The horrific story of Izuchukwu Anyanwu, the Nigerian lecturer who escaped kidnappers, only to be abducted again

After months of captivity, he escaped into the forest but was seized by another armed group demanding ransom.

Released on his daughter’s first birthday in February 2024, he returned home to find that she no longer recognised him.

When Izuchukwu Anyanwu finally escaped from the kidnappers who had held him captive for months, he thought the worst part of his ordeal was behind him.

He had been weakened by hunger, beaten during ransom negotiations and threatened with having one of his legs cut off. His clothes had become torn, and his slippers had fallen apart, while his captors had begun calling him “skeleton” because of how much weight he had lost.

After months in the forest, he seized an opportunity to flee when one of the guards suffered a seizure, and the hostages managed to get hold of the keys to their shackles.

Finally escaping the den of kidnappers, Anyanwu ran for nine hours. He moved through the forest with one destination in mind: home. 

His daughter was due to turn one on February 4, 2024, and after everything he had endured, he wanted to see her again. 

At one point, exhausted, he slept beneath a tree. When he woke and continued his journey, he crossed a ravine and noticed cigarette butts and human skulls scattered on the ground. Still, he kept going.

The university lecturer eventually found a Fulani herdsman who allowed him to use a phone. Anyanwu called his wife, Immaculata, expecting the relief of finally telling her that he was alive and free. 

Instead, he discovered that she had just paid another ransom of about $4,500 to the people who had been holding him, unaware that he had already escaped.

After Anyanwu hung up, the herdsman also made a call, after which four men from different bandit groups carrying AK-47s arrived. 

Anyanwu pleaded with them for help. They appeared to be sympathetic to his ordeal, took him to their camp, gave him food and medicine and then, at night, chained him up. They took him hostage and asked him to call his wife to give them ransom.

READ NEXT: The strange story of Daniel Ekechukwu, the Nigerian pastor who reportedly died, saw heaven and hell and came back to life

The story, according to The New Yorker Magazine, had begun several months earlier, on a night in September 2023, when Anyanwu was at home near Veritas University in Abuja. 

Izuchukwu Anyanwu, photographed by Etinosa Yvonne for The New Yorker. He had spent the afternoon playing football with friends on campus and returned home feeling unwell. 

After taking some malaria medication, he settled down with his family. His wife put their infant daughter to sleep, while Anyanwu watched a political programme on television using the family’s solar-powered system because the electricity was out.

Sometime around midnight, he heard someone trying to break through the veranda door. He shouted for help. His wife woke up, and they tried calling people in the neighbourhood, but the calls did not go through. Then the door gave way.

According to Anyanwu’s account, 17 armed men entered the house. Some were carrying AK-47s, machine guns and rocket-propelled grenade launchers. They ordered Anyanwu and Sunday Ujah, a 20-year-old who lived with the family and helped with housework, to lie on the floor while they searched the house for valuables.

There was little to take. The men collected food and drinks, then forced Anyanwu and Ujah out of the house. They also abducted a local trader from a neighbouring home and led the captives into the surrounding forest.

After walking for hours, they eventually reached an area near Tunga Maje where the kidnappers kept their hostages in a cave. Anyanwu was still wearing the clothes he had been at home in, and he would spend the following months sleeping on wet ground and living under conditions that steadily weakened him.

The kidnappers wanted to know what their captives did for a living. It was not casual conversation. They were trying to determine how much each hostage might be worth.

When Anyanwu told them he was a university lecturer, the group demanded ₦150 million for his release and that of Ujah.

His family struggled to raise the money, while the kidnappers used violence during ransom calls to pressure them. Anyanwu said he was beaten with machetes, wires and gun butts while his relatives listened on the phone. 

Eventually, the family managed to raise about $6,000. The kidnappers accepted the money, and Anyanwu’s relatives believed they had done what was required to bring him home.

But that wasn’t the case, as the kidnappers kept him and said the ransom was insufficient. Their leader later threatened to cut off one of Anyanwu’s legs and made him choose which one. Anyanwu pleaded with him, warning that he would bleed to death, but the threat remained. 

When he was forced to choose, he picked up his left leg, placed it on a rock, and prepared himself for what he believed was about to happen. But the order was eventually withdrawn. His captors decided they could get more money from his family and kept him alive.

As the months passed, Anyanwu’s condition deteriorated. His clothes became ragged, his slippers were no longer usable and his weight dropped so dramatically that his captors mocked him as “skeleton”. The food was sometimes little more than white rice, and the water available to the hostages was dirty. He washed himself in a river when he could.

By December, Ujah and two other hostages had managed to escape, but Anyanwu remained behind. His wife was still trying to raise money for his release, going from one person to another while caring for their young daughter.

Then, in January 2024, an unexpected opportunity presented itself. One of the guards suffered a seizure. As the hostages tried to help him, they persuaded him to hand over the keys to their shackles. Once they were free, Anyanwu ran.

He spent nine hours moving through the forest. The journey was exhausting and dangerous, but he continued because he believed he was finally going home. When he finally encountered the herdsman, he called his wife, a call he had been waiting months to make.

ALSO READ: Kwara man escaped kidnappers, walked for 9 days, then was captured again

The relief did not last. The four men who arrived after his call belonged to another armed group. Initially, they appeared sympathetic to what had happened to him. They gave him food and medicine and listened as he explained that he had escaped from another group of kidnappers.

That night, however, they chained him up. They told him to call his wife and demand another ransom. Like that, Anyanwu’s nightmare started again.

He was eventually released on February 4, the day his daughter turned one. His sister had sent money, food, phone cards, power banks, solar panels and two motorcycles through local motorcycle taxi drivers. 

One of the drivers dropped him near a highway, where his sister picked him up and took him to a hotel. From there, he went to hospital to be evaluated and then went home, but home was not quite the place he had left.

When Anyanwu saw his wife, he struggled to recognise her. She had lost considerable weight during the months she spent trying to secure his release. Their daughter, whom he had spent so long thinking about while trapped in the forest, did not recognise him either.

“I couldn’t recognise my wife. My baby didn’t know me,” Anyanwu recalled. His wife also said, “My life was shattered. I was traumatised and very depressed. But I didn’t give up.” 

Izuchukwu Anyanwu and his wife, Immaculata, photographed by Etinosa Yvonne for The New Yorker. The family was also left with debts from the ransom payments. Anyanwu and his wife wanted to leave Nigeria after his release, but they could not afford to start over elsewhere. The money they had borrowed to secure his freedom still had to be repaid.

For all that he had endured, Anyanwu said there was no formal institutional support waiting for him when he returned. Friends, relatives, his church and the university helped where they could, but the psychological consequences of the kidnapping remained.

He has struggled to sleep before midnight, around the same time the first group of kidnappers broke into his home.

Anyanwu’s experience took place in an area that has itself become synonymous with insecurity. 

Veritas University, where he worked, is in Abuja’s Bwari area, a part of the Federal Capital Territory that has experienced repeated cases of kidnapping and other violent crime.

The university has previously introduced additional security measures and, during a period of heightened insecurity, moved classes online because of concerns over the safety of students.

His was also not the only kidnapping involving someone connected to the university. In 2022, Veritas lecturer Dr John Adole escaped from kidnappers after being abducted in Benue State.

In 2025, a Veritas student, Cornelius Damulak, was abducted from his residence in Bwari and later escaped while being moved through the forest.