Agodi Prison Horror!: How warders attacked journalist - Loses cellphone, money, car key

Mr. Tope Abiola
Photo: Sikiru Adeoye-Yusuf

Men and officials of the Nigeria Prison Service and Nigeria Police recently attacked a journalist who was on an official assignment at the Agodi Prison for allegedly trying to expose the killing of some prison inmates. Adebayo Waheed reports:

Ibadan has constantly been in the news. Only that on Tuesday, 11 September, attention shifted to the Agodi Prisons in the heart of the city. Sporadic gunshots were heard in the neighbourhood while there was a stampede.

As early as 8 a.m. on the fateful day, officers and men of the Nigeria Police had stormed the prison with a view to assisting their prisons counterparts avert an alleged jail break by some inmates who were said to be protesting against the poor medicare and feeding in the prison, but they ended up disrupting business activities at the popular Gate area of the state capital just as some of the warders descended heavily on an Assistant Editor with the Nigerian Tribune, Mr. Tope Abiola and his colleagues who were trying to save him from the hands of the trigger-happy and power-drunk prison operatives.

The operatives were trying to prevent men of the pen from accessing information on what actually led to the death of the inmates in the custody of the Nigeria Prisons Service in Ibadan. It was when they were doing this that they descended on Mr. Abiola who was trying to perform his statutory responsibility. He was given the beating of his life.

It is a miracle that Mr. Abiola was able to escape from the prison warders. Their intention was not only to beat him but kill him because they felt he had taken the pictures of some inmates killed. This, they must have thought, would not only expose their shoddy care of the inmates to the whole world but would put the Nigeria Prisons Services in ridicule as people would want to know why they decided to kill the inmates who were defenceless but protesting poor feeding and medicare.

Mr. Abiola, while narrating his ordeal at the hands of these power-drunk warders, said he had gone to the Agodi Prison like every other journalist for an official assignment but on getting there, the Comptroller of Prison, Oyo State, Mrs. Maureen Omeili did not allow journalists to get close to the prison gate as she said ‘it is not a media affair, it is a private matter.’

According to Mr. Abiola, journalists who were there were of the opinion that an alleged attempted jailbreak could not be a private matter. “They were trying to prevent us from seeing how the lifeless bodies of the inmates were being thrown into an NPS lorry, so they sent us away. “We moved away as the warders did not allow us to take pictures of the event while cameramen of the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) and Galaxy TV were asked to turn down their cameras while the corpses were being thrown into the lorry. Before we lost count, we had counted 102 corpses as they were being thrown into the lorry”, he said.

He narrated further that trouble started when the Oyo State Police Commissioner, Prince Udom Ekpoudom arrived the premises of the prisons and journalists saw that as an opportunity to follow the police boss inside. “Though he (Commissioner) directed that journalists should be allowed to enter, the warders and mobile policemen stopped them from performing their statutory responsibility. Immediately the CP entered, they closed the door and when we told them he had said we should follow him, they responded by saying that the Comptroller had directed that only FRCN and NTA should be allowed in.

“I told them that other media houses could also help them but they said we would only go back and write rubbish about them. I however replied them that we are professionals, well trained, not illiterates. We always write the truth”, Abiola narrated. He said as he was receiving a call, a slap just sounded on his cheek and before he could know what was happening, not less than 10 warders had descended on him and he was given the beating of his life. He said that though his colleagues came to his rescue, their efforts were not enough to save him as he was continually hit with butts of guns, sticks, iron rods and boots and it was by God’s grace that he escaped. “They followed me as I tried to escape. They pursued and shot at me but it narrowly missed me by God’s grace,” he said.

In the process, Mr. Abiola’s cell phones, the company’s money in his pocket and his car keys were seized. At the time of writing this piece, no official comment had been received from the authorities of the NPS in Oyo State on the ugly situation. However, the Nigerian Tribune gathered that inmates of the Agodi Prison had last week protested against poor feeding and lack of medicare but the authorities of NPS in the state felt unconcerned until one of the inmates became sick and could not be treated at the clinic of the prison due to lack of drugs.

When his condition became worsened, Nigerian Tribune learnt that he was taken to Oluyoro Hospital. Having the thought that the inmate must have given up because of the state he was in before being taken away, the inmates rejected the food given to them as a mark of protest and demanded to see the Comptroller. The inmates were said to have unleashed their anger on some officials of the NPS who went to serve them food. It was based on the action of the inmates that the warders decided to ward off the protest by snuffing lives out of the inmates.

It was learnt that the warders allegedly teargassed the inmates before spraying them with bullets which led to the death of some inmates. Nigerian Tribune learnt that the corpses were taken to the University College Hospital (UCH) Ibadan under tight security. They were taken to the emergency unit of the hospital, before they were deposited in the hospital’s morgue. Workers, security personnel, patients and visitors to the hospital were subjected to thorough search. The medical personnel were also not allowed to go near the mortuary as both the warders and policemen tried to cover the corpses which littered the floor of the morgue. When the Nigerian Tribune visited the hospital, blood from the corpses was seen at both the emergency and mortuary units of the hospital.