A Government And Its Thugs On Rampage -By Sesugh Akume

There’s this urban militia of government-paid thugs in Abuja known as ‘taskforce’. They’re more dreaded than anything you know or have ever heard of. They’re a team from the Abuja Environmental Protection Board (AEPB) and a combined team of thugs from the military, police, civil defence, etc.

These things we’re hearing about abducting women at night clubs, labelling them, and everything we’re hearing about the thugs raping them whilst in detention, forcing them to confess to crimes they didn’t commit and so on have been going on for ages. Nothing is new about it. We all usually find convenient excuses to look away till it happens to us.

A few years ago, Dorothy Njemanze was abducted right in front of her house at about 7:30 pm right in Abuja. It had nothing to do with her appearance, what she wore, or anything. Nothing she told them meant anything. She was arrested, detained, labelled and went through all kinds of ordeals. Even her colleagues in Nollywood decast her from her roles, none would accept her. She fought those terrorists at AEPB and the Nigerian government despite all their shenanigans and won at the ECOWAS court. Did the Nigerian government obey the court order? Did anything happen to the offenders?

The crime of these ‘offenders’ is their being in Abuja, and their gender. The thugs know that the females can easily be shaken down to pay for their release. They can also be raped seeing as the thugs are for the most part heterosexuals.

That’s the first part of it. The second part is, they’re a law unto themselves. I’ve seen where they arrested someone for videoing them in action. They termed it ‘obstruction of justice’.

I, even I have been a victim of theirs. I sued, along with a friend we were assaulted. We lost in the Maitama High Court. Why? AEPB got a magistrate who sits in a mobile court at their premises to lie in testimony. Our friend Christopher Areghan Eichie offered his legal expertise pro bono. He was so furious when he came where we were assaulted even I couldn’t believe it. He’s cool, calm, always collected, but he couldn’t bear it. He diligently prepared the suit crossing all t’s dotting all i’s. A senior advocate who was interested in the matter called for and perused the court process before it was filed, he had nothing to say other than to commend this gentleman for the watertight, airtight case he had put together and his legal industry.

What did the trial judge do? She chose to believe the barefaced lies and dismissed our case. The militia knows it’s so powerful even the courts are on its side. In our case and that of the individual ‘obstructing the cause of justice‘ by simply recording their abuse of citizens, we used others means to get the FCT commissioner of police involved. He apologised on behalf of the militia which had his men among, and promised to do something about their excesses. If anything was done, it wasn’t good enough. Years on, they’ve gotten more brazen.

Don’t believe anything I say. Simply go to the AEPB Yard in Area 3 Abuja, there’s a long building to the right as you enter. The first room on it is the detention/holding centre and courtroom. Take a look inside. Or ask anyone to go there on your behalf and report to you. There are tens if not up a hundred people in that dark dingy place. It has no facilities so it’s where people vomit, pass urine and stool, and are forced to stay inside. Some are there for all sorts of frivolous charges, many if not most of which can’t be proven. For instance, how can it be proven that one is a prostitute? Which law defines what prostitution is, and labels it a crime? Why and how is someone at a night club a prostitute by merely being there? So what about the males who patronise the prostitutes? It’s just a load of nonsense!

We can’t keep shirking from lending our voices against this abomination right in the capital city. And for those outright denying that what these 71victims say they went through happened, or the other reported aspects of this abomination happened, I have no words for you.