He has been to hell, but he’s lucky to have returned alive. For three years, he was held incommunicado in a number of dingy cells of the Department of State Services (DSS) for an offence he wasn’t aware of. Pius Awoke is a Nigerian lawyer based Ebonyi State. He was arrested on his way back from Abuja and kept in custody in Kogi, Abuja and Niger State for three years after attending the trial of leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu in 2021. On his release on June 21, this year, Awoke looked like a scarecrow. The grossly dehumanized and malnourished lawyer shares his experiences with UCHENNA INYA in this exclusive interview.
Tell us a little about yourself and what happened to you?
I am a legal practitioner of over 15 years standing. I was called to bar in 2009. On 26th July 2021, I went to the Federal High Court, Abuja to witness the arraignment and trial of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, he was not produced in court, most lawyers were not even allowed access into the court room. We only gained access into the reception and after the media interview, we left Abuja. While on my way back to Abakaliki, by the Abuja end of the Murtala Mohammed Bridge of Abuja/Lokoja Expressway, our vehicle was intercepted by the military at the checkpoint. They told us to wait for DSS officials who were looking for a certain vehicle and that we should be patient and wait. We had to park our vehicle by the roadside. Shortly after about 35/40 minutes or so, the DSS arrived at the venue and ordered us to surrender our phones. We surrounded our phones and they brought out a piece of paper from their pockets containing about two to three phone numbers and started dialling the phone numbers with our respective phones. When they could not find any of the phone numbers stored on our phones, they gave us our phones back, then they went behind the vehicle and had some brief discussion. When they came back, they told us to surrender our phones for the second time. We surrendered our phones. They started re-dialling the phone numbers with our phones. After sometimes, they didn’t find any of the numbers in any of our phones.
They told us to come down and we came down. They threatened that they will deal with us if they find any phone in the vehicle and they went into the vehicle themselves and searched the vehicle. They couldn’t find any phone or any incriminating material in our vehicle, then they started searching our bodies. As they were searching our bodies, one of us, Ojuma Kenneth had extra phone battery and that extra battery was meant for the same phone he had. They told him to explain how he had that extra battery and asked what about the phone that has the battery. He told them that he had that extra battery because the battery in his phone could fail because of the long journey.
They said that he was lying, that he had already thrown the phone and that phone might contain those numbers that they were looking for. From there, they told him to lie down, he lay down and they started beating him, hitting him with butt and using cassava sticks around there to beat him and that’s how they now decided to arrest all of us and tied our hands in our backs like common criminals.
My explanation to them that I was from court and that I am a lawyer even to the extent that I brought out my wig and gown fell on deaf ears. They took us to the DSS headquarters Lokoja that evening. That evening when we got to DSS headquarters Lokoja, I asked them, what was our offence? They said that when we get to where we are going to, the person who asked them to bring us will tell us our offences, I said okay.
The following morning being 27th July 2021, they brought us out from the cell and handcuffed us and put us inside the vehicle and drove us back to Abuja. While we were still on the way, they blindfolded us to the extent that when we got to the DSS office in Abuja, we didn’t know where we were until we were taken to the cell. So, when we got to the cell in Lokoja that 26th day of July, we didn’t taste any food and we didn’t taste any water. That 27th, we didn’t taste any food but when we got to the DSS headquarters, Abuja, some of us who had the urge drank water there because there was water in the cell. So, in the evening of that same day, one of the DSS officials when work had already closed, came and opened the cell and told us to come out and we came out. He ordered us to pull off our clothes, leaving only our singlets and boxers. We did. He started searching our bodies to know if we had any charm and any mark he saw on our bodies, he questioned about it.
At the end of the day, he poured urine into an empty can of bottle water and splashed on our different heads to neutralize any charm/odeshi that we might have and now chained us in twos and put us in the cell. About five days later, they started interrogation. I gave details of where I went and why I went there. So, they never invited us for interview or told us our offences but they were interrogating us based on ESN. Eventually, after some days and that should be August 28, 2021 or something thereabout, they released the two drivers that drove our vehicles. Then, on 22nd of September 2022, they called some names in the cell and took some people out, including one of us called Igwe Johnson remaining eight of us now because we were 11 in number. When that happened, they started bringing other inmates, that is, Boko Haram suspects from other cells to join us and that made us 26 in total. The following morning as early as around 4.00-5.00am, they brought chains, called our names out, chained us in twos and drove us to one military cantonment in Niger State. There, I remained till I was released on 21st June, 2024. I was never arraigned before any court, I was never taken to any court, I was never even interrogated. That’s the simple thing I have to tell you. I never had communication with anyone from the day I was arrested till the day I was released.
What about your experiences in those cells where you were detained?
Anybody looking at me will know that I am malnourished; they said there was no food there, that things are costly outside. Even water we know that is there, they even denied us of water. I can remember that on the 4th of June, I didn’t take water from morning till night, the whole day I didn’t taste water as well, I didn’t taste at all and last month till part of this June, I stayed more than a month and 15 days without bathing, things like that. It’s a whole lot of trouble, it’s not all I can explain to you here.
All the period you were in the DSS custody, what was the attitude of your family members, relatives, friends and professional colleagues?
It was when I came out that people knew what happened to me because immediately I was arrested, they collected my phones. I never had access to my families. I never had access to a lawyer, I never met a lawyer, I never even saw a lawyer, not even a civilian.
Are you saying none of your family members, friends and relatives knew your whereabouts throughout the period you were in detention?
Not at all, until I called them when I was released. Whether I was dead or alive, nobody knew.
What was their mood when they saw you after you were released?
When they saw me, look at where I found myself. This public yard that is looking very ugly like this, is not where I was living. They had already ejected my family from where we were living before I was arrested and incarcerated. I found them in this place and I feel embittered but I have to thank the Almighty father who made the whole thing possible because I didn’t know I will not lose any of my family members. To be frank with you, it was just my decision to sleep here in the yard in the night. If not, I would have slept in the hotel but I said this place is better than the cell where I came back from and since my wife and my children have been sleeping here, they didn’t die, I will not die. But I will not remain like this, and by the grace of God, I will not remain in this yard till the end of this June. But my happiness, joy is that I met all my children in school. You can see my wife just cooking cassava and selling fufu for them to survive. This fufu thing is what has been sustaining them since these three years. They have been doing the business to be able to cater for themselves.
How do you see the Nigerian system generally as a lawyer?
Well, if I as a lawyer was arrested without arraigning me in court, just imagine what happens to a common citizen and I pity those people who are still there in the DSS cells, who have nobody to speak for them. And there are thousands of them over there. There is impunity in this country, there is lawlessness and it is increasing on daily basis.
Who and who did you see in the cells?
Those people I went there with, and so many other Igbo youths I met there. Those people who were arrested in Port Harcourt during the EndSARS in 2020. All of them are still languishing there and we even got the information that one of them had already died.
How many were you all together?
Those of us who were arrested in those vehicles were eight in number but the day they were taking us to Wawa Military Cantonment in Niger State, they joined three other Igbo persons but those three Igbo, one of them was arrested in Anambra at Barrister Ifeanyi Ejiofor’s compound in Oraifite. The other person was arrested in Lagos. The other Igbo guy was arrested in Adamawa. That one’s case was a Boko Haram-related offence. But those of us who were arrested in that same vehicle that conveyed us to the military cantonment, we were 10 in number but we met so many other Igbo youths there. By the time we got there, those other ones from Port Harcourt, they had already been there for some days. We met them there.
But are you an IPOB member?
I am never and I made it in my statement categorically that I am not an IPOB member and I cannot be. So, I am not an IPOB member. I just went to court as a lawyer, as an ambitious lawyer to have firsthand information about the arraignment or trial of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu because of the nature of his offence.
When you were in the cell, there were sit-at-home orders in South East which were affecting everything in the zone. Do you think this sit-at-home of a thing is a potent tool for actualising self-determination?
It might be but even as I was in the cell, I didn’t have the information about it until I came back home and that was why I didn’t travel on Monday when I was in Abuja, I was supposed to travel on Monday. It was on that last Monday I was supposed to travel because I was released on Friday. In fact, I was totally released on Saturday. So, I was to travel on Monday but even if I travelled on Sunday, I might get here on Monday or something like that. So they told me there is a sit-at-home. So, for now, I don’t know what it means and I don’t know what agitated it, I don’t know.
But do you support it as a tool for self-determination?
Unless I see the initiators and know the objectives for which they set it, then, I can say that I am in support of it or I am not. For now, I have not heard any information about it
Will you seek redress over your incarceration or let go?
As a lawyer and looking at the circumstances of the whole thing, I still have time to recuperate, get back to myself, retrieve my senses. My senses are like not normal now. I need medical attention, then I can now have the ability to form the opinion of what next line of action to take. However, I was released by my co-lawyers, I will still have to consult them. So, whatever they say should almost be the final.
What and what did you lose while in detention and how will you cope now?
I lost all my clients. I am just on my own, though God is very faithful. Since I came back, my friends, my colleagues, my relatives have been of help to my family and as I speak, they are still helping me. When I came back yesterday, NBA Abakaliki branch gave me some money. I am still sustaining myself with that. But I have not seen any of my clients and it’s like they are not aware I have returned now. My friends, colleagues and relatives have been wonderful people and of great help to my family. They have cordial relationship with my family. They have been coming to see my family. Not just coming to visit them, they have been assisting them in one way or the other financially and otherwise. Even as I came out now, some of my friends have done extremely well. Like this my friend by my side, immediately he heard that I have come back and he heard my voice when he called me on phone, he just transferred N100,000 into my account.
Source: The Sun Newspaper – Nigeria
This report was earlier published by The Sun with the titled “Back from hell after 35 months, lawyer tells harrowing story”