"It was a very serious attack and an unexpected one.
Before the attack on our school, Boko Haram terrorists had attacked Kano State
Polytechnic inside the city centre, with the new strategy of using female and
male teenagers, who they arm with bombs. In broad-day light on Wednesday,
September 17, our school, the Federal College of Technology, Kano, was
attacked.
That day, I didn’t have lectures, but, in
my usual way, I had to go to school, because I am very friendly with my
students.
I am always in my office to solve their problems
because I love my students. I must say that I had premonition which, if I had
heeded, I wouldn’t have been involved in the attack. One, I didn’t have
lectures; two, when I got to the school gate, I discovered my office keys were
not in my bag; three, my wallet containing my identity card, driver’s licence
and other important documents was not with me. But when I got to the office, my
colleague had already opened the door with his own key. If the door had been
locked, I would have gone back home.
I stayed in the office, Room 78, upstairs at the new site of
School of Arts and Social Sciences, FCE, Kano. Around 1.15pm that day, I heard
the sound of multiple bomb explosions at close range. Before you knew it, there
was pandemonium. Students and staff were running helter skelter for their
lives. On noticing this, I came out of my chair to check what was happening and
what I saw was the Boko Haram people wielding AK-47 guns shooting sporadically
and directly at everyone at sight. Downstairs, they had killed one of our
lecturers, Dr. Thomas Kayode Ajamu from Ogbomoso, Oyo State. Dr. Ajamu, a
former Head, Department of Christian Religious Studies, CRS, was buried that
same week.
So when I came out of the door, there was no way to pass.
Dead bodies littered everywhere because this attack happened at the prime-time
for lectures.
Before the attack, I have reason to believe terrorists came
on surveillance. Several male teenagers came visiting our offices in pretence
that they were begging for money. The one that came to my office said, teacher
good afternoon, please I am going to the hospital, I am not feeling too well,
but I don’t have money for transportation. Even though I don’t understand Hausa
very well. I replied him in Hausa, that I forgot my money at home, that there
was no money on me, and he thanked me and left.
That was the conversation during the surveillance time and
they did it in all the blocks in the five departments of the school- Department
of History where I belong, Department of Geography, Social Studies, Christian
Religious Studies, Islamic Religious Studies, and the Deanery. They surveyed
everywhere before the attack.
My office is located on the first floor of a one storey
building, so, I couldn’t jump down. I saw students jumping down, some got
injured, while others didn’t. What I did was that I hugged a pillar from the
first floor, trying to come down through it. So, when students noticed I have
created an escape route, many joined me and it was in that process that there
was a stampede. I fell down and couldn’t move because the long bone joining my
right knee got broken and shifted out of its socket.
I was trapped. I couldn’t run because a Boko Haram man was
just a stone throw. So, I told myself, ‘to God be the glory, God receive my
soul in heaven’. There was no escape, the man was directly shooting
sporadically at any person in sight. He was shooting directly at both the young
and old. They didn’t spare young boys and girls who came to the school to sell
groundnut and pure water. All of them where shot dead.
At the end, there was a massive attack, many people were
killed, several others were wounded. The big testimony of it all, was that the
Boko Haram man was standing on me, while shooting at others. When I saw him I
played dead. I remembered when I was in Alvan Ikokwu College of Education,
Owerri, in 1984, there was this lecture we had then on self-defence mechanism.
I remembered the lecturer told us how to escape if we were in situations like
this. So, that knowledge came into me. Another thing that came into my mind at
that critical moment was that I remembered that I and my wife had been praying
and fasting against gun shots, bomb blast.
At the Boko Haram man stood on me as if I was a dead victim,
I didn’t know how God seized the pains I was going through as a result of the
broken knee bone and also my breathe was also seized.
Few minutes later, the man left me and was walking away
towards the school gate. At that same time, there was one of the female
lecturers in my department who was finding her way out with four others. The
man spotted them and asked them to say their last prayers. While they put their
hands up to say the prayers, the bomb the man had on his body blew him up.
Shortly thereafter, a security guard came to me and asked me
to stand up, stand up, but I told him I couldn’t, that my leg was broken. He
tried to pull me but it was not easy because I was bigger than him. He managed
to pull me to hide behind a door inside a class. There too, I also played dead
because the sound of gun shots was still raging.
Some minutes later, I peeped from the door and saw some
policemen inside the school. I was in dilemma as to whether to call them to
come and help me or not, because, sometimes, these Boko Haram people dress in
police and military uniforms. Everybody had vacated the school premises, nobody
knew I was behind the door writhing in pains. I said if the policemen were not
authentic security agents that means I am gone, because there was still sound
of gun shots.
God receive my soul
I said within myself, if they were genuine policemen, I have
a testimony to tell, but if they were fake, God receive my soul. So, I summoned
the courage and called them, ‘Officer, officer, please come and rescue me’, and
they said ‘who are you?’ I introduced myself as Chief Ojimba of History
Department of the college. I told them I fell from upstairs and my leg was
broken.
It was then that they mobilised other soldiers. They asked
for my ID card. I told them I left it at home. They didn’t believe me and
threatened to kill me. I said I couldn’t stand up, my leg was broken.
I said they could waste me but I was a lecturer in the
school and they could confirm by going to my office at room 78. I said they
could see my two phones and a new laptop in the office. Yet they didn’t believe
me, so, they ordered me to pull-off my shirt and singlet which I did. They
further asked me to pull-off my trousers and I cried to them that my legs were
already swollen and my bones broken and I could not. In harsh tone, they warned
that if I fail to obey their instructions they will shoot me. After doing that,
they also asked me pull-off my short, which I did and was stark naked.
Well, one shouldn’t blame them, because they were actually
doing their job. They wanted to confirm if I was not one of the terrorists, and
was not concealing any bomb in me. When they noticed I was stark naked and
nothing was on me, they instructed me to put on my clothes. Then, they rescued
me out of the place. An Assistant Superintendent of Police, ASP, that came with
the team, an elderly man like myself, carried me on his back, with three other
soldiers carrying my swollen right leg to the waiting school ambulance. I cried
like a baby, as I was taken to the Murtala Muhammed Specialist Hospital, Kano.
I have never cried like that before all my life. It was then that they brought
out dead, Dr. Ajamu of the Department of CRS. He was shot inside his office,
because the Boko Haram people went to offices, classrooms and toilets shooting
anybody at sight.
I stayed at the specialist hospital with my broken leg
inside Plaster of Paris, POP, for about a week. But I must confess that I was
impressed by the way our school’s governing council, the school management,
students, staff unions, friends and relations rallied round me while I was hospitalised.
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