A teacher who spent 56 days in the custody of armed abductors following the invasion of his school in Ori Ire Local Government Area of Oyo State has given a harrowing account of how he was captured, how he survived in the forest, and the strange, almost theatrical manner in which his captors eventually set him and others free.
Speaking on Friday an emotional telephone interview on Nigeria Info’s Morning Crossfire programme alongside his wife, Mrs Zaccheaus, the school counsellor, Mr Olatunde Olutuye Zaccheaus, said he was the last of the victims to be captured and, fittingly, the last to be released, a twist of fate he attributed largely to divine intervention.
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His revelations have sparked controversy among online audience over whether ransom was paid before they were released and whether there was any shootout between the terrorists and the rescue team.
Narrating the moment the attackers struck, Zaccheaus said the assault began with the sound of motorcycles before gunfire erupted. “So what we just heard, we just heard the movement of a bike. Immediately we heard a shot of guns. They were shooting things sporadically,” he said, adding that panicked students began shouting warnings as the attack unfolded: “Our students, the voice we were hearing from our students, they were saying, bandits, bandits, bandits, bandits.”
Zaccheaus explained that a pre-existing case of arthritis in his left leg nearly cost him his freedom, and worsened dramatically the moment he tried to flee through a window along with fleeing students. “So when I jumped through the window, when I wanted to land, I landed on the left leg I had arthritis. Oh, my God. So immediately I knew, ah, there was a problem. So I was unable to walk,” he recounted.
Unable to keep pace with the students helping him along, he said he eventually urged them to abandon him and save themselves. “I told them, please, you go. Don’t worry about me, let them not capture you.” He explained that he hid beneath thick grass, using leaves to disguise his legs because his clothing happened to match the vegetation around him.
Capture
It was, by his account, the compassion of one of his own students that ultimately led to his capture. A girl in the school’s white and brown uniform refused to leave his position despite his pleas. When the attackers’ commander approached and reached for her, Zaccheaus said the student’s reaction gave him away.
“So he wanted to go and take that student. So when he took the student, the student smiled and looked at where I was hiding. So their commander also looked. He saw me, and so he opened his mask. He was thinking like, ‘is this a human being or what?’
He said the manner of his capture was so improbable that even his own community initially refused to believe he had been taken, insisting he must have escaped and gone into hiding.
“Everybody was saying, they trust me, they cannot capture me… So the students were saying they knew I was alive, that nobody captured me,” he said, adding that this belief was precisely what made it difficult for people to accept, on his return, that he had truly been among the abducted.
‘They healed my arthritis’
On conditions in captivity, the teacher was guarded in what he could disclose on air, but confirmed the captors spoke a mix of English, Yoruba and other languages, despite not appearing to be Yoruba themselves. He also disclosed that they were, at one point, forbidden from praying openly.
“After a month, they told us we should be praying, but we should not call the name of Jesus out. And whenever we were praying, we should not pray out so that they would not see or hear us,” he said.
In a striking claim, Zaccheaus said an ailment that had defied years of treatment was resolved during his time in the bush. “The leg that I have spent a lot of money, I have tried many hospitals, that I have bought many medicines and used. When I got there, when I complained to them, they just gave me one drug. When I took the drug, the arthritis went. I stood up,” he said.
Describing the day of their release, Zaccheaus said the captors’ demeanour shifted abruptly. “They were just laughing, they were smiling. They said we should thank God that we have been freed… They said we should open our eyes,” he recalled, noting that he and one other man had remained blindfolded, handcuffed and chained by the leg until that point
‘They wanted to cut off my hand’
His release, however, was delayed by a broken handcuff key, leaving him shackled even after others had been let go. “So there was no key to lose the handcuff on my hand. That was the way I was carrying the handcuff… So one of them said maybe they should cut off my hand. So the other said no, they should not cut off my hand,” he said, adding that a length of rope was eventually used to free his wrist.
Left behind and disoriented in the bush, he said he was called back at gunpoint by the group’s commander, whom he identified as an ISWAP figure, and redirected onto the correct path. “He told me to come back… I was afraid that only me in this bush. Ah, it meant that I was going to die,” he said. The group trekked for roughly an hour before reaching motorcycles that ferried them toward Kinyere village, after which they continued on foot for another ninety minutes before government operatives met them.
On the question of support, Zaccheaus said the state government, under the governor, had made efforts, though concrete financial assistance for the affected teachers remained unclear at the time of the interview. “We thank God for the best. God has favoured and honoured the best he has tried. But you have not gotten any financial support, the radiotherapy man asked. “We have tried our best,” he said, noting that a good Samaritan had distributed envelopes to all the victims while they were in Ibadan, and that reports of a car promised to the principal remained, in his words, unconfirmed..
Despite the ordeal, Zaccheaus, who is in his sixth year at the school, said it was the community’s first experience of an abduction targeting a school, though bandit activity in the area was not new. As the conversation closed, he reflected simply on how he made it home: “The way we were rescued was miraculous. It was people’s prayers and God’s help. Let me put it that way.”
