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One of the participants of the August #EndBadGovernance nationwide protests has offered a harrowing narration of how operatives of the Department of State Services (DSS) arrested him in Kano, detained and tortured him for over 60 days.
Khalid Aminu, an engineer by profession, said he was picked up alongside other young demonstrators protesting hunger and bad governance in early August.
Aminu said he was subjected to all forms of dehumanising torture while in custody and he had no contact with his family for the period of his incarceration at the Kano office of the DSS.
He was a guest on Inside Sources with Laolu Akande, a socio-political programme aired on Channels Television on Friday.
“They (DSS operatives) blocked all of us at the NEPA Roundabout and packed about 11 of us on the day three of the protests (August 3) and took us to their command,” he recalled slowly with a weak voice, his face still plastered with after-trauma of the episode, signs that he is still recovering from the “terrible” ordeal in the hands of the secret police.
“They kept me in detention from August 3 to October 17. For the 68 days, I was in the custody of the DSS minus one week when we were taken to the correctional centre after we were taken to court in Kaduna.
“When we were in detention, they kept bringing in more and more people and the number accumulated to about 39 of us.”
He described his plight in the hands of the secret police as a “terrible” experience that he won’t wish to remember.
The protester said, “What I went through, what we went through was inhuman, I can’t even begin to tell you everything,” Aminu said.
“On the 3rd (of August), they arrested us at NEPA Roundabout. There and then they started beating us. Boots, kicks, and all that. Then they pushed all of us into their Hilux, some into their SUVs, and then we went down to the Command.
“When we got there, the first thing I received was a strong cane, like an armoured cable that they used. If I pull up my chest, you will see. They started beating me, I was flat down and they were blasting me with all forms of sticks, armoured cables, everything you can think of.
“Then they took me to a garden with a sharp grass carpet. They asked us to pull our shirts and asked us to lie down. They poured water on me while I lay on this sharp grass. They were beating me and told me to roll from one side to another. I rolled from one end to another with water on my body. All sorts of insects were on this grass. So, it was double penetration. It was terrible. That continued for about an hour.
“Then they asked us to crawl in a gutter and we came out and they asked us to be looking into the sun. we were there for another hour. It became different type of torture after that day. From what you eat, psychologically, you cannot be stable.”
Aminu and his colleagues were accused of unlawful assembly and for flying Russian flags but the #EndBadGovernance campaigner denied the allegation. “There was nothing like the Russian flag in the first five days of the protests when we were arrested,” he said.
Also, on the programme, Aminu’s lawyer, Ibrahim Wali, said there was no justification for arresting the protesters in the first place because the constitution clearly states that if you arrest someone, you should charge them to court after 48 hours.
“The Administration of Criminal Justice Act goes further to say that when you need to remand further, you can apply for an order to remand further for 14 days but there was no remand order,” he said.
“They arraigned them in court on October 10 and they pleaded not guilty and they were now sent to the correctional centre,” the lawyer said, adding that the claim by the DSS that the protesters gathered unlawfully was not tenable.
“It is the duty of the police to curb riots during protests and the police failed in this duty but they tried to transfer the responsibility to the protesters.”
The lawyer said though the Federal Government and the DSS have withdrawn the case against the protesters because it lacked merit, the Bola Tinubu administration should apologise to the young campaigners and compensate them for the unwarranted clampdown and torture.
Meanwhile, the Counsel to the Federal Government, Rimazonte Ezekiel, has claimed that some of the 76 minors arraigned for #EndBadGovernance protests are adults.
Ezekiel even claimed that they have wives who came with their parents to the court.
He said this on Friday while speaking with journalist following the ruling that the minors should be bail for N10 million each totalling N760 million.
“These boys that we brought to the court today are adults. Most of them are married men. None of them is a minor. Some of them are University graduates. The small kids you are seeing here today came with their parents to come and greet their loved ones.
“They are not even the real suspects standing trial in this case. These boys were arrested in Kaduna and Zaria. Do you know how much it cost us to be at this level of democracy in this country? These you boys are trying to destabilise Nigeria using the Russian flags and other countries while calling on the military to remove our president.
“Is it fair? To even remove the state governors. If they don’t want democracy again, are we forcing them? Everybody is enjoying their fundamental human rights. Nobody is abusing their rights. Everything is moving on well in the country only for these boys for no reason started protests with Russia and other countries’ flags,” he added
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