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I couldn’t sleep all through the night I was terrified. I didn’t bring anything home, my phones, money, purse, shoes, ATM card, student Id card and my other belongings were left at the scene. Trying to explain what truly went down to my dad was… (A story for another day) but to quench your curiosity, I didn’t tell him till date, but I later traveled to Ibadan to tell grandpa because we were quite close. It’s just a pity he was never a Muslim until he died. If you have read ’’My dad and I series’’ you will understand better.

So, as I was saying, my dad kept asking how I lost my phone, especially my android. I was using a Samsung galaxy pocket phone then. The phone he gifted me after the completion of my Secondary School Education, so it was kind of personal to us both. My dad couldn’t place his finger on what was wrong but he knew I wasn’t saying the truth. For months, even the day he wanted to hand me a new phone he got for me, he said ’’Doyin, there is something you are not telling me. Something is not right.’’ I just kept mute.

Back to the next day of the event, we went to a nearby barracks to report based on the fact that a friend of ours we can trust has a contact there. We intentionally didn’t go to a police station because we didn’t want it to spread beyond our capacity. A soldier followed us to the scene where the event took place. We didn’t see any of my properties except for one thousand naira note of mine. The remaining were gone! Including my pair of shoe. We saw different clothes and singlets on the floor and in the drainage. We saw sacrifices.

Everyone passing by kept asking who the victim was, even some people had to park their cars to ask and all everyone was saying is ’’YOU ARE LUCKY!’’ they said countless times. They said that kind of event is not new in that particular place. After we left the place, I went to the bank to report about my ATM card, then went to retrieve my sim card. That day, every single bike man looked like the kidnapper to me, I can’t even recognise him.

Ever since then, I hardly do late-night journeys, no matter how short the journey is, and anytime a bike is taking me towards the route I don’t know, I won’t argue. I will just drop one of my things on the floor, it could be my sunglasses, money, purse, or even bag, and tell him to wait for me to pick it. If I should get down, I can use the opportunity to ask people around if the road leads to so so place, if they say yes I will climb back. If they say NO or I DON’T KNOW forget it, that is the end of that journey. I can’t count the number of times that I have created a scene by the roadside because of this. People will gather on our head, the bike man will be saying do I look like a kidnaper bla bla bla, I don’t care. Before you take me to oju olomo oto again, let people come and intervene.

Even if I want to board a cab or bus. I will look at everyone in it carefully and capture the faces and gestures of everyone in it, if I am comfortable, I will enter, if not I won’t.

I hope you have learnt a thing or two from my story. Most especially, parents, you need to follow up with your children and keep praying for them. Alhamdulillah for my life.

“And He has granted you all that you asked Him for. If you tried to count Allah’s blessings, you would never be able to number them. Indeed humankind is truly unfair, totally ungrateful.”

  • Surah Ibrahim vs 34

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