Donu Kogara,
a Nigerian journalist based in the UK, was kidnapped from her home in
Port Harcourt, Rivers State, threatened with rape and told she would
die. In this text she gives a blow-by- blow account of her terrifying
hostage ordeal in Nigeria.
Day 1
Just before 7am on Sunday, August 30,
2015, I am shaken awake in my bedroom in Port Harcourt, a city on
Nigeria’s southern coastline in the oil-producing Niger Delta region, by
two gun-toting young men. My trembling 79-year-old mother is standing
behind them. I later discover that they have overpowered the security
guards at our gate (everyone who has a few dollars to spare employs
“gatemen” in Nigeria), apprehended my mother while she is getting ready
to go to church and instructed her to show them where her daughter is.
They demand money and “gold or
diamonds”, I quickly hand over a small suitcase that contains about $400
and my modest collection of jewellery. I assume that will be it and
that they will abscond with their haul and leave us alone. I should be
so lucky.
“Come!” says the shorter of the men,
grabbing my left arm. The other grabs my right arm, my handbag and my
British and Nigerian phones, and they roughly propel me towards the
door. I am braless and wearing a T-shirt that leaves nothing to the
imagination, plus ancient black leggings. When it dawns on me that I am
about to be kidnapped, I ask them to allow me to get dressed properly.
Just before 7am on Sunday, August 30, 2015, I am shaken awake in my bedroom in Port Harcourt by two gun-toting young men.
“Shut up! No time for dressing up!” says the taller one.
“I’m hypertensive, so let me at least
take my medication,” I plead. Grudgingly, he agrees. Hastily, I pick up
some pills on my bedside table and throw them into my handbag, put on a
pair of cheap rubber flip-flops and off we go.
I am frogmarched out of my residence,
shoved into the back seat of a jeep and assured that I will be shot if I
don’t close my eyes and keep my head down. I do as I am told. I feel
weirdly calm, dazed perhaps. About 20 minutes later, I am told to open
my eyes and get out of the jeep. I look around and see a jetty in a tiny
waterside village, deserted except for two starved-looking small boys
in rags who watch in silence as I am bundled into a speedboat called —
improbably — Victorious.
I get the feeling those kids have seen it all before.
The taller abductor gets into the boat
with me and a driver. The other man zooms off. Again, I am told to close
my eyes. I have no watch so don’t know how long the journey lasts, but
it seems to me that we speed across the creeks for nearly two hours. I’m
not afraid at all — yet.
Eventually we arrive at a thatched,
rectangular, corrugated iron hut, 15ft square and built on stilts in a
small, remote, densely vegetated mangrove swamp. No islands or land
masses are visible. I am told we’ve left Nigeria and are now in
Cameroonian waters. To reach the hut, we have to walk along 12 narrow,
swaying, slippery planks. Each about 1ft wide and 5ft long and all
supported by stakes that have been driven into the swamp floor. Walking
along them is like navigating a tightrope in the middle of an ocean.
I am told we’ve left Nigeria and are now
in Cameroonian waters. To reach the hut, we have to walk along 12
narrow, swaying, slippery planks.
Finally, I am terrified and shaking. How
I make it from the boat to the hut without tumbling into the murky
depths I will never know, but I lose my flip-flops.
My captors are rugged Ijaw tribesmen. In
their traditional fishing communities, such plank contraptions are
commonplace and they breezily stride up and down, but I never get used
to the planks. It’s irrational, I know, but the planks bother me much
more than anything else. There is a crude pit latrine at the other end
of the plank walkway. In the days that follow, I am offered fairly
decent meals and various beverages, but I refuse almost everything in
order to minimise the number of occasions on which I need to brave the
planks that lead to the lavatory.
My abductor reveals his nickname:
“Engineer”. I am alone in the hut with him — and an ominously
bloodstained mattress, a radio that is always on, broadcasting frequent
bulletins about my abduction, which is already headline news, and an
exceedingly bold rat that frequently launches assaults on the “kitchen”
corner of the hut, where foodstuffs are stored.
Days 2 & 3
For the next couple of days, Engineer
goes out of his way to make me as comfortable as anyone can be in such
chronically imperfect conditions. When I discover that one of my
hypertension medications is missing and shiver because of the chilly
nocturnal creek winds, Engineer calls his accomplices on the mainland to
ask them to bring me warm clothes and Amlodipine. When I tell him that I
am a smoker, he adds cigarettes to the shopping list.
He also tells me about himself. He is 32
and sounds quite well educated. He says he was compelled to quit school
in his early teens because his parents were poor. He did a catering
apprenticeship, before deciding that crime would pay more than cookery.
But he is, he says with considerable vehemence, “tired of this job,
especially when we capture women who are elderly like you”.
As the days crawl by, Engineer tells me
that “someone close to you betrayed you, told us when and where we could
find you and gave us your personal, professional and political data”.
And he does, indeed, know a lot about me.
He knows that my parents sent me to a
British boarding school, that I am in my mid-fifties, that I am a
journalist who shuttles between the UK and Nigeria and that I’d
campaigned for Muhammadu Buhari, the Muslim former major general from
the north who had won the March 2015 presidential election and replaced
Dr Goodluck Jonathan.
Engineer tells me that “someone close to
you betrayed you, told us when and where we could find you and gave us
your personal, professional and political data”.
Engineer reels off a list of my famous
Nigerian politician pals and relatives and says that these “useless
greedy VIP thieves who have been stealing from the masses since I was
born” will have to contribute “millions” to my ransom if they want me to
leave the hut alive. But he quickly adds that he isn’t the gang’s
“executioner” and that killing me will be someone else’s duty.
I tell him that he is greatly
overestimating my family’s wealth and political connections. I urge him
to switch on my mobile phones and check my account balances. At first he
is reluctant to do so, fearing that my phones will emit signals that
will enable the police to pinpoint our location. But his curiosity gets
the better of him and he is shocked to see how penurious I really am.
Engineer is intrigued and wants to know
more about me — partly because the radio bulletins describe me as a
Niger Deltan activist who should have been immune from kidnapping,
because I have spent a significant chunk of my life supporting “the
Niger Delta Struggle”.
The delta region has provided the
Nigerian state with zillions of petrodollars — its main source of income
— since the first barrel of oil was exported to Rotterdam in the late
1950s. But ordinary Niger Deltans have paid a very high price for all
this rampant wealth generation and most have nothing to show for it.
Unemployment is rife and agricultural land and fishing waters have been
so heavily polluted by the oil industry that economic activity has
ground to a halt in many villages.
Against this backdrop of injustice, many
angry, despairing, jobless youngsters turned to militarised activism.
Many of them were Ijaws — an ethnic group who populate remote riverine
areas and to which Engineer and my abductors belong.
By the late l990s, the Ijaws’ ancestral
waters and land were so polluted that many could no longer earn a
living. Rogue local politicians spotted an opportunity. The Ijaw
“militants” could easily be transformed into armed thugs who would come
in handy when elections needed to be won.
They were given funds with which to
purchase substantial arsenals. Swaggering super-tough-guy alpha males
emerged from the rank and file, assumed leadership positions and became
“warlords” and feared household names. They operated like mafia dons and
ran different militant groups, each containing hundreds of
footsoldiers. But elections only came around every four years and these
“armies” soon started to go beyond providing their political backers
with electoral muscle and became organised-crime syndicates.
By the time I was abducted, at least one kidnapping was occurring every single week in Port Harcourt.
They set up camps in the creeks from
which they waged war on oil companies, the authorities and society. Oil
pipelines were vandalised. Bunkering and piracy on the high seas became
norms. Stolen oil was sold on the black market and huge profits enabled
militants to buy increasingly sophisticated weapons. They sometimes
launched raids on the mainland and seized hostages — initially
expatriates working for oil companies, then Nigerians as well.
By the time I was abducted, at least one
kidnapping was occurring every single week in Port Harcourt. Some
weeks, many people would be snatched — from their homes, from outside
churches or shops, on the road, wherever.
The militants haughtily described
themselves as freedom fighters. Most of them were affiliated to a
credible-sounding umbrella organisation — the “Movement for the
Emancipation of the Niger Delta” (Mend) — that regularly issued
articulate “ideological” press releases.
I was ambivalent. Half of me was alarmed
by these malignant developments. But the other half felt that this
militant monster had been created by successive Nigerian governments
that had selfishly ignored the legitimate grievances of Niger Delta
people for far too long.
Engineer tells me that most of the
proceeds from his gang’s kidnappings go to their boss — and that he and
others wind up with paltry percentages. He also tells me that he is
married and has a son. I overhear him telling his wife on the phone that
he is sorry she’s struggling to make ends meet and that he will soon be
able to send her money. He lies about his whereabouts and tells her
that he is “in Lagos on business”.
He tells me that he’d love to turn his
back on crime and start afresh in another country. He has heard about
poor Nigerians going to Britain and doing well. He asks me whether I
think he can make it “out there”. He sounds so depressed. To cheer him
up, I say: “Yes, you can start off as a taxi driver, save up a lot of
money and buy a house in London.”
I agree with him when he complains about
the egomania, dishonesty and insatiability of the predatory Nigerian
elite, of which I am a member.
Engineer listens intently to me and says
that he has gradually concluded that I am “a good person” and wishes he
could let me go. He then offers me some survival tips.
He says that his boss, who will soon
arrive, is “wicked” and advises me to handle him with care. Engineer
also says that he’s keeping his fingers crossed that Kenneh, one of his
comrades, doesn’t show up because he is a serial rapist and, though
young, is not fussy about the age of his victims.
Engineer shows me a video that he has
saved on his phone. It is harrowing. Two hysterical, stark-naked women
with dishevelled hair are crouching on the very same mattress that I am
sitting on. One, who looks as if she is in her thirties, is repeatedly
being made to sexually assault the other, who looks to be in her
forties, with an empty green beer bottle. Now, finally, I know why the
mattress is bloodstained. “This,” Engineer grimly informs me, “is the
kind of thing that Kenneh makes female hostages do when he’s too drunk
to sleep with them.”
My composure visibly cracks. Engineer
tries to console me. He says that there is a good chance that I will
never endure the misfortune of meeting Kenneh because Kenneh’s wife
recently died after a bout of illness, and he’s busy arranging her
burial.
Just before midnight on my third day in
captivity, Engineer and I are joined by seven other members of his gang,
including Boss Man, their leader. I immediately recognise him —
muscular, stocky, handsome, cruel eyes, about 28 years old — as the
second kidnapper who had dragged me out of my bedroom. And our
reintroduction is brutal.
Boss Man grabs a thick stick and starts
beating me. I am in agony and whimper like a wounded puppy. When Boss
Man tires of hitting me, he takes his T-shirt off, drops his jeans to
reveal blue boxer shorts, sits down on the edge of the mattress and
expertly rolls a joint — marijuana mixed with a mysterious substance
that a policeman later tells me was probably gunpowder. He takes a few
long, leisurely drags on the joint and his mood suddenly changes.
“I hear you smoke,” he says, smiling and
handing me a packet of Benson & Hedges and a lighter. “If you
smoke, Madame, you must also drink!” he adds, pulling a bottle of Whyte
& Mackay whisky out of a rucksack and offering me a plastic cup.
I thank him, taking care to restrict
myself to tiny ladylike sips, so I won’t need a trip to the latrine in
the pitch darkness. The other men, who have AK-47s hanging from slings
on their shoulders, position themselves around me and Boss Man and start
to fire questions at me.
Unlike eloquent, semi-schooled Engineer,
the rest of the gang, Boss Man included, can only speak pidgin English.
So I also use the local patois to communicate with them, but I’ll
paraphrase.
“Where are your children?”
“I only have one child,” I reply, “a 20-year-old son, and he’s in London.”
“What is he doing in London?”
“Studying and working in a restaurant in his spare time.”
“Working in a restaurant? Ha, ha, ha! Do
not insult our intelligence. Do you really imagine that we are dumb
enough to believe that the son of a rich political lady like you is
working in a restaurant like a poor boy?”
“I am not a rich political lady. I only
know lots of politicians because I’m a journalist and interview them
from time to time; and, trust me, most journalists don’t earn much.”
“Liar!” says Boss Man. “I have seen your
house and it is full of treasures. We know that you are stinking rich.
And we are going to ask your family and big friends to pay a $2m
ransom.”
“I am not a rich political lady. I only
know lots of politicians because I’m a journalist and interview them
from time to time; and, trust me, most journalists don’t earn much.”
“Two million dollars!?” I collapse into a nervous giggling fit and say that my family doesn’t have that kind of money.
“Shut the f*** up!” says Boss Man,
venemously. His mood has suddenly changed again. His voice is slurred by
drink and drugs. He threatens to “beat the shit” out of me again if I
“keep lying”.
Engineer gives me a desperate
conspiratorial look. His meaning is clear. Pleeeease don’t say another
word. So I fall into a despairing silence and Boss Man loses interest in
me. He and his “Boys” talk among themselves. I hear them saying that
Kenneh is still busy with spouse-burying issues. I’m deliriously
relieved by this revelation and start to relax.
Then Boss Man announces that it is
bedtime. Engineer had chivalrously crashed out on the floor and allowed
me to sleep on the mattress alone, so I’m very taken aback when Boss Man
and three others join me.
Why am I so surprised? The hut is so
small that mattress-sharing is inevitable. We lie side by side like
sardines that have been squeezed into a tiny tin can. The sweaty
intimacy doesn’t faze them and they are soon snoring. This is the
longest night of my life. I can’t sleep a wink.
Day 4
Early in the morning, Boss Man
contemptuously tosses a lighter and packet of cigarettes at me and tells
me to face the wall of the hut and be totally immobile until he decides
that it’s time to call my people to ask for a ransom. Engineer’s benign
regime has drawn to a close.
I am now being treated like a real
hostage. I obediently face the wall for several hours, cross-legged and
afraid to move a muscle, even when painful cramps descend. Morning
morphs into afternoon. Afternoon morphs into evening; and though they
talk to each other about their love lives, families, weapons, triumphant
encounters with the police and so on, nobody talks to me.
For the first time in my life, I
understand anorexics. I now realise that it’s about being able to
control your body when you feel as if you have no control over other
aspects of your life
I begin to cry. Boss Man hears my
piteous sniffles and warns me to stop disturbing him. But he gives me
water and asks if I’d like to eat something. I say “no thanks”.
For the first time in my life, I
understand anorexics. I now realise that it’s about being able to
control your body when you feel as if you have no control over other
aspects of your life. Boss Man is so pissed off by my rejection of food
that he slaps me hard a few times and swears he’ll kill me before I
starve myself to death. Another night falls. This time I’m so exhausted,
I sleep like a baby.
Day 5
Another day, another mood swing. Boss
Man is in fine fettle — ebullient and chummy. Lighting a joint and
smiling broadly, he says that it is time to call my people, starting
with my mother. He instructs me to tell everyone we call that I am on
death’s doorstep and being tortured, then smacks me around for a couple
of minutes, so I can sound authentic.
Mummy’s phone is answered by Rose, one
of her favourite church chums. Rose tells me that she is so glad to hear
my voice and quickly hands the phone to my mother. My mother is totally
flustered. When I tell her that I am on death’s doorstep and being
tortured — and that the kidnappers want $2m — she doesn’t believe what
she’s hearing.
She falls silent, then, stammering, asks
me to please repeat what I’ve just said. When I repeat the ransom
demand, she asks: “Did you say two million naira?” (Then about $10,000.)
I lose my temper. “Listen for chrissakes! I said two million dollars,
not naira!” She falls silent again.
Boss Man seizes the phone from me and
tries to talk to her. But she doesn’t respond, so he cuts the call and
tells me that we need to forget about her and speak to “someone serious”
like my pal/cousin Kenneth Kobani, who is the secretary to the
government of Rivers State, the state in Niger Delta that contains Port
Harcourt.
Boss Man and Kenneth talk. I can’t hear
what Kenneth is saying, but after a couple of minutes Boss Man is
incandescent with rage. “Don’t pretend! A Big Man like you can easily
pay what I am asking!” he screams. “You will know that I’m not joking
when I send you her rotting corpse!” Eventually, Boss Man cuts the call.
“Your people are too brainless or stingy
to save your life, and I’m tired of their rubbish. You will die today,”
he tells me, his jaw clenched. I beg him to give me another chance and
he agrees to try my friend Rotimi Amaechi, the former governor of Rivers
State. But Amaechi’s phone is off, so I suggest that we call Uche Igwe,
a writer who is close to both me and Amaechi. Uche answers his phone
immediately and is touchingly glad to hear my voice. I ask him to go to
Amaechi’s house at the earliest opportunity, to solicit funds. He talks
to Boss Man and promises to get back to us.
I crack a feeble joke and tell Boss Man
that he and Uncle Sam have a lot in common because Uncle Sam is also a
big Boss Man. Boss Man doesn’t crack a smile.
Boss Man softens, but only slightly. He
assures me that he will “deal with” me if Amaechi’s response via Uche
turns out to be unsatisfactory. He asks who else we can call, so I
mention “Uncle” Sam Amuka, the owner of Vanguard, the newspaper for
which I write a weekly column.
I crack a feeble joke and tell Boss Man
that he and Uncle Sam have a lot in common because Uncle Sam is also a
big Boss Man. Boss Man doesn’t crack a smile. He just tersely informs me
that if Uncle Sam turns out to be as “useless” as my mother and
Kenneth, he will shoot me and dump my body in the mangrove swamp behind
the hut, alongside the bodies of other hostages who’ve been killed
because their folks didn’t cough up quickly.
By the time we get through to Uncle Sam,
I am babbling like a demented halfwit and not making sense. Boss Man
seizes the phone from me. This time, the conversation goes very
swimmingly. Boss Man is smiling like a cat who got the cream and tells
Uncle Sam that he will call him back to tell him how to arrange the
payment.
Back at the hut, Boss Man announces that
a celebration is called for. The Whyte & Mackay has finished, so he
extracts a large bottle of bright-green herbal native gin from a black
canvas bag and pours generous shots for everyone, including me.
“Your Uncle Sam must really love you,
Madame Journalist, because he has just promised me $250,000,” he says.
The Boys and I gasp in amazement. We expected Uncle Sam to contribute to
my ransom, but we didn’t think he’d offer so much.
I timidly ask him whether $250,000 will be enough to secure my freedom.
“No way!” he sneers. “If just one of
your people can raise $250,000, we can definitely pick up another $1m or
$2m from the rest. We will make more calls tomorrow.”
My heart sinks. Boss Man takes off down
the planks to make calls and while he’s away, the Boys and I chill out
and chat. I ask them to introduce themselves. They do so, smiling
sheepishly, and gruffly explain their respective roles:
Ahua, a deceptively meek-looking chap
who says that he is the gang’s executioner; Allah, a very tall
policeman’s son who has, much to the amusement of his pals, converted to
Islam and doesn’t seem to have any particular job title; Parago, a
chubby man of few words who is the back-up boat driver; Mammu, a
seemingly gentle giant who says he’s 35 and in charge of purchasing and
maintaining the weapons. And last but not least, Nwanne, aged 34, who
has a huge gold crucifix around his neck and, ironically, is the gang’s
torturer.
They ask me, shyly, lots of questions
about my family, my friends, my political views, my work and my
experiences of the outside world. I answer honestly and also ask them
lots of questions, including: “Why do so many guys need to squeeze into
this small hut to guard one lady?”
They ask me, shyly, lots of questions
about my family, my friends, my political views, my work and my
experiences of the outside world.
They tell me that there are more than 30
kidnapping gangs in Rivers State and that they and other gangs often
try to hijack each others’ prisoners, so they are all there to fight off
any competitors who might try and steal me.
I discover that some of them are putting
younger siblings through school and/or supporting elderly or infirm
relatives with the money they make from kidnappings. Allah is
particularly voluble and says — after asking me whether Manchester
United is the capital of London — that he is attracted to older women
and since I am divorced, he will gladly become my boyfriend, if I think
him a suitable consort. His colleagues roar with laughter and tell him
to get real.
“Maleh can find a much better boyfriend than you!” Mammu exclaims.
I ask Mammu what “Maleh” means.
“Mother,” he tells me, adding that I have a warm, maternal, caring aura —
and that the Boys really like me and envy my son and wish they’d had
mothers like me and are praying that I will be released soon.
Day 6
As soon as he wakes up, Boss Man calls
Uncle Sam to tell him how to arrange the $250,000 payment. But the call
is not going as planned. We hear Boss Man raising his voice. Then he
yells: “Madame Journalist, come here now!”
When I get to him, Boss Man,
tight-lipped, says that Uncle Sam has withdrawn his offer. I grab the
phone. “Do you want me to die here?” I ask, sobbing. Uncle Sam is
audibly rattled by my tears. He implores me to understand his position
and explains that my family and the authorities have decided that all
negotiations should henceforth be conducted via Uche.
I am distraught. Boss Man is pacing up
and down, deranged. I say we should call my mother again, to beg her to
beg Uncle Sam to pay up and forget about what anyone else is doing. Boss
Man reluctantly agrees. I am shocked and overjoyed when my kid sister
Lela, an accountant and the assistant director of Islington council in
London, answers our mother’s phone.
She tells me that she flew into Port
Harcourt that morning, to help manage the situation. Lela is her usual
kind and competent self. She says that she can contribute to my ransom
and is liaising with the authorities and Uche.
I tell her that I don’t want her to
liaise with the authorities because if they attempt to rescue me, they
and I will be killed. I also say that Uche should leave Uncle Sam to do
his own thing. She firmly informs me that this will not be possible. I
get upset.
He says that Lela needs to be taught a
lesson and that he’s going to arrange for her to also be kidnapped — and
I can tell that he means it.
Boss Man takes over. He lavishes insults
on her, calling her an “Ogoni witch” (Ogoni is the name of the tribe I
belong to) who wants me dead, so she can purloin my inheritance. Then he
cuts her off.
Back in the hut, Boss Man concludes that
since Uncle Sam was willing to play ball until my sister arrived in
Nigeria, it must be she who has changed the goalposts. He says that Lela
needs to be taught a lesson and that he’s going to arrange for her to
also be kidnapped — and I can tell that he means it. Selfishly, I like
the idea of my sister joining me, so I’ll have company. But I do the
right thing and beg Boss Man to spare her.
Mammu helpfully points out that it will
be too risky to attempt to abduct my sister because our family compound
in Port Harcourt will undoubtedly have been encircled by a police cordon
since I was taken.
Boss Man abandons the Lela kidnap idea,
but decides that he’s had enough of the “crap” my folks are dishing out
and instructs Nwanne to help him hog-tie me.
Nwanne suddenly mutates into a barbarous
sadist and enthusiastically digs out some lengths of rope from a sports
bag. My wrists and ankles are tightly bound together. I am blindfolded
and gagged with pieces of cloth. Then I’m tied to a metal pole, which
they suspend across the ceiling beams, and hoisted up like a slaughtered
animal on its way to the meat market.
I hang there, stripped of all human
dignity, my back facing the floor. Boss Man punches me while I’m
suspended and I can hardly breathe, never mind bawl, because the gag
covers my mouth and my nostrils. But, thankfully, it’s made of light
fabric, so some oxygen gets through.
Days 7 and 8
They finally cut me loose after about 30
minutes, but I wake the next morning to find ligature bruises on my
ankles and wrists. I didn’t know it then, but those injuries would take
six months to heal.
Uche is hopelessly ineffective, if you
ask me. He starts off with a paltry ransom offer of N2m ($10,000) that
is a very far cry from Uncle Sam’s $250,000, but promises to keep
contacting my friends and relatives to urge them to add to my freedom
fund.
I visualise my darling son, Oliver, trying to cope with various challenges on his own when I’m dead.
Whenever Boss Man calls Uche for an
update, Uche announces a pathetically small increment that isn’t worth
mentioning. I give Uche a piece of my mind when Boss Man allows me to
talk to him. My sister also gets a tongue-lashing. I wonder why these
a******** are playing with my life. Boss Man says that he hopes, for my
sake, that someone bails me out soon because he is losing patience. I
visualise my darling son, Oliver, trying to cope with various challenges
on his own when I’m dead.
Days 9 and 10
Boss Man takes off to the mainland very
early with his favourite sidekicks for a couple of days, so they can
spend time with their families and visit the Port Harcourt brothels to
which they all seem to be addicted. The atmosphere drastically improves
as soon as he departs.
The remaining Boys sleep a lot. When
they are awake, they demand juicy gossip about VIPs — whether x minister
was really sleeping with y president and whether this senator or that
governor really snorts cocaine or owns 50 houses.
At sporadic intervals, we hear helicopter and speedboat engines humming above and near our little creek fortress.
They tell me the names of “Big Men” who
not only paid them to assist with rigging the 2015 presidential
election, but have also shared the proceeds of pipeline vandalisation
and oil theft with them and others.Allah asks me whether I will identify
them if they are ever arrested. I say that I will only identify Boss
Man and Nwanne because they’ve been mean to me. Parago says that he
would like to leave the gang and be my driver and security guard when
I’m released. I tell him that I will gladly employ him — and I mean it, I
think.
At sporadic intervals, we hear
helicopter and speedboat engines humming above and near our little creek
fortress. The Boys cock their guns and wait, grimly. They tell me that
they can never die in any skirmish because they are protected by the
spirits of their ancestors and by Egbesu, the Ijaw god of warfare, a
pagan deity to whom they pour libations every day.
Sometimes, they sing gung-ho rebel
anthems. I’m becoming “institutionalised”, beginning to feel at home and
no longer horrified by the possibility that I’ll be stuck here for
months.
Day 11
Boss Man returns with fruit, vegetables,
fish, raw beef and chicken, several cartons of water and more booze and
cigarettes. He is accompanied by Mammu, Nwanne, Togo Boy and — Lord
save me — Kenneh, the rapist.
Kenneh — shiny bald head, slim,
light-skinned, of average height and about 30 years old — immediately
calls me a prostitute and says that he is going to sleep with me as soon
as he has settled down.
He and Boss Man go outside. When they
return, Boss Man tells me that he has just spoken to Uche, who is still
only offering N3m. I wearily apologise. But Boss Man and Kenneh are not
interested in my apology and a bestial four-handed pummelling ensues.
Most of their blows land on my head and I notice a persistent ringing
noise in my right ear and a loss of hearing when they finally stop.
Kenneh is even more wedded to drugs and
alcohol than Boss Man; and, having rambled on disjointedly all afternoon
about the rapes that he has particularly enjoyed, he suddenly wilts and
crashes out in the middle of the mattress, completely spaced out.
A few minutes later, Boss Man, drunk as a
skunk, also nods off. When the other Boys are ready to sleep, Mammu,
who is too large to fit onto the mattress, tells the emaciated Togo Boy
to lie next to Kenneh, so he can act as a buffer between me and Kenneh,
in case Kenneh wakes up in the middle of the night.
Day 12
Kenneh keeps assuring me that he will
“collect sex” from me “many, many times, starting today”. Meanwhile,
Boss Man’s patience is running out. He says we should call Uche
together, to give him a final deadline to come up with “real money”.
With Kenneh’s depraved threats in mind, I
say that we’re more likely to get real money speedily if I tell Uche
that I’m being raped as well as thrashed.
I’m very surprised when Kenneh bridles
and says that I should not “disgrace us” and “spoil our name” by
mentioning rape to Uche. At this point, I realise that Kenneh is — where
I am concerned at least — all mouth and no trousers. I am quietly
jubilant and wonder why he has decided to spare me an encounter with his
penis, which I’m pretty sure is small and syphilitic.
Uche is also jubilant when we get
through to him because he has been able to hike up my freedom fund by
N1m in 24 hours. Boss Man and I are resolutely unimpressed by this
latest offer and can’t understand why Uche is so pleased with himself.
Boss Man: This photo was sent to Kogbara
by Nigerian authorities to confirm his identity after the gang leader’s
arrest last year
Boss Man is reaching the end of his
tether. Shortly after we finish with Uche, someone calls Boss Man to say
that two of his Boys on the mainland have been nabbed by the police.
Everyone is totally spooked by this news. They anxiously talk among
themselves.
Boss Man announces that they have three
choices: butcher me to teach my parsimonious people a lesson, so they
don’t dare offer him chickenfeed the next time he kidnaps one of them;
pick up the N4m today or tomorrow, but regard it as a mere “deposit” and
keep me until my people offer a lot more cash; or regard the N4m as
sufficient and let me go because, frankly, I’m turning out to be “a bad
omen”.
Mammu and Engineer urge Boss Man to go
for option 3. Allah, Nwanne, Ahua, Parago and Togo Boy urge him to go
for option 2. Kenneh says that he sees no reason why they shouldn’t go
for option 1.
Day 13
We hear on the radio that President
Buhari’s deputy, Professor Yemi Osinbajo, has just revealed his assets
and is worth a few hundred thousand dollars and several million naira.
“Bloody thief!” Engineer exclaims. I
protest: “He was a successful lawyer before he went into government.”
Engineer says that nobody gets that rich by being straight and the rest
agree with him. I lecture them about the benefits that educated
professionals and bona fide business folks can gain — legally. Boss Man
whips out his pistol and presses it against the side of my head. The gun
metal is cold and hard. I assume that he has decided to take Kenneh’s
advice. Don’t ask me why, but I don’t react. I just calmly wait for him
to pull the trigger.
“Woman, you no fear for your life?” he
asks. I remember a Dylan Thomas poem from school about raging against
the dying of the light and I angrily tell Boss Man that his “little”
pistol doesn’t scare me because I am a journalist who has been to war
zones and seen superior weapons.
“Where?” he asks, reluctantly intrigued by my sangfroid.
“Israel, Ethiopia, Iraq.” Actually, I’ve never set foot in Iraq, but I felt like over-egging my CV.
“So you met soldiers in those countries?”
“Yes, real soldiers, not ordinary Naija [Nigerian] kidnappers!”
Boss Man withdraws his pistol, addresses
me as “Madame General!”, saluting and smiling admiringly, and tells me
that I will go home today.
He is true to his word. Later that day,
once Boss Man had been informed by his representatives on the mainland
that the agreed ransom had been paid (Uche eventually raised N4.5m and a
family friend organised the cash delivery), we all leave the hut and
get in the boat as darkness falls.
I am given a militant Mend flag as a
souvenir, taken to a lagoon near Port Harcourt and dumped in a passing
crab fisherman’s canoe. He is commandeered at gunpoint and told to take
me to Borokiri, a waterside settlement from which I can get a taxi to my
home.
Uche eventually raised N4.5m and a family friend organised the cash delivery
When we get to Borokiri waterside in
pitch darkness, I am startled. Such poverty, ugliness and human misery.
Women for sale, plying their wares. Men who look like psychopaths.
Grossly underweight children hungrily roaming around. A Dickensian hive
of criminal activity and horrendously deprived existences. Some of the
Boys had told me that they’d grown up here and I concluded that God
wanted me to personally experience this Hades on earth, so I would
better understand where they were coming from.
I get home in a rickety taxi around
midnight, caked in mud, wearing khaki shorts that Allah had given me
because the leggings in which I’d been abducted had been laundered and
weren’t dry when Boss Man decided to release me.
The Mend flag is wrapped around me like a
sarong. I can barely stand. Two maids lead me to my bathroom and help
me wash. I call Uche and stay up all night with my sister and mother,
smoking and drinking brandy. They tell me their side of the story.
Lela says that Shell — the oil company
for which our late father had once worked — and British government
officials have been extremely helpful, but that Nigerian security
personnel, though well intentioned, inspired so little confidence that
she and Uche had withheld information from them towards the end, to
guarantee my safety.
I am dragged to the Shell clinic for a
physical and psychiatric evaluation. I feel OK, although it turns out
that Kenneh and Boss Man had ruptured my eardrum.
Shell’s security chief, who provided
Lela and Uche with professional advice, tells me that nearly 200 Shell
staff have previously been abducted and I discover that the whole thing
about Uche offering Boss Man chickenfeed was a tried-and-tested
strategy.
Apparently, if you wear kidnappers down
with small offers and make it clear that they aren’t likely to make
millions, they will eventually succumb and take whatever they can get,
nine times out of ten.
I also discover how lucky I have been,
in the sense that the psychos in the gang that kidnapped me were in a
minority. The Shell security chief tells me about three people abducted
some time ago by a gang that was dominated by psychos. Two were killed
early; the third was forced to sleep between the two corpses for a
fortnight and is still suffering from olefactory hallucinations.
Uncle Sam flies in from Lagos to see me
the day after I am released and explains how he was railroaded into
withdrawing his ransom offer. He had been told that if he paid $250,000
for me, all of his columnists and editors would be kidnapped, one by
one.
People start to tell me that my response
to the trauma is downright unnatural and that I am suffering from
Stockholm syndrome, because I keep telling all and sundry that I liked
seven out of my nine kidnappers and could understand why they had become
criminals.
People start to tell me that my response to the trauma is downright unnatural and that I am suffering from Stockholm syndrome
A little more than a year on and I have a
more complicated attitude towards the kidnappers because they’ve caused
so much devastation. My mother is suffering from “stress-induced pseudo
dementia”, according to an eminent psychiatrist to whom Lela and I sent
her when we noticed she was becoming mentally impaired. When I call
nowadays, she often doesn’t know who I am; and when she does recognise
my voice, all she can talk about is seeing the back of my head receding
as I was driven away in the kidnappers’ jeep.
My son, meanwhile, was so
discombobulated by the prospect of losing his mum that he took several
months to recover emotionally, and has found it very hard to concentrate
on his studies.
A little more than a year on and I have a
more complicated attitude towards the kidnappers because they’ve caused
so much devastation.
As for me, shortly after I was released,
I fled from Port Harcourt, leaving behind a fairly successful career
and my main income sources, because some folks have been kidnapped more
than once and I wasn’t willing to risk another trauma. I’m based in
London now, but, trust me, trying to rebuild your career and survive
financially here in your mid-fifties is not a piece of cake!
Some highly placed people have told me
that all of my abductors were caught and summarily executed at the end
of last year, but I’ve not had the courage to find out whether this
rumour is true. I abhor capital punishment and do not think that
Engineer, Mammu, Allah, Ahua, Parago, Togo Boy and Nwanne would have
been thugs if Nigeria had been fairer to them.
If they are really dead, may they rest in peace.
When I tell my Nigerian friends that
even Boss Man and Kenneh should, in my opinion, be in jail, not 6ft
under, they look at me pityingly and tell me to forget about those Boys.
Donu Kogbara’s life before the kidnap
Kogbara is an experienced journalist whose work has appeared in The Sunday Times
for the past two decades. Before the kidnap, she divided her time
between London, Abuja and Port Harcourt, the capital of the Niger Delta
region. Her links with the UK stem from her father’s turbulent political
career: in the 1960s he served in London as an ambassador for the rebel
Nigerian state of Biafra and was exiled here after Nigeria’s government
reasserted control. After school and the University of Leicester, she
began her career in journalism, working for this publication as well as
for the BBC and the Economist Intelligence Unit. She later moved to
Nigeria, where she worked for the government at intervals. She still
writes a weekly column for Vanguard, the Nigerian newspaper.
Kogbara is an experienced journalist whose work has appeared in The Sunday Times for the past two decades.
The Niger Delta struggle
One of the world’s most oil-rich
regions, the Niger Delta has been overrun by “petro-insurgencies” since
the 1990s, when paramilitary forces first attempted to seize control of
foreign-owned oil fields. The area, which at 70,000 sq km is more than
three times the size of Wales, has become a global capital of terrorism
and violent crime, including kidnap and oil theft.
Fuelling the conflict is the extreme gap
between the area’s wealth in resources and the poverty of its citizens.
Military groups, such as the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger
Delta (Mend) and the Niger Delta Avengers, say that attacking oil
fields, pipelines and kidnapping both foreign workers and fellow
Nigerians helps to redirect petrodollars away from companies such as BP
and Royal Dutch Shell and towards the region’s 35m inhabitants.
In Rivers State (where Kogbara was taken
from her home in Port Harcourt), the situation has improved over the
past 18 months, thanks to initiatives including tougher laws and
increased security patrols. An amnesty programme introduced by Nyesom
Wike, the current governor, to help repentant kidnappers make a break
with their criminal past has reduced the number of abduction.
This article first appeared in The Sunday Times.
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