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A rescued Oriire teacher, Zachery Olatunde, has revealed that his abductors occasionally washed the captives’ clothes during the 56 days they held him and 43 others in the Old Oyo National Park.
He said the disclosure was meant to counter online claims that the freed pupils and teachers looked too neat to have genuinely endured weeks in a kidnappers’ camp.
Olatunde spoke in a video shared by Oyo Matters on Thursday, days after he and other victims abducted from three schools in Oriire Local Government Area regained their freedom following a security operation.
Speaking in Yoruba which was translated to English by our correspondent, he explained that the abductors took charge of laundering the captives’ clothes once the smell from their bodies became noticeable.
According to him, this detail has been misread by social media critics as evidence that the abduction was staged.
“The abductors are the ones that wash the clothes for us a few times while we were in captivity, when they notice that we are already smelling. Don’t they (critics) see how rough and dirty we the teachers were? Didn’t they see how rough our beards were, like that of a bush rat?” Olatunde said.
He also dismissed the broader suggestion that the abduction was stage-managed, pointing to the deaths recorded during the ordeal as proof of its authenticity.
“Those saying the kidnapping was staged don’t know what they are saying. If it was staged, would they have killed two people? If it was staged, what we went through in that place was not good at all,” he said.
Olatunde further addressed claims that the pupils looked suspiciously coordinated in matching ankara outfits when they were freed, explaining that the attire followed an existing state government directive rather than any staging.
“They said the children were wearing matching ankara. Are they not in Oyo State? Don’t they know that the government has ordered that schoolchildren should be wearing native attires on Friday?
“Primary school pupils in private schools now wear native wears on Friday. We the teachers wore native attire, but secondary school pupils wore school uniform,” he said.
He urged Nigerians to stop peddling the claims, insisting that the experience in captivity was genuine.
“So those that are saying it was staged are all telling lies. It was not staged. It was real. So please stop saying those types of things,” he said.
His comments come amid a wave of online scepticism that has trailed the rescue since the presidency confirmed on July 10 that all 44 pupils and teachers abducted on May 15 from Community Grammar School, Baptist Nursery and Primary School, and L.A. Primary School in the Esiele and Yawota communities of Oriire had been rescued.
The abduction occurred on May 15, 2026, when armed men stormed three schools in the Ahoro-Esiele and Yawota communities of Oriire Local Government Area near Ogbomoso, seizing 46 pupils and teachers, including school principal Folawe Alamu.
During the attack, the assistant headmaster of L.A. Primary School, Joel Adesiyan, was killed while trying to escape.
Days into the captivity, Mathematics teacher Michael Oyedokun was beheaded by the abductors.
The captives were freed on July 10 after a coordinated operation involving the Nigerian Army, the Police, the Department of State Services, the Civil Defence Corps, Amotekun and local vigilante groups.
The Presidency maintained that no ransom or concession was made to secure the release
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