My stay in Kaduna was a lot of fun. I visited a lot of places including a car assembly plant, met knew friends, etc
My time was up, so in other not to over stay my welcome, i prepared for my journey back to Uyo the following day.
We departed Kaduna at 5:30 am for the 13 hours journey to Uyo, the capital of Akwa Ibom state in southern Nigeria.
Meters changed to kilometers, kilometers to miles, the ever unending journey continued. Kaduna to Niger to Abuja to Kogi to Benue to Enugu before the journey was halted. Our bus add a little fault so we had to pull over at the closest mechanic workshop for a quick check. Within 45 minutes the fault was fixed. So the journey continued. From Enugu, we passed through Imo then to Abia state were we had our own share of the day's nightmare. At a check point, an officer warned our driver of his tyre but he wouldnt listen. About 1 hour after passing the checkpoint ...the vehicle wasn't moving smoothly any longer, at this time, the tyre was fully damaged. We just had to pull over by the express way. All the passengers disembarked from the vehicle. This time there were no shops, mechanic workshops, residential houses, no nothing, just the forests that bounded the road. Worst of it the driver never had a spare tyre. Its very pathetic how a driver will embark on a 12-13 hours journey without a spare tyre. First we took that as an opportunity to stretch ourselves after sitting for hours.
The joy in our faces wore off the moment a fellow passenger picked a fresh bullet shell close to our vehicle. 10 seconds later another passenger picked another bullet shell. Then it was dawn on me that i was at the wrong place at the wrong time. We were at the exact spot that had been used for robbery by men of the underworld recently. It was getting darker and we stood there waiting for what would become of our fate.
Then the scariest happened when a black benz full of deadly looking men pulled over adjacent to us. The rushed out of their vehicle. At that moment the bottle of water i was holding fell off unconsciously from my hand.
......................to be continued in my next post
