Hundred and Ten Days in Slave Captivity
The Story of a Young Nigerian kidnapped by Ritual Murderers
By Global News Digest
The Punch -- Nigeria
January 19, 2007
Slavery continues to flourish under different guises in the 21st Century. Stories like the following make the headlines in Nigeria on a regular basis.
A story by Francis Falola in the Nigerian newspaper, Punch, published Sunday, January 21, 2007, carries the headline, ‘My 110 Days in the Den of Ritualists.’
The accompanying story tells of the lucky escape of 20-year old Ibrahim Umaru from more than three months of captivity in a den of ritual killers.
as with the slave trade of old, where the need for labor to work the farms and plantations of the New World propelled the trade in human beings, there is a specific need driving the new slave trade.
Many people in Nigeria (and other parts of Africa) believe in the power of the
occult or witchcraft just as strongly as they believe in the Bible or the
Koran. They are all looking for ways to gain metaphysical or super natural power, to acquire wealth and power over their fellows. Such people easily resort to voodoo or witchcraft practitioners to help them acquire the power they seek and will go to any length, including procuring human parts for the witchdoctors to use. For some reason parts from existing
cadaver may not be suitable and so the power seekers must commission others to commit murder in order to get what they want. This is what accounts for the growing incidence of missing persons in Nigeria today.
Ibrahim Umaru lives with his parents in the small village of Mariga in Kontagora Local Government area in Niger State located in the central part of Nigeria. Having little education, Ibrahim subsisted by making and selling yoghurt locally.
Ibrahim Umaru's travails began on Sunday, September 24 last year after consenting to accompany a local Islamic teacher, Hamisu Sufiyanu, to Kaduna in search of better prospects for both men. Before then, the teacher had persistently approached Ibrahim and his father, Mallam Umaru Mohammed, to allow Sufiyanu take Umaru to Kaduna, where the teacher promised to help the younger man find better paying job. The teacher had to engage the assistance of Ibrahim's uncle to help him persuade the young man's father before Mallam Mohammed consented to let his son travel to Kaduna with the teacher.
In Kaduna, Ibrahim and Sufiyanu found lodging with Sufiyanu's elder brother, Rabiu who lives in the city. On the second day after their arrival, they were visited quite early in the morning by four men, well dressed in business suits and travelling in a high end sports utility vehicle (SUV). The visitors were closetted with Sufiyanu for some time before leaving. Later in the day, the men came back. This time Sufiyanu and his brother urged Ibrahim to go to the market for food purchases. Being so new to the town, Ibrahim protested that he did not know where the market was located or how to get there. The others assured him that it wasn't far off and collectively gave him directions on how to get there.
Reluctantly the boy set off to do the errand. He wasn't gone five minutes before the four SUV visitors pulled up beside him and
offered to give him a ride to the market.
“I had only walked a few meters when the men in the jeep parked beside me and said my friend had pleaded with them to give me a ride to the market,” Ibrahim recounted. Gratefully, the young man accepted their offer, but no sooner had they driven off again before Ibrahim was assailed by a feeling of utter confusion. He became unconscious without knowing how. A few hours later (or so it seemed to him) Ibrahim found himself "in a thick forest in the midst of ritualists."
The "Den of Ritualists" is usually a remote secret location far away from normal human habitation. Some lucky escapees have described being taken underground and kept locked up and chained down most of the time. Ibrahim tells of there being more than 100 other victims held in the place of his captivity. as victims were being taken out and slaughtered or resold to other centers, more were being brought in to replace them.
Ibrahim would spend 110 days in that place before being rescued. His captors provided Ibrahim and his fellow captives with a daily meal of tuwo, a local staple.
“As other victims on a daily basis were being brought out for slaughtering and their bodies dismembered for sale, new victims are brought in to replace the departing ones,” the newspaper quotes Ibrahim as saying.
The paper quotes Ibrahim further as relating that some of the captives are not butchered immediately, but resold to other centers around the country where these practices are also being carried out. The buyers are "rich men in state-of-the-art cars."
Ironically, his savior came in the form of one of the ritualists. Somehow, one of the workers in the den of ritualists, an
old man, took a liking to Ibrahim and decided to help him escape. The old man arranged for Ibrahim to be among the captives to be resold when he (the old man) was to be one of the escorts for transporting them to their new location. The old man had already had Ibrahim tell him all about himself. Thus as the vehicle in which the dis-oriented captives were being transported came into Minna, the Niger State capital, the old man pushed the disorientated Ibrahim from the vehicle. By this time Ibrahim had been missing for three months and his poster was
pasted everywhere in the state. The still disoriented Ibrahim wandered about until he was recognized by some people and taken to his father.
******
Sufiyanu, the man who sold Ibrahim into slavery had, meanwhile, concocted a story for Ibrahim's father back in the village.
“I got the news through Sufiyanu who came to the village to inform me that Ibrahim was missing in Kaduna after he left the house to buy something and never returned back home. He told me that his elder brother with whom they lived in Kaduna advised him to come and inform me after two days of intensive search for my son. He pleaded that I should come to Kaduna and assist them in the search. But I refused since I did not know anywhere in Kaduna. I made a complaint to our Miayangwa, the district head, who later advised me to lodge the complaint to the Emir of Kontagora, and there, I was advised to report the matter to the police,” Ibrahim's father narrated.
Before Ibrahim was found alive and the truth came out, Sufiyanu and his accomplice brother were arrested by police and taken to the State Criminal Investigation Department in Minna. They refused to confess to the crime of selling Ibrahim into slavery. When their case came to court, on December 18, he and his brother pleaded 'not guilty' and were remanded in custody. However, that plea can not hold now because Ibrahim was found alive on December 29. His testimony when the case resumes later in the new year is bound to convict Sufiyanu and Rabiu.
|
