A lecturer at the Federal College of Education, FCE, Kabuga, Kano, Chief Christian Ojimba, in a recent interview with Vanguard recounted the ordeal he and some of his students went through when Boko Haram members visited their school on September 17th, an attack that lasted 45minutes. Below is what he said...
"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 t€enagers, 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 t€enagers 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.
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