A teacher who survived the May 15 kidnapping of pupils and staff in Oriire Local Government Area of Oyo State on Thursday recounted how armed men stormed their schools and took 46 people into the forest, beginning a 56-day ordeal in captivity.
The witness, identified only as AAA under a court-approved witness protection arrangement, gave evidence at the Federal High Court in Abuja as the Federal Government opened its case against five men accused of involvement in the abduction and the activities of the Jama’atu Ansarul Muslimina fi-Biladis Sudan, commonly known as Ansaru.
AAA, a class teacher at one of the affected schools, told Justice Salim Ibrahim that the attack occurred on May 15 while school activities were underway.
“School activities had just started when we heard gunshots,” she told the court.
According to her, the attackers subsequently took seven teachers and 39 students into the forest, where they remained for 56 days.
The victims were abducted from schools in the Ahoro-Esinele and Yawota communities of Oriire.
The incident involved 39 students and seven teachers, including school principal Folawe Alamu.
Earlier reports documented the coordinated attacks on the schools and the prolonged captivity of the victims.
Two of the abducted teachers were later killed by their captors, while the surviving victims were rescued on July 10.
Asked by prosecution counsel, Rotimi Oyedepo, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, whether the abductors were friendly during the period of captivity, AAA appeared to reject the description.
“Friendly? In what sense, sir?” she responded.
The witness told the court that the abductors mainly communicated in Hausa, although some of them could speak Yoruba.
“Some of them are Kogi boys,” she said.
Five defendants face amended charges
The testimony came after the five defendants were re-arraigned on a seven-count amended charge before Justice Ibrahim.
They pleaded not guilty to all the charges.
The defendants are Mahmud Usman Muhammad, also known as Abu Bara’a and Abbas Mukhtar; Abubakar Abbas, also known as Isah Adam, Mahmud al-Nigeri and Malam Mamuda; Abdulrazak Umar, also known as Abu Khalifa and Abu Khalid; Yunusa Musa, also known as Yunusa bin Musa; and Shamsu Adamu Sani, also known as Abu Itisar.
The prosecution alleges that the men are members of Ansaru, a proscribed terrorist organisation.
The DSS has previously described Muhammad as the self-proclaimed Emir of Ansaru and Abbas as the group’s deputy and chief of staff.
The defendants had earlier been convicted on separate terrorism charges and sentenced to life imprisonment.
Muhammad and Abbas were sentenced by Justice Emeka Nwite after pleading guilty to terrorism charges, while Umar, Musa and Sani were also convicted in a separate proceeding before Justice Ibrahim.
The Federal Government subsequently brought the men together in the amended case relating, among other allegations, to the Oriire school abduction.
The DSS re-arraigned all five defendants on Thursday, with the prosecution alleging their complicity in the kidnapping and deaths connected to the attack.
Court approves witness protection
Oyedepo, who is the Director of Public Prosecutions of the Federation, told the court that the sensitive nature of the case required measures to protect prosecution witnesses.
He urged Justice Ibrahim to invoke Section 232 of the Administration of Criminal Justice Act to allow witnesses to testify while screened or masked and to have their names represented by acronyms.
Defence counsel, Bala Dakum, did not oppose the application but asked the court to permit him to see the witness during cross-examination.
Justice Ibrahim granted the applications, allowing the prosecution to proceed under the witness protection arrangement while preserving the defence’s right to conduct cross-examination.
AAA’s testimony therefore marked a significant stage in the Federal Government’s prosecution of the five defendants over the attack that plunged communities in Oriire into weeks of uncertainty and drew national attention to the spread of terrorist activity into parts of southwestern Nigeria.
