Ifeanyi Ejiofor
As the Nigerian Bar Association’s Annual General Conference (NBA-AGC) unfolds in the Coal City of Enugu, beyond the familiar reunions, intellectual sessions, and corporate fanfare, certain sideline discussions have emerged with profound national implications that demand sober reflection.
Yesterday’s session on “Citizens’ Rights and Security Concerns” was, without exaggeration, the most compelling I have witnessed since the inception of this revered conference. The panel brought together two starkly contrasting camps: Representatives of the Chief of Army Staff, the Inspector-General of Police, and the Director-General of the DSS, and in bold opposition, legal and human rights icons ,Prof. Mike Ozekhome, SAN; Prof. Ernest Ojukwu; Chief Femi Falana, SAN; Chief Emeka Ngige, SAN; with Babatunde Ogala, SAN, as moderator.
The atmosphere at the International Conference Centre in Enugu was electrifying. The auditorium was full of lawyers, young and old eager to witness state security representatives justify their actions, and to hear the nation’s leading defenders of liberty confront them with raw, unvarnished truths.
Brutal truth
As Prof. Mike Ozekhome, SAN, emphatically stated: in Nigeria today, “national security” has become a protective veil for those in power, while “citizens’ security” is tossed aside. Our leaders are ferried around in convoys with truckloads of armed escorts, while the average Nigerian is left to the mercy of kidnappers, armed robbers, bandits, and the unchecked brutality of state security forces.
The security chiefs’ representatives came armed with polished presentations, academic papers, and theoretical assurances. But their words quickly unraveled under the weight of lived reality. Permit me to highlight just a few of the glaring misrepresentations that deserve public scrutiny:
The Wawa Detention Facility, Niger State
The representative of the Chief of Army Staff stunned the audience by claiming that detainees in the notorious Wawa detention facility enjoy “professional” treatment with access to their lawyers. The DSS representative echoed this claim, adding that eight Federal High Court judges reportedly sit within the facility to hear cases supposedly witnessed by Legal Aid lawyers.
This is a blatant falsehood. No lawyer in Nigeria, I repeat, no lawyer has been granted access to that notorious dungeon. The road leading to Wawa is sealed off miles away from public or legal access. Those who emerge from its depths after years of illegal detention are emaciated, traumatized, and visibly broken. I possess credible evidence to this effect. Any suggestion to the contrary is a calculated deception.
Tiger Base Police Facility, Owerri
When the NBA President, Mazi Afam Osigwe, SAN, demanded accountability for the inhuman atrocities at Tiger Base, a known black site where citizens are tortured, denied legal representation, and held for years without their families’ knowledge the representative of the IGP claimed ignorance. His tepid promise to “consult the Commissioner of Police, Imo State” was an insult to our collective intelligence.
Ignorance, in this case, is not mere negligence, it is complicity. Perhaps the most farcical moment came when the IGP’s representative proclaimed that the era of policemen demanding “mobilization” from complainants is over. He urged lawyers to report any officer who violates this new policy.
The hall erupted in laughter. For how long shall we pretend? Which Nigerian police officer, earning a salary that can barely sustain his family, will finance an investigation from his own pocket? To present this as reality is not only dishonest but also contemptuous of the sufferings endured by ordinary Nigerians. What the Nigerian Police Force needs is not empty rhetoric, but comprehensive structural and ethical reform, from root to stem.
Responses from legal icons
Prof. Ozekhome, SAN, with his characteristic thunder and eloquence, tore through these fabrications with clinical precision. Chief Femi Falana, SAN, was equally uncompromising, wielding the Constitution like a sword against systemic impunity. The auditorium erupted in applause. The younger generation of lawyers sat in rapt attention, starved for more of this rare honesty.
Nigeria’s democracy is suffocating under the iron grip of a “national security” architecture designed not to protect citizens, but to shield the privileged. Until we dismantle this grand deception and restore citizens’ rights to the heart of governance, we remain a nation at war with its own people.
What took place yesterday was not just a panel discussion, it was an indictment, a collision between fiction and truth.
And, as always, truth blazed incandescent.
Stay tuned — more reflections will follow in subsequent updates.
Sir Ifeanyi Ejiofor, Esq. (KSC)
Renowned Nigerian Human Rights Lawyer
Abuja, Nigeria.
