Take your eyes off my picture there and take note of the dark spot circled in yellow color. Zoom in the picture and you will see a human being chained behind me. My own left hand was handcuffed to a deep freezer.
What you see on the wall that looks like brown paint patches there, is sedimented human blood on the walls. Blood spilled from the torture and inhumanity meted on detainees to obtain confessional statements. Blood from gnashing wailing by detainees in the dead of the nights.
I can’t remember the name of that boy circled in yellow again. But he kept whispering to me every time we had a little space: “Bros abeg, if you comot here, forget me not. See wetin police dey do to human being. Abeg bros.”
We were both in manacles but somehow, he still had a feeling I could help. I don’t know why he felt so. I saw what he went through.
Regardless of the allegations against him, at least he is still innocent at the police station. But not so. Here you are guilty until proven innocent.
I was in hell but I saw him go through hell. I still feel the trauma everytime I try to explain the events of that period in the anti-cultism and anti-kidnapping unit of the police in Calabar, even in writing.
I suspect that boy may have been killed. I do not have any evidence. It’s just a suspicion. It was not unusual for the operatives to shoot detainees.
Maybe I failed him. May God forgive me. I forgot him. I actually did. I left there to prison and returned home long after to move on with life and indeed forgot about him until I stumbled on this picture this morning.
If he is still alive today, may God strengthen him and many others who are going through same and also grant them the wisdom to learn their lessons. If he has been killed like many others, may God grant his soul and others, safe passage.
And may God also give us a nation that will have a police to watch over us and not a police that torments the nation.
Yours sincerely,
Citizen Agba Jalingo.
Source: StreetReporters.ng
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