A 19-year-old admission seeker, Ewaoluwa Oluwatofunmi, has narrated how she and 12 other passengers travelling from Osogbo to Ilesa in Osun State escaped being abducted.
During an interview with PUNCH, Ewaoluwa said that she boarded a bus going to Ilesa from Osogbo at a park in Ilesa Garage Area of Osun State capital around 1.30pm on Sunday.
Midway into the journey, Ewaoluwa said three out of five all-men passengers that sat on the back seat of the bus told the driver to stop the vehicle because they wanted to ease themselves.
She said, “Around 1:30 pm on Sunday, I went to Ilesha Garage in Osogbo to enter a bus going to Ilesha. When I got to the park, I met 5 men and some ladies inside the bus. We moved after the bus was filled, but on getting to a bushy area in between Osogbo and Ilesa, three of the men sitting at the back seat told the driver to park for them to urinate.
“The driver obliged them and when they got down, they asked others inside the bus to also come down and urinate. But we told them we are mature enough to know if we wanted to urinate. Later, one of them lied to the driver that one of the bus tyres was deflected. The driver got down and the other people in the bus also went down.
“Few minutes before that would happen, I was on the phone with my father speaking and I didn’t end the call as I came down from the bus. As soon as we came down from the bus, the men brought out guns and asked us to move into the bush. We trekked for some minutes inside the bush until the men stopped us and asked us to bring out whatever valuables we had on us.
“I submitted my big phone to the kidnappers but I kept the small phone I was using to speak with my parents in my pocket without ending the call, so they could hear we were in danger. We were doing that when suddenly, we heard the siren of the police and that scared the abductors who were heavily armed and spoke in pidgin English. They ran away and left us there.”
The state police spokesperson, Yemisi Opalola, confirmed the incident in a text message .
The message read, “Combined efforts of the police and hunters rescued the victims.”
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