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For 46-year-old Mrs Tunrayo Famurewa, her ordeal at the hands of kidnappers is a bad dream from which she longs to wake up.
But every day appears to take her back to the fateful evening when she and her husband suffered a horror attack from the criminals who were to cause her physical and emotional pains. Not only was she widowed that tragic evening but she also lost her freedom to the kidnappers. Her husband was stabbed and killed during the attack.
Two months after the incident, Mrs Famurewa is still nursing her physical injuries while her heart bleeds for her deceased better half.
The Abeokuta-born trader, who is also a resident of the Ogun State capital, was attacked alongside her husband, Mr Festus Famurewa, right in front of their house at the Soyooye area. The criminals had laid in ambush and waited for the couple to return from the day’s work. They abducted the wife while her husband lay dead on the ground.
Mrs Famurewa said: “My husband was a commercial transporter plying Pansheke in Abeokuta to Ikorodu in Lagos. On October 19, he had picked me from my shop at the Kuto area of Abeokuta and we headed home, unknown to me that that would be the last time I would see him alive.
“We got home at about 8.45 p.m. Our children were in school. I was only with a girl living with me. We have no fence built round our house. I got down from the vehicle to open the front door while my husband locked the car doors. Then I heard some people talking to him. Everywhere was dark. There was no power supply.
Bruises sustained by Mrs Famurewa from beatings by the kidnappers
“I heard my husband trying to comprehend who these people said they were. There were five of them. At that point, they started shooting sporadically. I began to cry for help, begging people to save us from the Fulanis. My cry enraged them. They descended on me with serious beating. It was too much. My hand is still swollen. Some of the kidnappers concentrated their attack on my husband. The girl living with me ran away to safety.
“Somehow I managed to escape but when I didn’t hear my husband again, I went to check him by the car where I saw that he had been stabbed to death. There was blood everywhere in front of our house. I have not slept in our house ever since. I have been staying with my sister. I asked people to help me cover my husband’s blood with sand.
“Without mercy, they descended on me. I asked them what our offence was but they just told me to follow them. I later learnt that our neighbours reported the incident at Lafenwa Police Station where operatives were deployed to evacuate my husband’s body to the mortuary.
“They walked me into a bush and we trekked for about 14 hours, stopping at intervals. My feet and hands were pricked by thorns. They became swollen. At that time, my slippers, chain, earrings had cut off. They took my bag and phone. They also took my husband’s purse and phone after killing him. They gave me the phone after I was released.
“They didn’t beat or touch me in the bush. While we were there, I wondered how I would be saved. I believe that our neighbours called my firstborn. His call came in and it was picked by the kidnappers. They told him to get N50 million as ransom before I would be released. He begged them not to kill his mother but they switched off the phone. At daybreak, I asked them what they wanted. By then, I was in severe pain and discomfort. I showed them my swollen hands and tried to impress on them the need for me to be in the hospital. They threatened to break my head with gun if I bothered them again. Each of the kidnappers had a gun. They were Fulani but they could speak a spatter of Yoruba.
“They replied that I should look for N50 million. I told them it was better for them to kill me because there was nowhere to get such an amount. Later, one of them mentioned N10 million, but I told them it was not available. I reminded them that they had collected my bag containing N700,000. I was to go and buy goods to restock my shop. They asked me how much I had in my account and I told them to check it on my phone. They saw that I was left with just N1,000.
