I was once a prisoner but not a criminal
the story of how police boss brutalized me for fighting injustice and how I outsmarted their plan to send me to jail unreturned
BACKGROUND AND FINAL OUTCOME OF THE ACTIVISM.
I left my office which I used for social enterprise/activism works in Kobape town, to pray at my usual mosque and I met Mr. Abioye passing by and looking frustrated as I stepped out of mosque around 2pm on Mar 13, 2019. I gave him transport money to go and report the incident after he narrated his ordeal to me and said he does not have money to go to police station. He pleaded I should followed him and we reported and police officers were very eager to invite the family of 6 that collectively assaulted his pregnant wife because she shouted at them for chasing a fowl into their uncompleted and fabric covered windowless living room and the kids left to mobilized other family members and assaulted her with cassava stick which led to bleeding. Unfortunately, in what I perceived as a result of relief that Mr Abioye was about to get justice, when he got home he bragged that his offenders shall soon be dealt with and go to prison, instead of him to be quite and just tell them police said they should appear in station. The family then inform an associate that know high ranking police officers and when they got to police station the following day, the police that were eager to see and punish the accused then suddenly flipped the case and started blaming Mr. Abioye (despite obvious evidence against the accused) in what we later discovered that the woman they ran to called an high rank police officer and the officer called the DPO. When Mr Abioye informed me after returning from police station, I followed him the next day they said they should all come and to my surprise, the DPO started abusing Mr Abioye just as he reported to me and this led me to put my phone in recording at the back where I was sitting.
When the accused family mentioned me as someone that is assisting him and DPO called me to the front, the DPO started abusing me as well and when I said why would you be abusing me, he quickly reached for my phone, used force to collect it and hit my head with his pistol’s handle in the process. They discovered I was recording the conversations and beat me further, detained me and told the rest to go home.
We have started engaging PRALARG before we left to the station; in case it goes beyond what I can handle independently and this led Mr Abioye left station to update PRALARG office in Abeokuta and I was released the following day.
Thereafter, both police and accused family started threatening and intimidating the Abioye family, like inviting him to meetings and telling him to go and withdraw the case if he does not want to be locked up in cell like they did to me but I kept on telling him not to panic.
During this time, Mrs Abioye was at a local clinic in the town, unattended to, because the clinic lacked the capacity and the family does not have money for treatment as well. I gave Mr Abioye some money, around 2000, to take his wife to a competent hospital in Abeokuta and after he called me that they were at Hope Hospital, Adigbe, Abeokuta and they were yet to be admitted because they do not have the initial deposit money the hospital requested for, I asked for his account details and transferred 11000 to him (the transfer receipt of the medical treatment financial support that I backed up then https://drive.google.com/file/d/1R_EmuecZIDcuCUTu2OOTHmH1Qd-Nz6se/view?usp=drivesdk, also the video of the family when I visited them when the wife was about to be discharged https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VQB3BG_ENHg3F43pB8qajDLbfrWQlDSN/view?usp=drivesdk).
About a week later, two armed police men from the police station came and re-arrested me around 6AM. I asked them my offence and they said because I did not come to collect my smartphone – referring to my phone they forcefully confiscated then after deleting the recording of their verbal abuse of Mr Abioye and I which I believe later captured the few minutes of their brutality.
I asked them to give me the phone and let me go when we got to station and they said I should wait for DPO and they put me in one of the cell, joining cell population of over 6 people and about 5 in other cell. Meanwhile, I counted 5000 and put it in my pocket before we left my apartment so I told the police desk officer to order food for everyone in the cell. The cellmates thanked and hailed me for giving them breakfast and when it was around 2PM and heard the DPO was around, I called on them to come and unlock the cell to let me meet the DPO and they did not yield my request until around 4PM. The IPO was sitting about two metres away from DPO and asked me “what do you want us to do with your case now”, Do as how? I replied as I sat in front of him. “Do you want us to charge you to court” he responded after about 3 minutes of silence and I replied him “yes”. He then asked me to go back to cell (Firstly, what he expected was that I would beg and bribe them with the money I brought to the station and second, he believe I would be panicked to opt for court). Mr Abioye that I was fighting for was present watching us few meters away while all that unfolded so I talked to him silently to go and meet PRALARG and my fiancée and prepare my bail requirements and I returned to cell.
The following day was Monday, they charged me to court with 2 count charges bothering on using my phone camera to record them (the charge sheet here https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jtjqS04DkWtO4NHPJL2RbxvAJN7n5jO3/view?usp=drivesdk).
Court officials were surprised and started asking me left and right, they said you are the one that said they should charge you to court. My lawyer (from PRALARG) stood up when they called my case and the IPO looked very surprised (yes, I knew he would look surprised because the usual police style is using trumped-up charges to take people to court with hope that they will not be able to afford hiring lawyer to represent them hence they will languish in prison under the pretence of remanding them. So I deliberately focused my eyes where he was sitting beside prosecutor).
I pleaded not guilty to the charges but because I was unable to get my second surety before the end of court hours, my bail of 2 sureties in like sum of 100000 failed to be perfected and I was bundled along hardened criminal, handcuffed and squeezed into prison vehicle and conveyed to Oba prison yard, Abeokuta, from Owode-Egba magistrate court.
On arrival, they undress us, searched our anus (yes, we bent down and stretched our buttock while the officer watched for possible sign of keeping exhibit in the anus) and barbed our head with one razor blade used for over 5 persons untreated, the obvious reason I developed scalp infections the second day. Experience inside prison: I abandoned watery melon soup and beans and other abnormally cooked foods like rice they served us, I exchanged the food with inmates whereby they helped me do the routine work such as sweeping, cleaning toilet and fetching water assigned to me in the over populated cell. I was living on bread mostly for the 3 days except the second day my wife brought swallow food for me with half bag of sachet water. As over 10 inmates were queuing for leftover of the food, others were commending me that I am a big and generous man that has brought great relief to them in just two days, perhaps because sometimes bought things they were lacking and distributed it to the neediest. Hard to believe but I witnessed how sick inmates went to the prison clinic and they were unable to give them paracetamol which made me ordered and give the sick inmates. I remembered vividly in my second day, one prison officer that was passing by after closing of the end of the break hours shouted at me “hey what are you doing there, you are studying how you can scale fence to escape right”
I spent 3 nights in remand before my bail condition was perfected. As I was leaving the cell when an officer came to call me, one inmate render a statement that made me emotional and wanted to cry. He said “your arrival changed a lot of us positively, we have not seen sachet water in this cell for many years back but you made it possible and even gave some of us...”
As I was about to approached administrative block of the prison, an inmate that was on errand saw that my footwear was new (which I bought when I was about to leave court) and he quickly exchanged it for his own he used rope to bind.
The gate was opened, I stepped out and received fresh air that seems even much better than that of the prison yard, not to talk of prison cell. I was now a freeman again.
I left with Mr Abioye and 2 other associates that has been waiting for me outside and till I got home and several weeks later, I did not stop contemplating that I must go back to see prisoners’ smile again by distributing basic things like paracetamol, high quality gari, dried pepper, foreign used clothes, slippers and so on, to them. But I have not been financially capable again since then.
After over 4 months of going to court from home and 5 court sittings in which the police failed to show up in court to proof their case, magistrate struck out the case.
With my lawyer the day the case was struck out https://drive.google.com/file/d/13f6wY1MLrdrlpkk6-c2ChcstB4eqs80b/view?usp=drivesdk
Some months later, I was at the police station to report personal case and the IPO said why have I not come to collect my phone but I neglected him like I don’t know he was talking to me.
Some weeks later again, he saw me talking with another officer and quickly went to search for key of the stations exhibit box and placed the phone in my front with a form, that I should sign that I have collected it.