Never give
up. Through Facebook, a mother and her son who was abducted about three years
ago have reunited.
Suleiman Abba Umar was abducted on January 6, 2014, in
Kado, Abuja, after the close of school. His family searched for him – in
Nasarawa, Kano, Abuja and Kaduna states – to no avail.
Sharing his experience, Umar said after his abduction by
unidentified persons, “I regained consciousness only to find myself on a pile of
corpses by a beach, some with missing heads or limbs. I was
terrified”.
According to Daily Trust, the
teenager said he had to work menial jobs, like bricklaying, to
survive.
He later started visiting a football viewing centre where he met
one Muhammed who took him in.
According to him, one of the boys he met at
Mohammed’s place advised him to search for his parents on Facebook.
He
said he found his mother’s Facebook page but there was no response to his friend
request which led him to try adding their mutual friends — and one of his
cousins accepted.
Suleiman, now 15, said when he told his cousin who he
was, he thought he was a fraudster but later reluctantly sent him his mom’s
number.
His words: “I regained consciousness only to find myself on a
pile of corpses by a beach, some with missing heads or limbs. I was
terrified.
“I visited food vendors, pushed disabled people on wheelchairs
for a commission of their takings for the day, sometimes as low as N100
daily.
“I met one Muhammed, and we became friends, so I soon moved to
their shanty. I was always quiet, so almost everyone around me thought I had a
speech impairment.
“I told them my parents’ names, and they came up with
all kinds of ideas, and someone suggested I search for my family on
Facebook.
“There was no response for a while, so we also tried using
mutual friends. One of my cousins accepted, and we got chatting, and when I told
him who I was, he laughed and thought I was an internet fraudster out to exploit
the family’s pain.
“My cousin reluctantly sent me my mum’s number, and
that’s when I placed the call that night, and we spoke.”
Binta, his
mother, said she was asleep when his call came in.
“To my shock, I heard
Suleiman stammering at the other end. As I heard his voice, I knew it was him,
and I began to cry, and he joined in,” she said.
Binta said although it
was 1am in the morning, she could not wait to get to Lagos — having lived with
the pain of losing him for three years.
“It was past 1:00am and I
couldn’t wait to get to Lagos. I reached out to agents for flight tickets, to no
avail, as virtually all the morning flights had been booked,” she
said.
“In the morning, I rushed to the airport having finally got a
flight for noon. As I was doing this, I reached out to Katsina Liaison Office in
Lagos to help, as well.
“He’s totally changed, he’s now a man, and darker
as a result of hardships he’s been through.”
