By Izunna Okafor, Awka
An Anambra-based woman (name withheld) has narrated her ugly experience as a kidnap victim, after miraculously escaping from the hands of her abductors.
The victim was said to have been kidnapped in Awka, the State capital after she boarded a commercial tricycle (Keke Napep) at UNIZIK Junction, to Eke Awka Market.
Sharing her ordeal in a viral social media video, the victim said she was in the tricycle with a heavily-pregnant woman and two other men, comprising the driver and another person presumed to be a passenger.
According to her, on their way to Eke Awka, the driver diverted to another route, on the argument that the usual road was blocked and full of traffic jams, which, he said, would make their trip longer and delayed than usual.
However, as the victim narrated, the pregnant woman, when she got to the place she wanted to alight, told the driver to stop for her to alight, but they declined, and commanded her to shut up and keep calm, that they had not yet reached where she was going, and would stop when they got there.
“I joined my voice to tell them to stop for her to come down since she had reached where she was going and; but they never obliged. Rather, they forced me to shut up, and threatened to harm me if I ever said anything on the matter.
“They also brought out their guns and commanded us to keep quiet and ‘play along’ with them, or else they would waste our lives.
“As this was going on, the pregnant woman courageously began to apply force in her struggle to alight; and in the process of that, they pushed her out of the speeding Keke and continued speeding on,” she narrated.
She said the hoodlums began to rob her inside the Keke, after which they tirtiredy her till they got to their hideouts in one of the villages in Awka.
According to her, the armed hoodlums beat the hell out of her and subjected her to different kinds of humiliations, after which one of them pulled out the gun to shoot her dead.
“Despite all my pleas and cries for them not to kill me, one of them pulled the gun to shoot me dead for not yielding money for them. But one of the gang members who was also at the hideout told him to stop, and not to kill me because they did not get money from me.
“Consequently, they started having misunderstanding and serious argument among themselves about my matter, to the extent that they even forgot about my presence at the place,” she narrated.
She said it was during the argument between her abductors that she surreptitiously escaped from their hideouts.
“And, that was how I escaped from their hands. So, when I ran out to the main road, someone who saw me with those fresh and bleeding wounds all over my body sympathetically offered to help convey me to a hospital for treatment,” she said.
When contacted by this reporter, the Police Public Relations Officer of the Anambra State Police Command, DSP Ikenga Tochukwu declined to comment on the incident, as at the time of this publication.
