The four Nigerian journalists who were freed from one week of captivity by their abductors Sunday have revealed that their kidnappers threatened to kill them during their incarceration.
One of the journalists, Sylvester Okereke, said the gunmen blindfolded them and took them to a place where they were to be killed.
‘They told us to say our final prayer,’ he said, describing the whole scenario as a ‘sad experience’.
The journalists – Wahab Oba, chairman of the Lagos State Council of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ); Adolphus Okonkwo, a zonal secretary for the union; Sylvester Okereke, secretary for the Lagos state council; and Sola Oyeyipo, a Lagos-based journalist – were kidnapped last Sunday by the gunmen who waylaid their vehicle as they were returning in a bus from an NUJ executive committee meeting in Akwa Ibom state.
The gunmen first demanded a ransom of US$1.67 million, which they later reduced to US$200,000.
‘I don’t know whether government paid any money but they told us that they did not collect any money and that they were releasing us due to our profession so that we will go and right the wrongs in the society,’ Oke reke said.
He said the kidnappers told them they were protesting against bad governance in their state, Abia, and accused the state government of diverting the money from the Federal Government released for amnesty.
‘They told us that they were giving the state government one month to either complete the amnesty programme or face their wrath and that they will come out openly to shoot at people,’ he said.
Oba said that the hoodlums accused the government of insensitivity to the plight of residents of the state and threatened to disrupt the 2011 general elections.
The journalists described their release as ‘miraculous’, saying the kidnappers took them to a market square where they were abandoned between 1.30 am and 2 am (local time) at Ukpakiri in Obingwa Local Government Area of Abia, and that they had to wait till 6 am to be ‘rescued’ by the police.
While they were being held, the journalists said the gunmen ‘collected all our personal effects, including laptops, wrist watches and the sum of N3 million and even shared the money in our presence.’ They said they were fed on bread once a day, but were not beaten.
According to the journalists, the kidnappers had the best of communication netwo rking, adding that everything that transpired in the course of their captivity was at the finger-tips of the kidnappers.
‘These people are well connected and are aware of every bit of police movement both internal and external,’ the News Agency of Nigeria quoted Oba as saying.