Five of the 39 students of Federal College of Forestry Mechanization, located in the Mando area of Kaduna, have found divine favour in the sight of their captors who have set them free from captivity.
Narrating how they regained their freedom from the den of the criminal gangs who invaded their campus at about 3:00am of Friday, March 12, 2021, Francis Paul, one of the released 5 abductees, said “We were just on the roll in the afternoon, some of them (bandits) just came and started selecting us and by that time, I am very ill and they asked me to sit up and that I should get up and then selected other female students.”
“They put us on the bike and dropped us on a nearby village close to the main road and told us that when we get to the main road we should ask of a particular village.”
Paul, a 200 level undergraduate of Agricultural Technology of the college, spoke on Thursday during the handing over of the five students to their parents by the Kaduna state government, said he was happy that he was freed but nevertheless expressed sadness about the situation in which the remaining 34 students were.
“I am one of the students abducted by bandits on March 11, 2021.It was on the 11th of March that we were taken from the hostel. The bandits came and woke us from our sleep and took us out of the compound. They told us to lay on the ground. “After they asked us to lay down on the ground, they took us through where they broke the fence with digger outside the school.
“It was when they took us through the fence out of the hostel that we saw many of them outside with bikes. It was from there that they took us from one place to another.”
“I feel happy that I am released but whenever I think about my colleagues, I don’t really feel happy because being there is no fun, being there is not nice.
“We are just praying to God that God should just release us from that place because those people don’t really know God
He confirmed the authenticity of the video released by the bandit a few days after their abduction. Some of the students were seen in the viral video released by the bandits on Saturday after their abduction, in their night wears.
According to Paul, the bandits maltreated them and said when they are flogged, the governor will be moved to come and pay the N500m ransom they had demanded. When asked whether the bandits molested the female students sexually, he said “no”.