It was on a very cold evening during harmattan and my friends and I decided to hangout and take some bottles of alcohol after finishing lectures for the day.
There were five of us that dashed into the hotel bar in front of our campus. As usual, we had some good times with individuals taking his favorite drink.
I was so carried away that I didn't bother to check the time in order to return to my hostel before it became late. The bar man came to remind us that the closing hour of the bar was 9 pm and at that point, I checked my watch and realized that the time was half past 8. I never intended to go beyond 8 pm outside my hostel. We hurriedly paid the bill for our drinks and we left the bar.
One of my friends came with his car and he decided to take me to my hostel's gate before going to other places to drop off other guys. I was the only one staying at the hostel while others were staying off campus.
My hostel has two entrances. One was a pedestrian path with a small gate through the fence. The other one was the main entrance with vehicle and pedestrian gates.
On our way going from the bar, we got to the pedestrian gate first and I decided to alight from the vehicle. When I told my friend to drop me, he offered to take me to the main gate for security reasons.
"This path is always too lonely. It may be risky for you to follow it. Let us drop you at the main gate which is always busy and safe." All the four offered to drop me at the main gate.
On my part, I was being considerate of the fact that they would still go round the town to drop off the other three friends before Jude, the driver of the car, returned home to his parents.
I had witnessed several times when Jude's parents were warning him to avoid returning home late in the night. When I considered all these, I decided to insist that I would stop.
I alighted from the vehicle and they drove off.
Between the pedestrian gate and the residential area was about a kilometer distance. I opened the gate and began to trek the distance.
The time was already half past 9 and everywhere was silent of human activities. The only sound audible to the ears were the croaking of toads in the damp areas along the path. I put on the light of my phone to avoid stepping on any dangerous reptiles because the area was notorious for snake presence.
I was trekking fast in an attempt to get out of the lonely area as soon as possible. My instinct was telling me that I made a wrong decision for not following my friends' advice on taking me to the main gate. On second thought, I felt that there was no going back again so I continued my journey.
I was about a few hundreds of meters away from the residential area when I saw two guys coming from the opposite direction. Before then, reggae music by Lucky Dube was playing on my phone.
I concentrated on my path, taking the far right of the road when I saw them maintaining the left. My intuition was telling that they were among the bad boys on campus terrorizing others. All my prayers were to walk past them and immediately run to my hostel block which was not far away any more.
We walked past each other but I didn't start running immediately as planned. After about 10 seconds, they turned back to call on me to assist them.
"Please, we just want to ask you some questions. Don't worry, you are safe." They pleaded.
My instinct told me never to turn back to these people for whatever reason.
"Run to safety as you initially planned," my instinct warned me.
On the other hand was another part of me telling me to assist these guys. They may just be in need of vital information that I could provide.
I went with the latter and I decided to trek back a few meters to meet them.
Immediately I met them, they asked me to kneel down. I resisted the unprovoked assault by not kneeling.
One of them raised up his hoodie and what I saw underneath was a pistol. Immediately I saw the weapon, I complied with all their demands.
There had been cases of shootings along that path in the past.
They collected my phone and wallet. They ransacked the wallet, dispossessed me of my money and gave me back the wallet with my ID card in it. They removed the SIM card of the phone and gave it to me while they left with the phone.
After the operation, they walked away while I was standing helplessly. I regretted not abiding by my intuition that told me that these guys were dangerous and that I should run away from them.
In another 10 minutes, I arrived at my room without my phone and money.