Uniilorin undergraduate recalls ordeal in the hands of kidnappers

A survivor of what could have been a ritual murder, an undergraduate of the University of Ilorin, 22-year-old Seun Bankemo, told our correspondent about how she fell victim of a gang that needed a female human head for money-making rituals.

On November 12, 2016, a Saturday, Bankemo left her school in company with a friend to attend a birthday party in Offa but on her way back, she fell into the hands of men who kidnapped her.

She told a correspondent, “The host actually told my friend and I to sleep over till the following day. She is also a student of our school but I told her I had to go back since I had to read in the night in school that day.

“Around 8.30pm, I decided to take off. My friend chose to stay behind. The vehicle I boarded from Offa broke down on the way and I had to take another one. Less than five minutes after I got into the bus, I did not know where I was anymore.”

According to Bankemo, she only regained consciousness when she found herself in a forest surrounded by three men, who told her that her life was over.

“I looked at my surrounding, I could not recognise anything. There was no building in sight. I asked them where I was, I began to beg them but they left me for about 30 minutes and said nothing to me.

“One of the men, a man with three long tribal marks on both sides of his face, later came and sat down in front of me. He told me that I should not make trouble because it would serve no purpose. Then, he said in Yoruba, ‘Your head is all we need.’ At that point, I began to weep and beg them, I lay on the ground begging them, but they just ignored me,” she said.

But after about two hours of crying herself sour during which they put her in a hut, fate smiled on Bankemo. She explained that while in the forest, a sound of a hunter’s gun went off suddenly, startling her and her captors.

But apparently, the hunter had just shot at an animal several meters away from the camp in which she was held.

She said, “I think they must have realised that it was just someone hunting too because they went back to whatever they were doing with their backs turned to me.

“But while looking towards the direction of the hunter’s gunshot, I saw a light far off. I saw the hunter’s light in the distance and I don’t know how I summoned the courage.

“When I realised their backs were still turned, I just took off towards the light. I was praying hard as I ran off. I thought that if it was sure I was going to die, at least I would make an attempt to escape.

“I did not think about anything other than running as fast as I could towards the light. I knew they were running after me but I was too scared to look back. I just kept running. But when I knew I was getting closer to the light. I started screaming ‘E gba mi o! Egba mi o!’ (Help me! Help me!). That might have discouraged the men from pursuing me further. I ran blindly like someone who was mad. I don’t know where the energy came from.”

Bankemo’s newfound strength took her to a camp where she saw the light. But it turned out that it was farther than she thought.

By her estimation, guided by the light she saw in the distance, she must have run at least two kilometres in a forest she did not know before she got to the hut of a hunter, who took her on his motorcycle to the police that night.

Bankemo, who explained that she had not recovered from the trauma of the incident, could not summon the courage to follow the police when they asked for her help to trace the location of the camp she fled from.

But she said her rescuer (the hunter), who seemed to be familiar with the area, took the police into the forest but could not locate the camp.

Bankemo continues to live with the memory of the day she nearly died, haunted by the faces of three men who wanted to behead her. She said she could still remember that they spoke a particular language she could not understand when conversing with one another.