Rescued Oyo State teacher Zacchaeus Olatunde has directly contradicted the official rescue narrative, telling Nigeria Info FM that he and his fellow captives were released by their ISWAP abductors and had already trekked out of the forest before government security personnel met and escorted them home, per Punch.
The Nigerian government’s account of a dramatic military rescue of 56-day hostages from Oyo State has been directly challenged — by one of the hostages themselves.
Speaking in a telephone interview with Nigeria Info FM aired on Friday, rescued teacher Zacchaeus Olatunde said the captives were freed by their ISWAP abductors, not by security forces. According to him, the kidnappers’ commander simply appeared one day, smiling, and announced they were free to go.
What followed was anything but a military extraction. The former hostages trekked for 40 minutes to an hour through the bush, were transported by ISWAP-provided motorcycles to the edge of a nearby village, then trekked another hour and a half before finally encountering government personnel.
“We trekked for about 40 minutes to one hour before they provided motorcycles that took us close to the nearest village. They later stopped and told us they could not go further, so we trekked for another one and a half hours before we got to where the government people who came to rescue us were,” Olatunde told Nigeria Info FM.
The freed hostages were so uncertain about the government personnel they met that they demanded to see identity cards. “The buses had no number plates and had Arabic inscriptions. We were afraid they wanted to take us somewhere else,” he said.
The account raises pointed questions about the official version of events. Oyo State Governor Seyi Makinde had already called for a UN-backed investigation into the abduction, saying Nigerians deserved a full account — a request the Presidency’s Bayo Onanuga dismissed as suggesting “a lack of confidence in Nigeria’s security institutions.”
Olatunde’s testimony suggests those questions are far from settled.
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