INTERVIEW: What I saw of Sambo Dasuki in SSS detention — Jones Abiri

by thrilliant
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It is a heart touching story of scheming, incarceration and torture. Recently released journalist, Jones Abiri shares his experience in the hands of the dreaded State Security Service (SSS) in this interview with PREMIUM TIMES Evelyn Okakwu and Halimah Yahaya. Mr Abiri spent two years without trial at an SSS detention facility.

Excerpts:

PREMIUM TIMES: You were arrested and detained for two years. Can you narrate how your arrest took place?

Mr Abiri: I was arrested in my office in Yenagoa. That was on July 21, 2016, 23 minutes after three o clock. Twelve men came into my office and showed me a warrant for searching my office, duly signed by a magistrate, Lucky. I gave them the privilege to search my office. After the search, they could not find any incriminating thing.

What they found was a phone that they had been tracking. The phone was brought to my office by some men who had come to ask me to write a (press) statement for them as a journalist. They said someone directed them to me. I did not know that they were having an ulterior concept (motive) for asking me to anchor the statement.

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At a point, I wanted to resist. But two of them threatened me. They said I must write the press statement, if I was ‘mindful’ of myself. So I became afraid for my life and decided to write the press statement for them. It was published by various media houses and later they called me and said that there was a particular story that was published that the government had reacted to the story and that they would like to react to the position of government.

At that point, two of them came. They were looking quite haggard. They asked me to help them charge a small Nokia phone. The phone should cost about N2, 000 or so in the market. It’s one of these old phones. Unknown to me that was the phone they were using to send text messages to oil companies (allegedly) demanding for money.

I ignorantly agreed to help them charge the phone. I did not know that AGIP had sent a petition to the SSS state command, which had resulted in the tracking of the number inside the phone. They gave me the phone and left, as if to return shortly.

When they did not come back, I realised that there was no way I could contact them, because the phone I was using to contact them, was charging in my office. So I removed the phone and put it in my drawer. They (SSS) found the phone in my drawer.

That purportedly linked me to becoming the leader of joint Niger-Delta Liberation Force. Which I do not know. I am not the founder nor a member of the militant group. If I had been attending any of their meetings, I would not have been operating an office for the production of newspapers, in Yenagoa.

I would have been in the creeks. They wouldn’t have seen me. Moreso, I was running a programme, I was a law undergraduate. A level three law undergraduate. As a law undergraduate and mindful of the facts about the illegality of militancy, why would I condescend so low as to be involved in such a thing?

When they left, they told me they wanted to buy a copy of the paper, so that I would see the story that government reacted to. That was how I kept the phone and the SSS said I am a militant, a leader of a militant group.

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PREMIUM TIMES: What was prison experience like for you?

Mr Abiri: Very unfortunate. While I was in the detention facility of the SSS, underground where I was kept; there was no freedom of moving out of the facility.

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