It was a Monday morning. Jack just dropped off the children at their school gate. He backed up the new Toyota Prado SUV and suddenly noticed there was car behind him. The car seemed to have suddenly appeared out of nowhere. He tried to move forward but the oncoming Mercedes-Benz blocked him off.
"Oh, well", he thought. "I knew the day would come when this big car would put me in this kind of situation".
He calmly parked the car right there and got down from the vehicle with his hands raised above his head. There were six gun men. Three had AR-16s, two had AK-47s and the one closest to Jack had a Remington M1911 .45 calibre piston.
"I am not resisting", he said. "Please take the car and go". The gun men exchanged looks and one of them, surprisingly polite, asked Jack, "What is your name sir?"
"Jack", he answered. "Please take the car. I don't want trouble".
"Get in. We shall talk on the road", the man barked. Jack obliged. Three of the men joined him in the car and the three cars sped off towards the outskirts of the town.
As he drove, Jack racked his brain to understand his new situation and what options were open to him. He was lost in thought when something hit him hard at the back of his head.
"Answer me", the man with the pistol barked.
"Err, sorry, what's the question?"
"What did you say your name was?"
"I'm Jack".
"Aren't you Mr. John Adeleke?"
"No, that would be my boss. I just dropped off his children at school and I was going back home to pick him up for work".
Jack had just realised that this was a kidnap situation rather than a robbery and he had no idea how he was going to get off from this one.
The man with the pistol ordered him to turn around and head back home. He turned the car around and obeyed. Two poles from the residence of John Adeleke, he stopped. The house was heavily guarded, therefore driving in with all the gunmen was not an option. So they told him to call his boss to meet him outside.
It was at that point that Jack realised that his lie had backfired because he is, in fact Mr. John Adeleke even though his close friends called him Jack and he liked to introduce himself as Jack. He was a top executive in one of the biggest commercial banks in Nigeria. In spite of his high rank in the organisation, he always maintained a low profile and was very conservative in his dressing. He seldom wore a jacket because he had a closet for his suits in the office so you could often spot him in white shirts and dark coloured trousers driving himself to work. But today he wore a jacket and now he had to play the driver.
He dialed a number on his phone and put it on speaker. "Good morning sir", he said.
"Good morning", came the response. "Where are you, Jack?"
"I'm in front of the house sir". There was silence at the other end of the line.
"Well, why don't you come straight to the office? I'm already there because of the loan approval meeting at 9 am". The line went dead.
"Shit", the man cursed. They threw Jack out of the car and sped off.
The vehicle was later recovered by the police in the neighbouring town but Jack has refused to drive his company car ever again. Of course he never told anyone what had happened to him that morning, not even his boss whose number he dialed to save himself.