; he was
now holding a gun. Everybody kept
quiet. Then he drove away inside the
bush till it was really dark. When it
was around 10pm, he started
dropping us one by one. He would
drive for about 10 minutes, drop a
passenger and give him or her their
phone and bag, then drive for another
10 minutes, drop another passenger,
and on and on like that. He would
spread the phones out and ask the
person to pick their phone. It finally
got to my turn and I think I was the
sixth passenger to be dropped, I can’t
remember full well because at that
point, I had become so confused.”
When Praise got out of the bus, it was
then that it dawned on her that she
was in another world, in the middle
of a forest and the screech of insects.
By then, tt was around 11pm.
“He stopped me at a T-junction and
gave me my phones, but they were
already dead, so I couldn’t contact
anyone. When he dropped me, he told
me I was at Share (Kwara State). I
didn’t know where Share was then. It
was very dark, around 11pm. The
village was quiet. Anywhere I turned
to, it was forest all around me. I got
to know later that Share was very
close to Niger State. It’s a border town
between Kwara and Niger states,” she
said.
Suddenly, in the midst of the the
forest and darkness, she heard the
sound of a motorcycle coming
towards her direction.
She continued, “I flagged down the
rider and he stopped. I asked him, ‘I
was told this is Share. Please, where
is the nearest town or somewhere
where I can get help from?’ The man
simply said, ‘Ilorin.’ I know Ilorin
quite well because my grandparents
stay there, I once schooled there and
my aunt still lives there. I got on the
motorcycle and he took me from the
jungle to Ilorin. When he dropped me,
I could recognise the area and found
out that the place was actually close
to my aunt’s house, around Basin
area.
“I asked him how much I should pay
him. He just nodded his head and
zoomed off. He didn’t utter a word or
ask for money. Meanwhile, I was
lucky my phone came up again, so I
quickly called my dad that I was in
Ilorin and that I was near my aunt’s
place. He quickly notified my aunt
that I was coming.
“I was dumbfounded. From where the
motorcyclist dropped me, I trekked to
my aunt’s house for some minutes
and when I got to the door, around 12
am on Sunday, I knocked. She was a
bit scared because she was expecting
no one. She asked who was knocking.
I replied, ‘It’s me, Praise.’ She
retorted, ‘Which Praise?’ I said,
‘Praise Adelakin.’ She asked again,
‘Praise Adelakin from where?’ We
often talk and so she recognised my
voice. She then said someone should
open the gate for me. She just didn’t
know what to do when she saw me in
the middle of the night.”
In the morning of that Sunday,
Praise’s parents came for her in Ilorin
to take her back home. But up till
now, she has yet to recover from the
incident.
She said, “I wouldn’t know what
happened to the other passengers in
the two other buses. I’m still trying to
get over it because I’m still scared of
boarding buses right now. I used to
enter any bus as long as I see people
inside it, but my experience has
taught me to be more conscious. I am
still amazed. It was not the first time
I would board a bus from the park,
and it is even a public park. It wasn’t
a lift.
“My parents came over to Ilorin to
pick me up on Sunday to return to
Ibadan. They said they immediately
started praying for me when I sent
them the message. They also told me
they went to the police station in
Ibadan and contacted another one in
Ife to report the incident, but the
police said they couldn’t do anything
about it.
“The police said they should go to
MTN office to track my phone to know
where I was. MTN said they needed a
police report, which the police
couldn’t give because they didn’t
know about the incident. Everything
was complicated. They said they had
to resort to prayers throughout the
night. I just thank God I am still alive
to tell this story. I don’t know what
would have happened to the
passengers in the two other buses. I
will be back to school this weekend as
the strike has been called off.”
Could she describe the driver, his
conversation with his fellow
suspected ritualists and the area they
were taken to?
Praise said, “I didn’t hear their
conversation because they really went
far away, but they could still monitor
us. They talked in low tones. I can’t
really describe the area but I know
it’s a few minutes’ drive after passing
the Oduduwa University that he
branched into the bush.
“Our driver was wearing an ankara
dress that day; he has an average
height and dark-complexioned. Except
one old man, almost all other
passengers were students. I suspect
that the drivers of the other two buses
too belong to the gang because they
all held the meeting together.”
Praise’s father, Timothy Adelakin,
who is a pastor, said when he
received his daughter’s message that
she was in danger that day, his heart
jumped out.
He said, “I just thank God for how He
acted in the situation. When she was
about leaving Ife that day, she called
to say she was returning home and I
thought she should be home two
hours later. We were attending a
prayer meeting in the church; we
were rounding off when her message
came in that I should pray for her.
She said they were held hostage and
she didn’t know where they were.
“When I got her text, I told the church
members what had happened. I called
other pastor colleagues to pray for us.
We prayed again till 11pm. Around
midnight, her aunt called me and
said, ‘Speak to Praise.’ The next voice
I heard was hers. I was filled with
joy.
“I would like the authorities to
investigate this incident because it is
surprising that a driver from a public
park could do this. They must have
been doing it before. Praise told me
the passengers of their bus and the
two other buses were mostly students,
so I am worried what would have
happened to her colleagues. I have
already instructed her never to board
private cars and she doesn’t do it. But
with something like this happening in
a public park, it is worrisome.”
Meanwhile, Saturday PUNCH learned
that the Mayfair motor park closes by
4pm and vehicles no longer load
passengers from the park after this
time.
The Chairman of the National Union
of Road Transport Workers, Ife 1
Branch, Mr. Gbadegesin Asiyanbi,
when visited at the park, said Praise
could not have boarded the bus from
inside the park at the time she got
there.
Asiyanbi said activities at the park
close by 4pm, after which any driver
is allowed to pick passengers on the
road irrespective of where they come
from.
He said, “There are no kidnappers in
our motor park. I have never heard of
anything like that. There is no way
such thing can happen, we know
ourselves, our members are true
drivers.
“We lower our flag by 4pm and as
you can see for yourself now (around
5:30pm when Saturday PUNCH visited
on Thursday), there are no vehicles
on queue, so anybody who boarded a
vehicle between 6pm and 7pm here
and is claiming they boarded it from
our park is either ignorant or telling
lies.”
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