UNDERCOVER INVESTIGATION (III): A reporter’s diary — Living with a ‘mad’ cell mate, set up by prison warders, abducted by the police

Investigative journalist ‘FISAYO SOYOMBO spent two weeks in
detention — five days in a Police cell and eight as an inmate in
Ikoyi Prison — to track corruption in Nigeria’s criminal justice
system, beginning from the moment of arrest by the Police to the
point of release by the prison. To experience the workings of the
system in its raw state, Soyombo — adopting the pseudonym Ojo
Olajumoke — feigned an offence for which he was arrested and
detained in police custody, arraigned in court and eventually
remanded in Prison. In the third and final installation of the
series, he documents the soft side of his time in police cell and
prison, and how prisons, police and court officials conspired to
abduct him after his cover was blown.

I hadn’t yet spent a full day at Pedro Police Station, Shomolu,
Lagos, when I asked myself the question: “Who sent me?” But it was
nothing new; I knew I would ask myself that question at some point
during this investigation, and I knew too that it wouldn’t make me
call it off. If you asked any hardcore investigative journalist,
they would say the same of almost every daredevil story they have
covered.

As I lay in that warm cell in the wee small hours of Tuesday
July 9, it dawned on me that surviving the days ahead would require
more than brawn. Five of us ‘suspects’ had crammed ourselves into
that narrow, filthy cell, all wanting to get our bodies on that
small mat but none fully succeeding. So, intermittently, one
suspect pushed or snuggled into the other. The four of them were in
deep sleep but I lay there wide awake. How could I sleep? To my
immediate left was Uchenna, whose snores could dwarf the grunt of
an elephant; and on my other side Austin, coughing so laboriously
as though his heart was about to be flung out through his mouth,
and in a manner predisposing cell mates to air-borne infections.
The air was reeking of alcohol, too. Back in the evening, one
suspect had tipped a policewoman to help him buy two sachets of gin
that he didn’t down until just before midnight. I looked at the
cell gate again and it was firmly padlocked. There was no escaping;
this would be my home for a few more days.

MY CELL MATE ‘RUNS MAD’

Two of the next three days proved tumultuous, even for the
police officers.

It started over the night between Wednesday and Thursday, at
about 1am. Three of us were in the entire cell, but only Uchenna
and I shared the inner cell. Suddenly, he hit me in my deep sleep
and asked me to look at a hole in one of the walls of the cell.
“There’s an eagle in that place,” he howled, spilling a sachet of
water in that direction. “Can you see it? That’s the eagle!”

It marked the onset of a two-day turbulence in the cell. Uchenna
sprang up and began sprinkling water in all three rooms of the
cell, casting and binding, shouting and crying out prayers. “Jesus
is here, Jesus is here,” he screamed at a time. “Leave this place,
you demon! No space for you here. I am no longer with you. I’m a
new man now. Jesus is here!”

Uchenna went on somewhat schizophrenically for the next six to
seven hours, punctuated only once by the arrival of Sunday and
Japheth in the cell. The police officers ignored him altogether,
but we, the suspects, were worried; we weren’t sure if he had run
mad or if he was pretending, to force an unlikely release. By
Thursday, it had become so unbearable the officers had to handcuff
his left hand to the gate of an inner cell. It was a big shock to
find out he had disentangled himself in a matter of minutes. He was
re-cuffed but he again freed himself; this time, I caught him. He
had signaled to Japheth to help him fetch a sachet of water; with
this, he greased his hand and the handcuff, and boom, he was free
again.

This time, the officers removed him from the cell gate and
chained him in the inner cell proper, alongside his helper Japheth
who was first blessed with a few smacks. Still, it didn’t deter
Uchenna; it emboldened him to tacitly pray for the death of the
officers, over the night.

“Kill them all. Fire, burn you. In the name of Jesus. Fire,
fire, fire, fire, fire, fireeeeeeeeeeee,” he yelled at one time.
“Jesus is here. I need the fire from heaven, the fire from heaven,
the fire from heaven. Jesus, release it on me now. You did not
disappoint Elisha, Elijah… I need your fire now to quench and
destroy all the people tormenting me. Die in the name of Jesus! You
die! Dieeeeeeeee!!!”

Japheth, on the other hand, was having a torrid time. The inner
cell in which they were caged was mosquito-infested, due in part to
the volume of water Uchenna had moistened it with. Even when he
wasn’t caged, I’d furtively observed how Japheth frequently
scratched his crotch region with great discomfort, sometimes even
peeping into his dingy briefs to catch a glimpse of what was going
on down there. Now in that inner cell, it worsened. “My body is
rotting,” he screamed in a manner that broke my heart. “Please help
me, please!”

His pleas were loud, persistent and touching. “Help me out!!!”
he would say. ‘Who is there to help me out? My body is rotting.
Help me out! Help me out!!!”

Even though he had rebuffed my repeated warnings not to pass
water on to Uchenna, I felt pity for him. I would later crawl over
to the cell to hand him an anti-mosquito cream smuggled to me
earlier in the day. It helped a bit but didn’t entirely solve the
problem.

It was such a relief to be taken out of the cell to the court on
Friday morning and to Ikoyi Prison in the evening. When 46 new
inmates, I think, arrived at the prison on Monday evening, I was
stunned to spot Uchenna’s sparkling white teeth shining through
from the crowd. He had become markedly lean and his laughter this
time was shallow. How he got to prison, I still don’t know.

THE SNIPER CHALLENGE IS REAL

How many times have we read in the papers and on social media how
someone committed suicide by gulping a bottle of the lethal
insecticide, Sniper? It now appears many successful suicide
attempts escape media notice. On Friday, while taking in some fresh
air at the IPO’s office in anticipation of transfer to the court, a
young man sped into the police station with a little note in his
hand. He pleaded for a police report. His friend, an artisan in his
late 20s whose wife had just been delivered of a second baby, had
made an attempt on his own life, leaving a suicide note revealing
his encounter with a diviner during which his struggles in life had
been linked to a family curse. He wrote that he was leaving to
escape the curse. Life hadn’t been completely snuffed out of him
when he was found, but the hospital to which he was rushed demanded
a police report to complement treatment. The guy who rushed in for
the report owned the shop where the suicide mission was
surreptitiously executed. I could sense from his eyes he thought he
would be held liable should his friend pass on.

Having obliged, the Police were shocked to see him again within
30 minutes of his exit. Well, the man died. His family, summoned,
started arriving one after the other. “He’s a very foolish boy,”
one of them, an uncle, said. “You have a wife; you have a baby; God
just blessed you with another. You may not be making millions but
you’re not begging or stealing to feed your family. Then you take
your own life? He was extremely stupid!”

After leaving the prison a week later, I scoured the papers for
this story. To my surprise, it didn’t make it.

CONGESTED PRISON CELLS

I was less than an hour old in prison when I discovered stories
of cell congestion were not made up. Sixteen of us, I think, were
taken in that Thursday. As is the practice with fresh inmates, we
slept in the welcome cell. The cell always had its own base
members, the number usually hovering between 10 and 15. The
tradition was that stale inmates slept ‘comfortably’; they didn’t
have to shrink their bodies into narrow spaces, even though they
slept on bare floor with or without blankets and bed sheets. Only
the four most senior inmates slept on bunks bearing threadbare
mattresses. After the stale inmates had marked their territory in
the room, estimated to about 20 by 16 metres in size, the rest of
us were arranged like logs of wood on a trailer. None of us slept
face down or face up; we all slept on our sides, one’s head
positioned in north-south fashion, the other’s positioned
south-north. If an inmate turned sideways, the next complained.
Therefore, from time to time, the Section barked out orders
resolving arguments from such tussles.

Little did we know we were lucky. The 45 inmates who arrived
five days later had no such luck; they sat down all through the
night! With the total number of inmates that night trumping 60,
there was no chance for sleep. Instead, they were arranged in long
rows in which an inmate sat in between the legs of the one behind
him, and opened up his own legs for the one in his front to sit. As
I would later discover, more than 3000 inmates inhabited a prison
built for 800; of a higher consequence, the number of
awaiting-trial inmates usually hovered beneath or just over 2,500,
proving the slow dispensation of justice is a major contributor to
prison congestion.

SUNKANMI IJADUNOLA… FROM BEATER TO
PATRONISER

Over the course of my seven days in prison, it was, quite simply,
too easy for me to separate the corrupt warders, who were in the
majority, from the clean ones. The corrupt ones were usually
pensive and jittery whenever they came in contact with me, and they
were the ones who were most vicious during the initial attempt to
unravel my identity. I could see the apprehension in the eyes of
two of those filmed demanding and receiving bribes from me in
court. The corrupt ones in the prison yard who didn’t appear in the
videos were nevertheless furious, knowing it could have been them
as well. The blameless ones wanted to know my mission quite
alright, but they were calm and civil with me. No violence; their
strategy was to engage with me and look out for any loopholes in my
answers. Fair enough.

Assistant Chief Sunkanmi Ijadunola, for example, the word in
prison was that he was one of the numerous warders for sale. And,
boy, was he vicious with the cane and, latterly, the stick! If he
was the only warder on duty, he would surely have beaten me to
death! No question. I remember he flogged me from his office to the
records office and back to another office just by the prison gate,
where an apparently senior warder appealed to him to stop the
beating and remove my handcuff. Rather than accede to that request,
Sunkanmi claimed the key to the handcuff was in his office. With
his hands and that cane, he continued the beating until we were
back in his office; and in his office, he fetched the stick once
again and continued hitting the joints of my legs, elbows and
shoulders. And in all that period, my two hands were still
handcuffed to my back. By the time he belatedly lifted the
handcuff, he and some warders had trumped up some allegations
against me and had succeeded in making some inmates believe I’d
come to film them and expose them to the world. They had also
alleged that I was plotting a jailbreak. I had a gang, they said,
and I’d come to study the prison’s security architecture, film it
surreptitiously and send it to my gang so we could finally return
to set inmates free. Even while the beating was going on, I found
those claims so hilarious my inner laughter knew no bounds.

All this was on Saturday morning. By evening when I finally
revealed I was a journalist, I was stunned to see Sunkanmi
transform from a ruthless beater to a barefaced patroniser. First,
he asked if I would eat. He offered to buy the food but I knew it
would be too dangerous to eat. With the offer of food rejected, he
bought me a stone-cold bottle of Pepsi. When it arrived, I checked
the seal very painstakingly to be sure it hadn’t been previously
opened. I drank it, knowing I could continue to endanger my life if
I flatly refused every offer. In the six days that followed,
Sunkanmi would buy me Pepsi on two more occasions. The arrogant man
that he is, he just couldn’t bring himself to verbally apologise
for his actions even though at least three other warders who didn’t
lay a finger on me had profusely apologized for his indiscretion in
taking the law into his hands. For Sunkanmi himself, the Pepsi was
his way of saying ‘sorry’.

MOCKED BY INMATES

Other inmates were still locked in their cells when Sunkanmi sent
the Section of the welcome cell to fetch me. But at about the time
he was completing the first round of beating, the convicted inmates
were needed for a task. While they trooped out in their blue
uniforms, I noticed from afar how they giggled and pointed fingers
at me. I was sprawling on the ground with my hands chained back,
but I looked at them eyeball to eyeball and listened to their snide
remarks.

“I thought he was gay,” one of them said. “I heard he came here
to record the prisoners and expose them to the public,” remarked
another. Some said nothing but cast nasty glances at me and made
funny gestures.

Still, I looked straight at them. I was full of pity for them,
in fact. I knew I had committed no crime in practice, something not
many of them could boast of. In the eye of the law, they were
convicts, some left with many months to serve, others even years.
They were stuck in there in the long term; I wasn’t. What irony
that prisoners, convicted prisoners, were mocking a fresh inmate
who would be granted bail and released in a matter of days!

But it wasn’t all gloom. One convict and an awaiting-trial
inmate showed me compassion. “Bros, there’s a lot of sun here. Why
not shift towards that side,” the convict told me as he swept the
expansive ground. It was soothing in that moment, so I asked him
for his freedom date, phone number and where I could find him
afterwards. That day is faraway but when it comes I’ll find him.
And I’ll hopefully be friends with him. The awaiting trial-inmate
is now free; you already read about him in the preceding
series.

‘HOUSE ARREST’ IN PRISON
The scars of prison torture… after
three weeks.

Once the time came for me to admit I was a journalist, the
warders huddled together to discuss their next line of action. I
was isolated, like a bacterium from a colony, when I heard Sunkanmi
scream from afar: ‘Hey, squat down there!” That bark, quite
frankly, sums up the master-slave relationship that largely defines
the handling of inmates, even awaiting-trial inmates, by warders.
No inmate in his right senses, even if not yet declared guilty by
the court, will approach a warder for a conversation sitting or
standing. He first has to “squat down”! It’s the unwritten
rule.

The warders’ deliberation soon morphed into a full-fledged
meeting. One after the other, they filed into a room, but the
meeting had barely taken off when the Comptroller of Prisons, Lagos
Command, phoned in. “What is going on at Ikoyi Prison?” I would
later learn he had asked. He had received a call from Abuja — the
offshoot of my support team’s activation of the Plan B reserved for
the unlikely event that my cover was blown. Shocked that the matter
had reached Abuja in a little over an hour, the warders started to
become friendly and courteous, almost obsequious, with me. Sunkanmi
withdrew his squat-down order, asked me to sit in his office, asked
if I wanted to eat (which I politely declined) and sent an inmate
to fetch me a bottle of Pepsi. “Fisayo the big man!” he would later
exclaim.

In the evening, after their apprehension had subsided, I was
plucked from Cell D2 to the welcome cell. Their plan was to
restrict me to that cell, and they were very strategic about it.
Sunday morning, a warder whose name tag included ‘Ishiguzo’ was my
first guest. I hadn’t even had a bath or brushed my teeth when he
arrived. Ishiguzo engaged me for well over an hour — on issues
ranging from politics to governance, love life, humanity and sex.
No sooner had he left than Sunkanmi arrived. He stayed close to an
hour. I jumped into the bathroom after his exit but before I was
done, a third warder, Timmy, had asked after me. It wasn’t long
before the strategy was laid bare before me: I was under house
arrest by style. The plan was to take turns in engaging me, to such
extent I couldn’t leave the cell without wondering who was already
waiting for me. Still, I occasionally managed to wriggle my way out
of the human cul-de-sac.

COMMUNICATION BY STYLE

My first days in the welcome cell were hellish. No inmate wanted to
talk to me or come near me. At night or during the day when no
warder was visiting, I lay alone in a corner. But when I did, it
was with my eyes open; I wasn’t sure no inmate was considering
attacking me. I didn’t blame them; a few warders had made them
believe I was in prison to record them and circulate their photos
and videos online. Of course that was false.

Soon, a lifeline presented itself. I noticed during Ishiguzo’s
first visit how all the inmates listened in as we engaged. It
became clear it was my clearest chance of explaining my mission to
the inmates. From then on, whenever a warder showed up, I made sure
not to always hand over the initiative to them. As the talks
progressed, I always found a way to redirect them to my reason for
coming to prison. On an occasion, I told them the real-life story
of an acquaintance whose father died of heart attack, due to delay
in the availability of an ambulance and the pot-hole ridden road
leading to their estate in Ogba, Lagos. This was a stupendously
rich man who carved out heaven for his family in that estate, but
he was ultimately failed by his state. “No one — rich or poor,
mighty or miniature — is immune from the consequences of a
malfunctioning society,” I chipped in. “It’s the reason I’m here.
If the criminal justice system works effectively, everyone —
policemen, lawyers, warders, even inmates — benefits. If it
doesn’t, we all lose someway — because we’re all in this vicious
cycle together. The only problem is that rather than enthrone a
society that works for all, too many want a society that works for
them — at the expense of everyone else.”

After hearing that, one warder gave me a long, unusually emotive
look, then nodded in affirmation. “You are right,” he said. This
warder — I won’t name him — was once a victim. He narrated the
experience. One of his children arrived at birth several weeks
premature, requiring mother and daughter to spend extensive time at
a hospital. He visited every day, before and after work. He soon
noticed how quickly the baby ran out of drugs he paid for through
his nose, how drugs that should last three days were gone in just
over one. He observed the hospital keenly and spotted a disturbing
trend: the hospital was redistributing the drugs bought by some
patients, among those who couldn’t afford them! This warder was
distraught; he told me he felt cheated. I apologized to him for the
unpleasant experience, though this didn’t colour my knowledge of
his aversion to my mission in the prison.

So I asked him a question: “If I’d undergone an undercover visit
to that hospital to expose the disguised robbery of some patients
to treat others, would you have been unhappy with me, as you are
now?”

He went silent, but his eyes were latent with penitence. He
didn’t have to say it; I knew I had just won a convert.

THE THOROUGHBRED PRISON WARDERS

On Sunday evening, some 24 hours after my cover was blown, I was
summoned to the building housing some offices, including those of
the Assistant Chief and the Chief. I was taken into an office I’d
never really taken notice of, welcomed by a burly but
innocuous-looking man, dark in complexion and spotting a noticeable
belly. A warder I was seeing for the first time instructed me to
hold the recording devices found on me. He held a regular camera
opposite me, wanting to take pictures. I quickly posed for the
pictures so we could get down to business.

The dark man introduced himself as “Mr. John, sent from Abuja to
Lagos with taxpayers’ funds” to investigate my matter.

“I’m sorry for disrupting your Sunday,” I said. “You probably
should be resting or relaxing with your family.”

“Not a problem,” he answered with the kind of courtesy atypical
of many of the warders I’d come across in prison in those three
days.

He asked to hear my side of events. It was unarguably the
longest single conversation I had with anyone in prison. I
explained my interest in the criminal justice system and the
justifications for my undercover method. “I wanted to experience
what the regular guy gets to taste in police cell, in court, in
prison,” I told him. “You’re never going to get this by talking to
people; you have to taste it. And if the system is itself clean, no
warder should lose sleep over my presence.” I told him some of my
findings in undercover work, generally; I particularly recall
saying how much it “grieves my heart” and “burns my skin” the
extent to which Nigerians are short-changing their country for
personal pecuniary reasons. “We’ll ruin this country someday if we
continue this way,” I submitted. “We’ll bring it crashing to earth
in a few decades.”

John proved himself a rare breed, a cut above all other warders
I encountered. I noticed how he listened to me carefully, urged me
to take my time, asked not to be distracted when some warders
thought we were taking too long, asked his questions politely, and
repeatedly asked for a description of the warder who spearheaded
the beating and the others who witnessed it. He also asked to know
the officers in the bribery video seized from me. “I apologise for
the beating,” he said at some point. “That was an exception; not
the norm. It is not in the character of the prisons service to take
the law into its hands.”

We discussed a few other things I’ll keep confidential — because
he won my respect. Not to say he was perfect. Although he
repeatedly said he was from Abuja, lodged in Lagos on taxpayers’
account, I found out John was actually based in Lagos; he is the
spokesman of the Prison Controller in charge of Lagos. Still, he
retains my respect with his calmness and professionalism.

WHAT NIGERIANS CAN LEARN FROM PRISONERS
I witnessed a few interesting developments in prison, the most
significant being the impressive levels of tolerance level in the
welcome cell. At the welcome cell, everyone made way on the floor
at or about 4:45am for Muslims to observe their call to worship and
the prayer proper. Just before 5:30am, the Muslim leader would
begin winding down the prayers “so that our Christian brothers can
take over”. Whenever the Muslims prayed, no one dared murmur, much
less talk. And it was the same during the Christians’ praise and
worship, sermon and prayers. If Nigerians generally had this level
of tolerance for people of divergent faiths and ethnicities, our
peace and unity would be impregnable and boundless.

SHADILY RELEASED FROM PRISON, ABDUCTED BY
POLICE

My release from prison was complicated. The prison officials at
Ikoyi desperately wanted my bail to sail through; the more I
stayed, they reasoned, the higher the chances I could implicate
them. But the ones in court, specifically the corrupt ones I
filmed, preferred that I rot in jail. The latter group would then
work closely with officials at the Magistrate Court, Yaba, to keep
me back in prison. Therefore, what would have been a simple
granting of bail was repeatedly frustrated. The court wouldn’t
grant me bail after conditions had been met — until the
intervention of senior judicial officers on Friday July 19. The
court then granted me bail but a sinister plot was hatched.

Some court officials, collaborating with prison warders in
court, alerted the Police to my release date and time. They only
contacted my legal team hours after they’d notified the prison of
my impending exit. Then the prison itself fast-tracked my release;
the strategy was for me to be out of prison before the arrival of
my people. And it worked. I stepped out of prison and had barely
walked 50 metres when three gun-wielding policemen swooped on me,
truncating my delirium at finally tasting freedom after eight
dramatic days in prison that indeed seemed like eight weeks. One
corked his gun while the other two hooked me by the waist. I was
still figuring out the confusion when two plain-clothed officers
stepped forward from the rear, bearing a handcuff. I knew them.
Crime Officer Badmus and Inspector Obadiah from Pedro Police
Station. I slid my hands into the handcuff and watched Badmus pay
off the Ikoyi prison policemen. He made for the same rickety bus
with which we went to court the previous week, while Obadiah
frisked me and bundled me in. My lips were static but I started to
pray in my spirit.

What are they going to do to me? Kill me extra-judicially? Rope
me into an existing crime in another police station? I was still
drunk in thoughts when Badmus interrupted me with an instruction to
Obadiah: “Search him very well to confirm he doesn’t have a phone
on him.” It was then I knew I was in big, big trouble. Why the
desperation to ensure I can’t reach anyone? This was a little
before or after 5pm.

MIRACULOUS RELEASE

Police officer Obadiah

This investigation was published with collaborative support from
Cable Newspaper Journalism Foundation and the International Centre
for Investigative Reporting (ICIR)

Ndume, Namdas: N100bn for Armed Forces in 2020 budget
grossly insufficient

The Chairmen of the National Assembly (NASS) joint committee on
Army, Senator Muhammed Ali Ndume and Hon. Abdulrazaq Namdas have
bemoaned the low budgetary allocation for the Nigerian Armed
Forces, saying the N100bn allocated to the Armed Forces in the 2020
appropriation bill is grossly insufficient.

They both made this known when they led a delegation of the
Senate and House Committee on Army, to visit the Chief of Army of
Army Staff (COAS), Lieutenant General Tukur Yusuf Buratai, at the
Army Headquarters in Abuja.

Sen. Ndume, who acknowledged the efforts of the Army in tackling
insurgency, and other emerging security threats across the country,
said there is need for their joint committee to robustly engage
with the leadership of the Army with a view to addressing some of
their challenges.

“Our NASS’ joint committee is very important. We fill in the gap
for the Nigerian Army in the NASS. Among other things, we are glad
that the Army is living up to expectation in tackling the myriads
of threats to internal security in the country,” he said.

On his part, Hon. Namdas, lauded the Army for independently
sourcing for funds to execute some of its programmes and activities
such as manufacturing of various equipment of warfare such as
Armored Personnel Carriers, gun trucks, bullet vests and other
modern fighting ammunition.

Namdas, stressed the need for government to create what he
called a ‘war budget’ for the Army in order for them to permanently
wipe out terrorists and end insurgency in the North East.
He further disclosed that a bill on how the Army can be adequately
funded independently without relying on the allocation captured in
the national budget has already been tabled on the floor of the
house.

Responding, Lt. Gen. Buratai, assured the Committee members that
the Army, under his leadership, will continue to carry out its
constitutional responsibilities diligently, responsively and
professionally.

He said though the Nigerian Army has continue to sponsor its
officers and men for training both locally and internationally,
more funds are required to help them effectively prosecute some of
its operations and programmes.

By PRNigeria^[1]