Hive, hello I rarely talk about the story I'm going to tell you, but it's the most traumatic event my family and I have ever had. In December of 2019, to be exact, my sisters and I traveled to Ibadan to see our eldest sister. And what happened to us left us permanently scarred.
We had a strange start to our journey the morning before. We had missed the first bus because we had forgotten something at home, and I didn't want to board the second one since it was too crowded—people were traveling with their families as it was the holiday season. When I told my father, he insisted on going. So we did, but four hours into our trip, we encountered horrendous traffic, which persisted for three hours.
By the time we started traveling again, it was 2:00 PM and we still hadn't arrived at our destination . From that point on, the travel went quite well with just little traffic that didn’t last up to thirty minutes.
By the time we got to the outskirt of Ibadan, it was already 8pm, usually when we make our journey from bayelsa to Ibadan, it takes atleast 8hrs, so at most 4pm we should have been at Ibadan, but because of the traffic we got to Ibadan by 8pm.
Since I had been to Ibadan and knew that it was only a fifteen-minute drive from where we were to the main town, I objected to the two men who sat in front of the driver and ordered him to take the speedier route. The driver nodded in agreement with the men and refused to listen to me.
Not long down this desolate highway, men came out from the bush with pistols and machetes and ambushed our bus, ordering everyone to descend. I was so afraid that my whole body froze. My sisters, who were just 8 and 17 years old at the time, were instructed to lie flat on the ground and the men were instructed to kneel. After hitting the driver in the head with the revolver, they searched the vehicle and us as well.
They spoke in foreign language, we were on the floor for more than 3hours, you could hear the cries of the children and mothers that were in the same bus with us, I held my 8years old baby sisters hand and told her not to cry, she was shaking. One of the men saw that I raised my head and used his big boot to match my head, I couldn’t cry cause my sisters were looking at me. I started praying in my head, they told me to get up and stripped me naked, I held my cry, but the tears couldn’t help but roll down
After what seem like forever, they told us to get into the bus, when we got in , I checked my luggage and everything was still intact, they didn’t take anything … the bus was silent and the road was very lonely, only for us to see a sign board “Welcome to ogun state” how did we get from Ibadan to ogun state?, my mind was racing, my body was shaking, the bus became too small I couldn’t breath and suddenly had an anxiety attack…. I was so embarrassed that I let my baby sisters see me like that, I should have held it together and be strong for them, but I couldn’t. the bus had to stop for me to get fresh air, I couldn’t hold my tears and so I cried, my sisters held me and we cried.
We got to Ibadan by 2am to see our eldest sister and her husband at the park looking worried, she was crying
All this while I didn’t check my phone, when I did I saw more than 20missed calls from my parents, I called back and heard my mum cry, my baby brothers and dad all crying.
Till date I hate Christmas cause of that experience.
THANKS FOR READING