Kidnappers washed our clothes when we started smelling, says freed Oyo teacher

A rescued teacher from Oyo State has pushed back against online skepticism regarding the authenticity of the 56-day kidnapping ordeal, revealing that the abductors themselves occasionally washed the captives' clothes. Zachery Olatunde, one of the 43 individuals freed from the Old Oyo National Park, shared this detail to counter claims that the victims looked too neat to have endured weeks in captivity.

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The abductors are the ones that wash the clothes for us a few times while we were in captivity, when they notice that we are already smelling. Don’t they (critics) see how rough and dirty we the teachers were? Didn’t they see how rough our beards were, like that of a bush rat?

Olatunde explained that the abductors would launder the captives' clothing when their body odor became noticeable. He questioned why critics would misinterpret this act of necessity as evidence of a staged event, pointing to the rough appearance of the male teachers and their beards as proof of their hardship. He also highlighted the deaths of two people during the captivity as irrefutable evidence that the abduction was real and not a fabrication.

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Those saying the kidnapping was staged don’t know what they are saying. If it was staged, would they have killed two people? If it was staged, what we went through in that place was not good at all.

Addressing another point of contention, Olatunde clarified that the pupils' matching ankara outfits were not part of a staging effort but rather a compliance with a state government directive. He noted that Oyo State mandates schoolchildren to wear native attire on Fridays, a practice observed by both teachers and pupils in primary schools.

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They said the children were wearing matching ankara. Are they not in Oyo State? Don’t they know that the government has ordered that schoolchildren should be wearing native attires on Friday?

Olatunde urged Nigerians to cease spreading unsubstantiated claims about the abduction being staged, insisting that the experience was genuine and harrowing. His comments aim to provide clarity and counter misinformation circulating on social media following the victims' release.

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So those that are saying it was staged are all telling lies. It was not staged. It was real. So please stop saying those types of things.