The Five kidnapped train passengers who regained freedom on Tuesday; have begged the government to rescue the remaining victims in captivity because they were in dire need of food and medication.
The terrorists who attacked the Abuja-Kaduna bound train in March 2022, have released 5 more kidnapped passengers on Tuesday.
The 5 victims are Prof. Mustapha Umar Imam, Akibu Lawal; Abubakar Ahmed Rufai,
Mukthar Shu’aibu and Sidi Aminu Sharif.
While confirming their release to journalists in Kaduna,lead negotiator and Media Consultant to Sheikh Ahmad Gumi; Malam Tukur Mamu said government should hasten and negotiate the release of the remaining victims in captivity because they were in dangerous situation .
He also harped on the importance of dialogue with the terrorists, insisting that there is nothing dialogue and negotiation could not achieve.
” in a situation where military force cannot work, dialogue would certainly work,” he said.
All the freshly released victims,expressed gratitude to Allah and thanked Tukur Mamu for the role he had played while negotiating with their captors .
said he would never even wished his enemy to be in the terrorists den.
Speaking in an interview,Prof. Mustapha Umar Imam said ” I am an Associate Professor of Medical Biochemistry in Usman Danfodio University Sokoto. “
Commenting on life in the terrorists den, he said “the situation is really, really dire and terrible. My experience is really terrible, you can see I just finished shedding tears, tears of joy that I’m going to be reunited with my family very soon.”
“Quite frankly the experience I’ve gone through in the last 4 months is not something I will even wish my enemy to go through .There was barely no food to eat, we were hungry for the last 3 and half months.We were quite surprised in the last 2 weeks that they started bringing food stuffs..we were OK in the last 2 weeks. ..But we were very, very hungry for the first 3 and a half months. “
” When I say very hungry, this is an understatement. There were days that we actually ate once. Just imagine there were children just 1 year old, there was a 90 year old person just feeding once a day.You can imagine that.”
“When you talk about medication, I was literally the Medical Doctor on camp. I was treating the captives as well as the bandits,the Boko Haram members. “
” There wasn’t medication to be frank with you. We had on the radio somebody was claiming they would bring medication whenever it was needed, there wasn’t medication on camp.”
“There was a day a particular lady had malaria, you could treat malaria with N1 thousand..But this lady was literally going into coma because there wasn’t any medication for malaria. “
” I personally did not experience any molestation, but sone women on camp claimed there were attempts at molestation. But I personally did not experienced any.This happened one to two weeks after we were held captive.”
Prof. Umar Imam called on government to do whatever is possible to rescue the remaining captives who he said, were in a very terrible situation.
” They are very hungry and there is no medication for them,” he said .
