“It was stressful”: Rescued corps members recount ordeal in Imo forest

Twenty National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) members freed after seven days in captivity in an Imo forest have reunited with their families in Ibadan, Oyo State.

The Department of State Services (DSS) command in Oyo handed them over at about 8:30pm on Thursday after their parents waited about three hours, TheCable reports. Security operatives had earlier debriefed the victims.

One of them, Akande Morenikeji, described the ordeal as mentally and physically draining.

“Ah, it was stressful, too,” she was quoted as saying.

She said the female victims were neither chained nor sexually harassed, while the males faced restrictions.

“We were not chained; the guys, yes, the guys mostly. But as for us, the girls, they did not do any sexual harassment to us. They did not do anything sexual to us,” she said.

The corps members were abducted on the Owerri-Onitsha expressway on October 1. Their abductors reduced a N1 billion ransom demand to N5 million per person before a joint security team rescued them on Wednesday.