Thousands of people in Nigeria have been held for ransom by bandit groups. One professor escaped his captors—only to be abducted again.
By Alexis Okeowo
Photograph by Etinosa Yvonne for The New Yorker
Izuchukwu Anyanwu, a university lecturer in Abuja, Nigeria, came home one evening and settled in for a quiet night. It was September, 2023, and he had spent the afternoon playing soccer with friends on the campus of Veritas University, where he taught. He was tired and was running a fever, so he took a shower and had some tea and bread; he also took medicine for malaria, in case he had contracted it. His wife, Immaculata, put their infant daughter to sleep, then went to bed herself. Around midnight, Anyanwu was watching a political-news program on TV when he heard a noise at the outer door of the veranda. It sounded as though someone was trying to break in. There had been a power outage that night, and he was using a solar-energy system to run the TV. He opened a window but couldn’t see who was there. “I was scared,” he told me recently. “I started shouting, ‘Who is that? Who is that?’ ”
At thirty-eight, Anyanwu is slim and bearded, with a youthful face. He grew up in a small town in the southeast of the country, then went to Veritas, a Catholic university, to get a master’s in political theory. He eventually was offered a teaching job, and rented a place in Zuma II, a neighborhood just outside the university’s gates where many faculty members live. It’s on the northern outskirts of the city in the rocky foothills of some nearby mountains. “I felt safe,” he said. “My hope was to build up my academic profile and eventually have my own house here.” His daughter would be turning one in February, and the family was planning a big celebration.
As the noises grew louder, Anyanwu tried calling a neighborhood-watch group, then some friends, but the calls didn’t connect. His wife woke up, and the two of them screamed out the window for help. Then the intruders broke the locks. “That is when I saw that it was over,” he said.
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