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Literature:Tales Of A Kidnap Victim… Your Death Hour Is Ten O’ clock

By Ekemena Azaino
07 February 2016   |   2:06 am
LAST week Hope Eghagha, a professor of English at the University of Lagos, Akoka, Lagos, and former Commissioner for Higher Education in Delta State, presented a factional account of his kidnap experience in 2012 titled Your death hour Is Ten O’clock, as part of the Faculty of Arts Seminar Series. He said the short story is part fact and part fictional account of his ordeal in the hands of kidnappers.
Eghagha

Eghagha

LAST week Hope Eghagha, a professor of English at the University of Lagos, Akoka, Lagos, and former Commissioner for Higher Education in Delta State, presented a factional account of his kidnap experience in 2012 titled Your death hour Is Ten O’clock, as part of the Faculty of Arts Seminar Series. He said the short story is part fact and part fictional account of his ordeal in the hands of kidnappers.

Eghagha was kidnapped on his way to the state capital where he served as a commissioner. The hoodlums killed his security aide who was with him. He stated that he only took soft drinks for the first three days, and only water from the fourth day because he had read somewhere that one could live on water for six weeks and still remain strong; he wanted to avoid the food provided by the kidnappers.

He said his kidnappers beat him severely when he failed to provide satisfactory answers to the questions he was asked about his family, the governor and other government officials of the state. When asked by the gang to pay the sum of N150 million (one hundred million naira) ransom, he pleaded with them to pay N4 million (four million naira), as he did not have the huge amount demanded. He received a barrage of insults and beatings as a result.

After sometime, he said someone entered the room and announced, “Your death hour is ten o’ clock” repeatedly. The threat to his life, he recounted, made him say his last prayers three times: “O God if this is how I’m destined to go may your will be done. I ask for forgiveness for all my sins. Please stabilize my family when I’m gone. If it is my sins that have brought this about please forgive me, Father…”

He recounted how the hoodlums accused the government of making people die of hunger due to joblessness. One of them cited government’s ban of okada motorbike taxis from doing business thereby increasing poverty and crime rate in the state. He also criticised government on the standard of education in the state. The kidnapper was angry with Eghgha and blamed him for the state university for sending three students who cheated in an examination to jail.

He asked, “If person cheat for university na jail dem go send am go?” to which Eghagha insisted he was not aware, promising to instruct that the students be freed as soon as he was released.

Prof. Iwu Ikubuzor and Mrs. Philomena Gbemi-Ogunleye, a librarian at the university asked him how he was able to reproduce the words of the hoodlums verbatim. Eghagha said, “It was the mental notes I made while in their custody and the flashbacks I had after the incident that enabled me write my story factually. I also visited a psychiatrist for six months and a psychologist for three months for self-evaluation after my release”.

Gbemi-Ogunleye then suggested that the short story should be made available at the University Library.
In the same vein, Prof. Gregory Osas Simire proposed that the story should be written as a screen script and sold to Nollywood to make into a film, stressing that people mostly remember what they see than what they read.

In response, Eghagha said, “Chico Ejiro, a movie producer met me after my kidnap and asked me to write a script on my experience so it could be used for movie production but I told him to wait till I leave government before doing it”.

According to him, “My kidnap was a premeditated one because they described my house well. One of them asked me whether I was a commissioner. When I confirmed that I was the Commissioner for Higher Education in the State, the kidnapper replied, ‘Yes, he is the one’”.

Out of curiosity, Prof. Adebayo Lawal of History Department wanted to know if ransom was paid, to which Eghagha replied, “Yes, it was paid”. But he would not disclose the amount paid as ransom. An audience member, Adeniyi asked, “Have you gone into the service of God as you promised to do if you were released?” to which Prof. Eghagha replied, “You can serve God without being a priest. I am now closer to God”.

When asked what he learnt from the experience, he said, “I have learnt never to take anything for granted. A directive came from a pastor that I should not embark on any journey that day but I still went ahead after saying a short prayer, hence I was kidnapped”.

On his choice of narrative voice, he said,
“I used the third person narrative because I wanted to detach myself as Professor Hope Eghagha from the major character”.

He suggested that a special unit should be created in Intelligence Gathering in the Police, Army and Anti-Kidnapping Squad so that criminals can be detected and caught on time. He advised people not let their blood relatives be the bearers of ransom money to abductors as they may be abducted as well.

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