Victims Recount Their Harrowing Experience In Captivity, Where Kidnappers Employed Snakes To Instill Fear.

 Recently released from prison, abducted victims disclosed that their captors had terrified them with deadly snakes.

The victims told the News Agency of Nigeria in separate interviews about their ordeal that the bandits lived in forests full of snakes.

They claimed that the victims and the kidnappers were both bitten by the snakes.

According to one of them, who yearned for anonymity, the kidnappers dumped them in areas rife with snakes.

“The kidnappers know the areas infested with snakes and would often throw the victims there. Immediately they see snakes, the fear-stricken victims will want to run away. The sight is used to frighten people. That is the time a victim can ask friends and family members to sell everything – house, land, cars, household items, shoes, just everything – to raise the ransom."

The deadliest snake-infested woodlands, according to NAN's study, are found in Kala-Balge, near Lake Chad in Borno, and Birnin Gwari in Kaduna State. Shaki in Oyo State, Borgu and Kagara in Niger, Karim Lamido in Adamawa, and Lau in Taraba were among the other locations.

Due to the heat, several of the victims informed NAN that the situation had gotten worse as the snakes were leaving their burrows in search of food and fresh air. 

"The nights are often more traumatizing. You are left outside in the dark, and a reptile may just creep through your legs. While I was in captivity, snakes bit some victims. The kidnappers were not spared as some of them also got bitten.” One of the victims said.

He claims that because the snakes are so prevalent in the Kagara forest, the locals call them "kadangarun Kagara (Kagara lizards)."