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“My people, good [day] morning. I just decided to make this video now believing that this video will get to the president. It will get to the Attorney-General, it will get to the CJN [Chief Justice of Nigeria]. And, ehm, we cannot continue in this way. In the first instance a lot of things are happening in our judicial system against the Igbo, yes I want to say against the Igbo. “Some Igbo guys were arrested from the south east and they were dumped at Wawa barracks in Kainji, Niger state, in the name of being members of IPOB [Indigenous People of Biafra and being members of ESN [Eastern Security Network] without proper investigation. Innocent persons.
“Now I gave you a story one day about one Chidiebere Echefu. How that young man was arrested from his house at Owerri. This young man was arrested in Owerri in 2021 by the DSS [Directorate of State Services/secret police] operatives. The family members thought that this young man was dead. They searched for this young man, they couldn’t find this young man. They forgot about him only for someone who came out from DSS cell after six months called the wife to say that your husband is still alive, and [that] they should look for a lawyer to come for him and that he’s being incarcerated at DSS headquarters in Abuja.
“That matter got to NBA [Nigerian Bar Association] human rights committee, and I was assigned to handle that matter. I visited DSS Abuja and they said that the young man was not there. I went to DSS Owerri, they said that the young man was not there.
“So I decided to file the enforcement of fundamental human rights in favour of Chidiebere Echefu, only for the DSS to file a counter saying that they arrested this young man and kept this young man on an order, motion exparte, from a federal high court to keep the guy for 90 days. And unfortunately for them the 90 days the court gave them the order had elapsed.
“So when I served them they quickly went to court and they renewed that particular order and the judge did not ask, please can I see this person that [on whom] you are getting this order? Can you bring the person to court [and] let me see him? The court now granted that particular order. It was now when we filed the enforcement of fundamental human rights and the matter was before another judge.
“And the judge looking at what was filed, the court gave a judgment. This judgment was delivered by an FCT [Federal Capital Territory] high court on the 11th of March, 2022, by Honourable Justice Ogbonna, enforcing his fundamental human rights, directing that he [detainee] should be released forthwith. We served DSS this judgment [but] the DSS refused to comply with the order.
“I have been going to DSS [but] they refused me access to see this young man apart from one time, only once [when] the court directed that they should allow me. When I saw him the young man has emaciated. [As] I continued to go to the DSS they told me that the young man was no longer there.
“I don’t know his whereabouts. The wife was crying, his relations were crying, only for someone to tell me that the young man has been sent to Wawa barracks in Kainji, Niger state, in spite of a judgment of a court directing that he should be released. This judgment was not appealed against. Now when all my efforts to see him proved abortive I even thought that the young man [had] died, only for this young man to send me a text [SMS] from Kuje [Abuja] prison. That was three days ago through their welfare officer, saying that they have moved him from Kainji to Kuje prison. I couldn’t believe that he was still alive. [On further probing], he started telling me what happened”.
He said “that they [state security] were forcing them, a lot of them that their people thought that they were dead. They brought judges and they were forcing them [detainees] to start pleading guilty for terrorism. They don’t have access to their relations, they don’t have access to their lawyers. They only have access to lawyers given to them by the government and by the Legal Aid Council.
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“Some of them don’t even know what the charge is all about. So they were just pleading guilty and the judges were just convicting them. So reaching on his own, Chidiebere said that he will not plead guilty [because] he never did anything and that he will prefer to die. Why should they force him to plead guilty.
“Now Chidiebere is in Kuje prison. I learnt that they have started trying him again. These things are happening majorly on the Igbos. We cannot continue like this. I am asking you the senator, I am asking you the house of reps members representing the south east, are you not aware of this? If you are not aware come let me tell. These ones, they are 142 of them. I got judgment for them [shuffling sheets of papers in his hands] and court orders that they should be released. As I speak to you they [the DSS have] failed to comply with the [court] order.
“I can go on and on. What they normally do is that when you want to deal with somebody they just write a petition accusing the person of membership of IPOB or ESN. They [state security] just come in the night and whisk the person away. They seize the victim’s handsets and deprive him of access to a legal practitioner of his choice and also access to his family. They move the person to Wawa barracks and you people say we should keep quiet. We cannot keep quiet. Enough of this. There are some persons there in Suleija prison…”
It’s not in my character to indulge in copiously quoting anyone else. But today’s entry is entirely different. I do not claim to have developed the literary and writing skills to paraphrase the emotional, troubling and gripping narrative of Barrister Maxwell Opara about the horror experiences of Chidiebere and others without losing the essence of the Nigerian state’s soulessness, callousness, wickedness and cruelty. The real story is that Chidiebere is but one of the many Igbo youngsters, in their hundreds and probably in their thousands, who have been imprisoned for years without trial. Their arrests could not even be said to be lawful. They were simply branded as “terrorists” of the IPOB and the ESN.
Many of them do not belong to any of the groups. The point was that to be a youth in the east, especially during the failed presidency of Nigeria’s affliction, Muhammadu Buhari, was to be treated as a terrorist. To wave a BIafran flag, to embark on a peaceful protest, and to demand a referendum for self determination, were all criminalised. Even youngsters who did none of these things that were treated as treason, were randomly picked up in their parents’ homes in the east, or on the streets, or in their business premises, including their shops in the markets or the roadside, or secretly from schools. They were subsequently driven by road overnight to distant prisons and dumped there. Only remembered for torturing and traumatising. Their only crime was that they were Igbo and young. Nobody would ever know their whereabouts. They were never arraigned in any law courts. The state security agencies do not bother to procure detention warrants. The victims do not have names. They are not citizens. In short, they do not exist. The tragedy is that after years of no information about these victims of the terrorism of the Nigerian state, families, relations, and friends of the disappeared innocent Igbo youngsters are presumed dead and their funerals conducted. In Igbo land it’s a taboo to effect funeral rites for the living. To appreciate the enormity of the taboo, it took decades for families in the defunct Republic of Biafra to organise symbolic funerals for their loved ones who did not return from the civil war of 1967-1970. But that’s what the federal government under the APC has gifted Igbo parents – burying their children even before they die. There’s no suggestion that the Nigerian state terrorism of this nature is visited only on Ndigbo. No. But the experience of the Igbo is different and unique because it was founded on the false premise that they were, still are, terrorists who are levying war on the Nigerian state. It was also unique because Buhari [president from 2015-2023] boasted publicly that he would teach the Igbo and their self-determination promoters the lesson they would never forget. And he proceeded to implement it as a state policy.
Buhari was known to have hired a private military company and used it to wreak havoc on Igbo land. He would then turn around to blame the insecurity on IPOB and ESN, which by the way had not clothed themselves in glory. It has to be acknowledged that the two groups by their excesses and immaturity played into the hands of the butcher, Buhari. He would use the pretext of insecurity to raid families, arrest Igbo youth, and dump them in prisons far from their homeland. Buhari had Igbo accomplices in the torture and decimation of the youth population of the east. The extant APC regime of Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu may not be accused of sustaining that evil, certainly not at the scale of Buhari, but there’s no evidence that it is working to make amends and to reassure Igbo youngsters that the Nigerian state is not their enemy.
If Tinubu is minded to redress the issues of arbitrary arrests and detentions, and holding victims incommunicado, he would have set up committees to probe every such case. He also would have directed his attorney-general and minister of justice to work in conjunction with the NBA, the judiciary, Nigerian Human Rights Commission, Human Rights Watch and similar organisations to review all such cases, identify the judges who were handing out long prison sentences like confetties to illegally detained citizens who were not allowed proper legal representation, and to ensure that the rogue-judges are sanctioned. None of such is publicly known to be happening which could be interpreted as an endorsement of the Buhari evil.
It will be difficult for Nigeria to heal and unite for as long as any section of it feels disadvantaged and unduly targeted for reproach and humiliation. There’s a reason why the Igbo youth are not attracted to seeking enlistment into the Nigerian armed forces and sundry security agencies. Apart from the real fear of career stagnation, they regard those institutions as their enemies. Every season leaders of the security agencies would bemoan the serial inability of the states of the south east to fill their quotas. However, they appear not to be interested in engaging in the serious conversation of why. Until that day we will only be muddling along.
