Freed Oyo Principal Recounts 56 Days in Captivity

Racheal Alamu carries the marks of her ordeal on her body. Bruises still visible, the school principal stood before Governor Seyi Makinde at the Government Secretariat in Ibadan and described what 56 days in the hands of terrorists had done to her, her teachers and dozens of frightened children. Handed back to the Oyo State Government after one of the longest school abduction sieges in the country’s recent history, she chose to speak plainly about a captivity that gripped the nation.

“You can only imagine it. It was not easy. We were in the forest, in the open, most of the time, under the sun and under the rain, with the children. But we kept going because there was no way out,” she said, adding that faith and the belief that Nigerians were praying for them kept the group alive.

The 39 pupils and seven teachers were seized on the morning of May 15, 2026, when dozens of armed men, some in military fatigues and riding motorcycles, stormed three schools in the Ahoro-Esiele and Yawota communities of Oriire Local Government Area near Ogbomoso. Baptist Nursery and Primary School, Community Grammar School and L.A. Primary School were all attacked. According to accounts confirmed by the Oyo State Government, one teacher, Joel Adesiyan, was killed as he tried to flee, while another, Michael Oyedokun, was beheaded the following day in the kidnappers’ den to deter pursuing troops. The victims included a toddler of about two years.

Alamu, who said she was not personally beaten, recounted how the youngest captives bore the worst of the cruelty. “What they hated most was noise because they believed it could attract attention,” she explained. “The youngest children suffered the most. They would tie their mouths with pieces of cloth and beat them very well.” The men, she said, “were blindfolded, handcuffed and chained on their legs.” She stressed that none of the captives was sexually molested.

Survival was reduced to its barest terms. A relative of one rescued pupil, who gave her name only as Olasunbo, said the children lived mostly on cocoyam and noodles, sometimes eating once a day, and drank from a waterfall deep inside the Old Oyo National Park, where the group was held by fighters linked to Jama’atu Ansarul Muslimina fi-Biladis Sudan, better known as Ansaru. Whenever a hideout was suspected of being compromised, the captives were marched off around seven or eight at night, walking for three to four hours through rugged bush. “The younger ones were carried, but the older children had to walk. They fell many times,” Alamu said.

The rescue, announced on Friday, July 10 by presidential spokesman Bayo Onanuga, came after 56 days of painstaking, intelligence-led effort. The General Officer Commanding the Army’s 2 Division, Major General Chinedu Nnebeife, said troops mobilised within hours of the attack but arrived to find the abductors had melted into the forest. The turning point, he said, came when operatives severed the terrorists’ main supply line. “When we blocked their major logistics hub, they were eventually willing to release them unconditionally,” he told journalists at the handover.

The operation drew personnel from the Defence Headquarters, the Office of the National Security Adviser, the National Counter Terrorism Centre, the Army, the Navy Special Boat Service, the Air Force, the Police, the Department of State Services and other members of the Joint Interagency Task Force. Security accounts indicate at least two attempts preceded the final breakthrough, with nine terrorists reportedly neutralised and eight arrested and held in DSS custody. Among the fallen was Lt. Felix Ademe Isaac, a 28-year-old officer who led the first assault team and died when his convoy struck improvised explosive devices. He was buried with full military honours on the same day the captives regained their freedom.

Retired officers who commented publicly cast the outcome as proof of improved coordination. Brig. Gen. O. Adegbesan (retd) said, “No single service can successfully execute an operation of that magnitude in isolation,” while another retired officer, Danjuma Saidu, argued that “sometimes patience achieves what force alone cannot.” Both dismissed persistent social media claims that a ransom was paid, insisting such a transaction would be difficult to conceal across so many agencies.

Yet the relief has proved fragile. Barely a day after the Oriire victims were freed, gunmen abducted a 60-year-old headmaster, Matthew Kolawale Owoade, of Nomadic Basic School, Igbojaye, in the neighbouring Itesiwaju Local Government Area on the evening of July 11, demanding N30 million in ransom. His abandoned motorcycle was recovered in the bush the next morning. The Oyo State Police spokesman, DSP Olayinka Ayanlade, confirmed the incident and said efforts were underway to free him.

The episode has revived a national anxiety over the safety of Nigerian schools that dates back to the 2014 Chibok abduction and the wave of mass kidnappings from schools in Kankara, Kagara, Jangebe and Kuriga that followed across the northern states. That the Oriire attack unfolded in the South West, long considered relatively insulated from such raids, marked a troubling shift, prompting the Nigeria Union of Teachers in Oyo to suspend academic activities during the crisis and moving Governor Makinde to call on the United Nations to investigate. For Alamu, a teacher of 28 years with barely four left before retirement, the personal cost is stark. “Going to rural areas now will take the grace of God,” she said. “I want to see my husband. When I get home, I can think of every other thing.”