RALPH, 26 IBRAHIM, 23
“I was kidnapped by SARS. I was on a bus going to Ibadan from Oyo town. We got to this checkpoint where they asked us to come down. They took stock of everyone and told the driver to leave without me. They were led by a woman who searched me and threatened to hit me and take me to jail if I refused to enter. I was forced into one of those Micra buses they use as public transport in Ibadan. The other male officers saw I was resisting and said “Put handcuff for him hand”. One of them started going through my phone and saw a message NCDC had sent to me weeks before after I had tested positive for COVID. He told his colleagues and they asked what country I went to and got COVID because they didn’t believe COVID was in Nigeria. I told them I had never left the country. They let me go afterward because they were afraid of catching COVID and didn’t find anything on me. I think I was lucky but I was baffled at how daft they were”. These are the people supposed to protect us?
“My friend and I left school from Abeokuta to Lagos and as we got to the outskirts of Lagos, we could see a small white bus signalling us to stop and we recognized them as SARS. I advised my friend not to because we smelt of weed and had some in the car. We hoped that if we acted totally oblivious, they would stop chasing. We kept on driving fast while they followed us for about 5km. They started fading and we thought we had lost them only to suddenly find them back behind us. This time they were shooting so we knew the game was up. My friend started to slow down and at that moment one of the bullets went to the back of his neck, he lost control of the car and we ended up crashing into a roadside shop. I don’t remember what happened after that but my friend died that day and the bullet caused more damage than the accident. I was in the hospital for three weeks and came out with a shattered leg they had to cut it off because it started to decay. People present at the scene reported that the SARS officials did not stop to see the accident they had caused.