In November 2003, Ballarat-born Josh Nijam was shot at by Nigerian militants brandishing AK-47 assault rifles, kidnapped, held hostage and then released only to deliver the ransom money back to his former captors.

A decade later, Josh is ready to reveal the full extent of his ordeal.

Josh went to school in Ballarat at St Paul’s and then Midlands Secondary College.

He completed a John Deer apprenticeship with Peter Stevens in 1999 and then started backpacking through Europe, Britain and the United States in 2001.

It must have seemed like the adventure of a lifetime: travelling the world and plying his trade as a mechanic. Josh worked in Ireland for 14 months, during which time he did the running of the bulls at Pamplona, celebrated Oktoberfest in Munich, spent Independence Day in New York and St Patrick’s Day in Dublin.

He then went to Edinburgh to work with a concrete pipeline coating business. The company offered him a position in either Nigeria or Norway.

"It came down to a pint of beer costing 15 bucks in Scandinavia and I had never been to Africa," Josh said.

"I ran maintenance in Nigeria. There was a working compound and living compound and it was my job to keep the generators running in both of them. You were always going back and forth between the two, with guards armed with AK-47s.

"It wasn’t bad. You were 12 weeks on, three weeks off during the three weeks off the company would fly you around the world for holidays."

The working compound was a 10-hectare area surrounded on three sides with concrete walls and armed guards. The fourth side was along a river and the only means of escape if the rest of the compound was surrounded.

Training for a potential evacuation was what brought Josh and six other international workers unstuck.

"The evacuation boat was a former SAS boat. Seven of us - three Russians, two Colombians, a British guy and myself - were on board without an armed guard because we had evacuation training," Josh explains. "We took the evacuation boat down to the river’s edge to learn how to use it. Another little boat pulled up next to us with four Nigerians on board armed with AK-47s. They shot up and destroyed our boat. I don’t know how someone wasn’t killed. There were 30 plus holes in it.

"They violently threw us in their boat and took us through the jungle for four hours or so until we got to their little village. They were pretty much intent on capturing white people. They said right up front if you were white people you would have money."

The seven internationals were then locked in a small steel shed for three-and-a-half days in 40 plus degree temperatures. During that time they were under constant watch, staring down the barrels of automatic assault weapons.

When Josh’s girlfriend (now wife) Karen first heard of the crisis, she was, herself, preparing for an international flight.

Karen remembers receiving the call and then being caught between flights and airports trying to find out what was happening.

"I remember it," she says. "The initial phone call I received that something was wrong was when I was in London, a couple of days before I had to travel. I just wanted to get home.

"I was in San Francisco at the airport on what must have been the third day of the negotiations and they were just saying the same thing. I was getting the same story and I was thinking that it might not work out. I was a mess. It was really hard being on my own and not knowing anything."

It became apparent pretty quickly to Josh that there would be a ransom involved. "We had to do ‘proof of life’," Josh said. "The company sent copies of current magazines and we had to sign them and send them back.

"The very first night they sent one of the Russians back with to negotiate the hostage demands. And the British bloke got malaria."

Josh was the next to be released, to act as a go-between between the kidnappers and the company.

He was dropped off in the middle of the night on the border of the working compound and had to run the gauntlet of the compound’s own armed guards. Even when he was safely inside, that wasn’t the end of it.

"The company agreed to pay $50,000. They gave me a UHF radio and I had to go back to the water’s edge, to the boat and then drop off the ransom money. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done," Josh said.

"I had to drive down to the water’s edge in a dual cab Hilux and leave the ransom money in front of it.

"I then ran as fast as I could into an area with some pipes. The militants then radioed me and told me I had to come back and turn the lights off on the Hilux."

The hostage takers were also given food and clothes. The next day they released the other hostages.

"Once we were released it was probably three or four days and we had thousands of meetings," Josh says. "They flew us all back to our home countries. I got back to Australia and everyone in Ballarat was asking a whole lot of questions. A friend of mine, Pete, took me away to the beach at Torquay to look after me and get me away from it.

"I got pretty sick from it all. Constant visits from doctors, having test after test. It was all post traumatic stress. I hung around Australia until January and then ended up going back to Nigeria for three or four months.

"Everyone asks me why I went back, but the guys I was with and everyone else in the compound were my mates. My wife says going back might have been about facing my fears.

"The most traumatic thing is the realisation that you can be shot at the drop of a hat. Life is cheap in Nigeria and there were constant stories about people being killed. During the negotiations, it was unforgettable. Nigeria is a country where the government is corrupt. There are so many resources and none of it gets to the people. I can understand why the kidnappers do what they do."

But this story does have a happy ending.

Josh married Karen in 2005 and they have two children, Harry (six) and Jack (four). However, Josh did not tell Karen of the full extent of his experience in Nigeria until four years ago. She says she is still learning details.

He started his Central Machinery Services business in Ballarat four years ago, specialising in servicing and repairing farm machinery, and has since expanded it to a purpose-built workshop in Delacombe.

"We’re doing well. It has been 10 years since the kidnapping so life moves on," Josh says.

Josh’s story will be on SBS’s Insight program on August 27 at 8.30pm.