Except for sheer luck, businesswoman, Blessing Ebun-Adigun wouldn’t have lived to tell her story.
The mother-of-four was among two captives that escaped kidnapper’s den along Lagos/Ibadan expressway some days ago.
In her narrative, Blessing detailed how she was abducted while on her way back to Lagos from Ile-Ife on a business trip.
‘we normally charter a mini bus for delivery and movement of supplies around the Southwest. It was a two-day trip and we had made the last delivery in Ile-Ife and on our way back our vehicle broke down in Ibadan, we all alighted and it took us about 45 minutes to fix the car and we proceeded on our journey. It was about 6:45pm and I was fast asleep in the car when I heard a bang and gun shots, I woke up in the confusion to see our driver jumping out of the car, crossed the road and was pursued by three men’ she recounted amidst sobs how she was whisked away by four other men into the thick forest where they joined other captives who claimed they were been abducted for two days.
Trying to remember vividly her experience, she continued ‘we were three occupants abducted from my car except for our driver that ran out and we didn’t know his fate. we were blindfolded the first night and woken up the next day around 5am and we started walking into the thick forest heavily guarded by three armed men who took turns to flog us whenever they thought our movement was slow. I made a mental head count and discovered we were 10 in number, we met 7 people already in captive, 3 men and four women. On the second day, a man and a woman were taken away after the leader of our gang received a call, we didn’t know where they were taken, but they left and we remained 8’.
‘The first day we shifted bases twice, we were poorly fed and tied together at night, beaten and left to sleep on the cold rock.
The second day one of our abductors came with the documents, receipts and phones taken from our bus and called the three of us to identify ourselves, forced to apply the passwords to our phones while some contacts was written down. One of the kidnappers took my identity card and wrote down my address and my husband’s phone number in a notebook. On the third night, two of our abductors left the camp and we were left with an armed man who was barking out orders and threatened to shoot us. I was already dozing off in my sitting position when I heard a loud argument between our abductor and one of the women, later the woman started screaming and the man was flogging her, I didn’t know what got into me as I stood up , walked up to them and I started shouting Jesus! Jesus! I dragged the woman up and faced the armed man who pointed his gun at us but looked confused while mumbling some orders. I noticed he was shocked as I continued screaming Jesus! Jesus! and dragged the other woman with me into the bush and we fled’.
Blessing and the other captive were later spotted in a farm by a local palm wine tapper who took them to a community clinic on his motorcycle before the police came and took custody of them.
Now reunited with her family, the businesswoman who said she does not know the fate of the other captives as she couldn’t give a perfect description of where they were held to the police who claimed their men were combing the forest in a rescue mission.
Blessing’s husband, Mr Olusegun Ebun explained how he was contacted by the kidnappers on his phone and they demanded N50million.
He claimed he was contacted with an anonymous line where the caller gave him a deadline to pay the ransom or face the consequence.
Blessing Ebun-Adigun’s story was among the many gripping, kidnapping tales which is fat becoming a trend in Nigeria.
In a report released by the Nigerian Police, 4,616 were kidnapped in Nigeria between 2021 and 2022 in which 3,972 were civilians, 202 military personnel, 186 police officers, 154 vigilantes, 14 security guards and 17 others reportedly killed.
