‘How I escaped from ritual killers’ den ‘

Inside one of the rooms in the crowded compound was seated 22-year-old Kabiru Abubakar with his freshly-shaved head, which was shining reflecting sun rays that had found their way through the thick fog of human curtain blocking the entrance to the equally crowded room. Kabiru had just been set free that morning from suspected ritual […]

Inside one of the rooms in the crowded compound was seated 22-year-old Kabiru Abubakar with his freshly-shaved head, which was shining reflecting sun rays that had found their way through the thick fog of human curtain blocking the entrance to the equally crowded room. Kabiru had just been set free that morning from suspected ritual killers.

According to him, his short-lived travails started on Thursday night of  December 17, when he went to take tea and noodles at a teashop in Kwanar Dakata located just a trekking distance from his house near Kawaji Juma’at Mosque. “I was on my way to a tea joint. Suddenly, a vehicle without its headlights on appeared and drove in my direction. The vehicle was a Honda Odyssey, so I stopped for it to pass, but a woman behind the wheel said to me: ‘It is you I’m waiting for, my friend’,” he narrated.

On hearing the unexpected reminder from the stranger, Abubakar told Weekly Trust that he started trembling and shaking, because it quickly dawned on him that back at the spot where he’d just chatted with his friends and relations some minutes before, the subject of kidnappings had dominated their discourse. He said his fears were thus increased by that statement from the strange woman.

 “I remained transfixed at the spot until a man came down from the car, took my hand and placed me in between him and another man in the centre seat. They drove off with me towards Yankaba Roundabout and as she was negotiating the roundabout, the lady driver asked me if I loved her and I replied, ‘no, I don’t love you.’

For Abubakar’s parents, nothing in their wildest imagination ever suggested to them that he had been bundled off to the den of ritual killers. They said nobody even noticed his absence because he was picked up around 10:30pm. But when his roommate woke up two hours later and discovered that he was not in the room, his absence became apparent and slightly disturbing, but not at all scary yet.

According to his father, Abubakar Yahaya, “His roommate went and asked Kabiru’s mother if she was aware of his whereabouts and she replied no. So we thought he was at one of his friends’ house.”

With the hope of finding him at a friend’s place, the family combed all his known hangouts throughout the night. However, when at 2pm of the next day all their searches proved futile, they took the next line of action by reporting the matter to the police.

“When they reported the matter to us, we advised them to remain prayerful and promised to investigate,” the Kano State Command Police Public Relations Officer, SP Baba Muhammad Azare, told Weekly Trust.

While his family struggled to trace him, Abubakar’s captors had already taken him to an unknown destination. Narrating how he was taken to a ritual killer’s house to Weekly Trust, Abubakar said, “I only woke up and found myself inside the compound of a house. The house has many rooms and they opened one for me which contained so many people and I joined them.”

Inside the room were about a hundred other captives, according to Abubakar. He also disclosed that a dwarf hunchback was manning the gates and monitoring the movement of the ‘prisoners’. Abubakar told Weekly Trust that his first contact with the outside world since he went into captivity was through an afternoon phone call. “Anytime I had a call, the dwarf guard would first answer to know who the caller was before he’d pass the phone to me. The dwarf speaks Hausa and told us that his name is Duguja and that he hails from Yola in Adamawa State. When I asked about the location of the house [in which we were being kept], he told me he doesn’t know, because he was abducted and brought to the house.”

The phone call was from his sister. His mother Fatima Yahaya told Weekly Trust how they had tried in vain to contact him on his phone until when that defining phone call went through. Fatimah who was still in visibly in low spirit during the chat, said in an emotion-laden tone: “When his sister finally got him after several attempts to talk to him had failed, we felt very happy. However, our happiness and joy evaporated when he replied his sister’s question, saying “I don’t know whereI am. All I know is I’m in a dangerous situation. You people should pray for me. That chillingly vague information unnerved all of us.”

Abubakar explained what “dangerous situation” was inside the ritual den. “We were about one hundred [in the room]; some are my agemates, while others are older than me. It is a two-room apartment, but it has neither ceilings nor cement floor. We sat on bare ground and could move from one end of the rooms to the other, and peep through the windows.”

Some of the roommates, Abubakar claimed, “are not in their senses,” perhaps because they were yet to recover from the effects of the Juju the abductors used to make them docile for easy capture and transfer to the abode. As for Abubakar, he explained, “I did not lose my senses because I kept praying seriously.”

Next to the room housing Abubakar, was another reserved specifically for “children between the ages of three and seven,” he revealed. “We could always see them through the window, some of them crying, while others appeared undisturbed and were even playing. They are about 50, comprising boys and girls and their heads partially shaved, while the grownups like me had their heads completely shaved.”

On his first day in the ritual killers’ house, he with other captives were removed from their cells and given a clean shave, possibly to prepare them for sacrifice. He recalls how they lined up for the exercise. “After I passed the first night there, a heavily-built man wearing a skimpy shirt that was hanging above his navel came and they brought us out. One by one we sat on a local mat in front of him and he used a very sharp knife on our heads. By the time he places the knife four to five times on your head, he would hit you on the back [signaling you] to give way for the next person.”

All the while that Abubakar was going through this experience that undoubtedly remain memorable to him, his parents and loved ones were fervently praying for his release.

On Saturday morning, the suspected ritual killers assembled all the abducted adult in the courtyard, he recalled. Nobody could tell what their intention was that time, according to Abubakar, but he was asked “to step aside.” When he stepped aside from the crowd, they asked him to get his clothes and put them on. “As I put on my shirt and joined them in the car, I lost my senses again. But I could hear when the gates were being shut behind us. There was no sound of car or motorcycle in the entire vicinity,” he recounted.

When one of his relations called his number around 8am on that day, he was told to go and pick Abubakar up at a place called Bukar Makoda along Western bye-pass in Kano municipal. “Nobody took the message seriously, his 23-year-old friend Muhammad Salisu,” said. But in order that some miracle may happen, they decided to take the ritual killers for their words and went. As they reached the place, they made a startling discovery.  “We met him holding his hands on his chest and walking in the direction of home. Immediately he heard us calling his name, he took to his heels, but we chased and grabbed and assured him that we were not out to harm him as we are his friends. He did not utter a word that time and he was having white marks under his eyes, so we wiped them off and brought him home,” the friend narrated.

After he got home, the battle to get him to open his mouth and talk again began. And when he eventually opened his mouth, he spoke of the picture of the ritual den that stuck to his mind: “There are children in that room, break it open and set them free,” he told his relations and medical personnel who were attending to him in the hospital.

Abubakar now detests the idea of hanging out late at night. His answer was “God forbid, I will not come,” when one of his friends mockingly asked if he was going to be at their usual night rendezvous.