It was almost five years ago, was visiting a town in Abuja state located north central of Nigeria with my younger sister to visit my aunt who invited us to spend our school break with her. We were very happy because we haven’t been to Abuja before. Abuja is a big state which is also the capital of Nigeria. So we set out on our journey on a very cold December morning of on the 15th.
We arrived at the bus park, and between 9am and 10am we took a public bus from Lokoja town which is the capital of kogi-State. Few kilometers away I remember the driver heading into a fuel station to buy gas, and we had to step out to stretch our legs and some probably peed. The journey turned out not to be too exciting after a while because the driver decided to take a shorter route that is less traveled, no good views just mountains and forests and I was getting tired of just seeing that so I decided to take a nap because I was actually feeling sleepy.
Woken by a bump and the wailing of other passenger, the driver noticed the vehicle tire might have been punctured, he stopped to check, and there it was, a flat tire. some passengers became very angry because the thought of their time being wasted was a lot to take in because some probably had appointments to keep that same day. Things became worse when the driver noticed he wasn’t with the right equipment to change the tire and put in the spare so we had to wait for vehicles passing by to borrow their equipment and render help which was very difficult being on a less traveled road but eventually we got help and the tire was changed but lot of time has been wasted.
The journey was supposed to be around 11-12 hours but 7 hours has gone by and we are not yet half way our journey, situation became worse when we lost another tire and then there were lot of panicking, some were scared because it will soon be dark, hell I was scared but the driver was still trying to assure us that the situation is under control. ‘What a reckless driver’ someone said angrily from the back, yeah I remember that. It wasn’t funny anymore the driver didn’t know what to do and it was getting dark already and no spare was left, so technically we are stranded. There was no network reception and no vehicles came by, the driver was insulted continuously and blamed for taking that route. Later we were on term with the fact that we were going to have to sleep on the bus for that day.
At about 10pm we saw a bonfire, at least we thought it was a burn fire but as time goes on we heard noises and the noise was getting louder and louder like men cursing towards us, an elderly man among us and the driver decided to find out what it was, few minutes later they came back scared and were whispering to other grownups. Just then my sister told me something bad must have happened because the men were talking to each other like they were making plans. All of us was then asked to move out of the bus then it was explained that the fire seen was from a group of armed insurgents.
Nigeria at the time and probably still at present was facing huge crisis from a terrorist group called ‘Boko-Haram’ so it was enough to think that we have come in contact with same group of people but some were still in doubt because they normally don’t carry out any activity in that part of the country. We were then led into the bushes to hide while they pass. We were all scared, my sister held my hand so tightly while we made our way into the bushes. Since the men were on foot it took them a while to get to the position of our vehicle. When they finally got to our bus, obviously they knew the vehicle had a flat. our luggage’s were still inside the bus so they knew we were still around and probably have gone into hiding, they ransacked the vehicle, scattered our luggage’s in search of valuable, for about two hours they remained at the site and refuse to leave.
it was about 2am already and we remained at our position patiently and quietly because nobody wants to attract any attention from them. After a while we noticed some of them entering the bushes opposite our hiding place then we deduced that they were probably looking for us but we kept our calm and another set was then deployed towards our side of the bush but still we had to keep our calm. But, God I was scared, everybody was scared, some were just shaking heads in prayers and I was praying deep down myself, while they were still searching for us and almost at our position we had a couple of gunshot for which they ran back immediately and we never saw them again nor their fire. But still we couldn’t come out till light out the next day.
Next morning, we scouted and found out nobody was there anymore before we could head out to the vehicle, then we noticed we were actually at the top of a mountain and a village was at the extreme far end, we didn’t know this before because everywhere was dark and we finally saw a man coming towards us and the driver went out to meet him explain our situation and enquire what last night was all about. We later learned from the driver what the man told him, he explained that the group of men we encountered was actually not ‘boko haram’ but just a group of bandits that attacked the village to which two lives was lost and the army was called in and when the army finally came they went in pursuit of the bandits, so I guessed the gun shot we heard was from the army and the bandits noticed and ran off.
The man we met advised the driver on how to go about the vehicle, and few hours later we were on the road again. Finally, we arrived at our destination at about 1pm same day. I narrated our encounter to our aunt to which she was glad none of us was hurt, she expressed how sick and worried she was when she couldn’t reach us on the phone and our parents too couldn’t reach us either.
So to me that was a moment of magnificence because those bandits were so close to reaching our position if not for the intervention of the army. I actually took a photo of the village that was attacked by the bandits, and I don’t think I can ever forget such life experience.
