Miss Olayemi said she was beaten many times and denied food. She, however, said the kidnappers did not rape her.
A 23-year-old student of Rufus Giwa Polytechnic, Owo in Ondo State, Regina Olayemi, has narrated her ordeal in the hands of kidnappers who held her captive for seven days in the Ago-Oyinbo forest in Akure North Local Government Area of the state.
Miss Olayemi on Monday said she was working in her family's farm at Ago-Oyinbo village last week when she was kidnapped. She was released after seven days after her family paid N350,000 as ransom.
In spite of the payment, she said it took the efforts of operatives of the state's Security Network, the Amotekun Corps, to force her release.
"My mum and dad were in the town, but I went to the village to help my sisters in the farm before our resumption, in order to get some money to take to school, when the incident happened," she told journalists on Monday at the corps headquarters in Akure.
"We were at the farm and suddenly we saw these three kidnappers coming towards where we were, I told my sisters that these Fulani people are coming to our side that I was going to run, but they said that I should not go anywhere that they were not going to do anything to us.
"When they got to us, they asked us to kneel down and we knelt down. At that moment we started begging them. Two of them were with guns while the third person was with cutlass.
"They later asked me to stand up and told me that I should be following them. They took a cassava stick and started beating me as we were going.
"I spent seven days with them. They asked for my dad's number but I told them that I did not know it off-hand. I later told them I did not have parents again, that they had died, that I just came to the village to help my sisters so that I would get money to take care of myself when I get back to school.
"But they said it was a lie, that they knew everything about my family. I later gave them my number because I was not with my phone on that day."
The kidnappers according her, got through to one of her sisters through her phone and informed her of her kidnap.
Her sister reported the matter to Amotekun, whose operatives immediately started a search for her in the forest.
Miss Olayemi said she was beaten many times and denied food. She, however, said the kidnappers did not rape her.
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The Amotekun Corps Commander, Adetunji Adeleye, spoke on the incident and the fight against crime in the state. He said the Corps arrested about 29 suspected criminals in the state in recent times.
"We were about to pick up the suspected criminals, especially the kidnappers and we are also about to bring the victims who have gone through terrible times in their hands," he said.
"The resurgence of kidnapping within the state made us to go deep into forests to fish out these kidnappers.
"We have a total number of 29 criminals, and about 20 of them are suspected kidnappers. We also invited all those that came to complain that they were kidnapped in the last three to four months in the state and they were able to identify majority of them.
"As a matter of fact, we have to cross the river to arrest them, and we were equally attacked by majority of them. We also found out that these criminals live in our forests along Ala-Dada, Jugbere, up to Ijagba and we were able to comb the forests.
"This is to send a strong signal that even crossing the water will not deter Amotekun from flushing these criminals out of Ondo State. "The only solution is for all these criminals and kidnappers to pack and leave Ondo State," he said.
