Professor Sylvester Odion Akhaine Speaks with Gbenro Adesina on the harrowing experience of his incarceration under the military regime of General Sani Abacha, his role in the pro-democracy struggle, and the state of Nigeria’s democracy 26 years after the return to civil rule.
Q: Who is Professor Sylvester Odion Akhaine?
A: I am a professor of Political Science with the Lagos State University (LASU). I have had career in community service, especially in the Human Rights community. In the hey days of military rule, I was the General Secretary of Campaign for Democracy (CD) in Nigeria, over which I suffered incarceration under the regime of General Sani Abacha between 1995 and early 1996. I was held in solitary confinement in the Northern part of the country, Birnin Kebbi’s prison in North West. In CD, we promote the idea of freedom, justice and democracy in Nigeria. I joined the academia full time in 2011. Between 2001 and 2011, I was in the world of research. It was during that period that I consummated my PhD and established a research-oriented Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO), known as Centre for Constitutionalism and Demilitarisation (CENCOD), which produces one of the most enduring academic journals in the country, The Constitution, which I have edited since 2000 and it is still in existence.
Q: At the time, what job were you doing, which you’re earning a living from?
A: What will interest you is that being a General Secretary of Campaign for Democracy was voluntary. It was a social and political movement, without salary. I acted as secretary for documentation and research for the Committee for the Defence of Human Rights (CDHR), which is another organisation for human rights. There, I was salaried. The salary was quite insignificant.
Q: Can you mention the names of those who were with you in CD?
A: I was the general secretary. I succeeded Chima Ubani as the secretary general after the split in the CD convention in 1994 after the annulment of June 12. Beko Ransome-Kuti was the chairman.
Q: Was Dr Kayode Fayemi part of you?
A: Kayode Fayemi was not an active member of CD. He was in London during this period. Perhaps, he played a leading role in the establishment of Radio Kudirat in UK. The members of CD, who were in UK at that time include Chief Abiodun Sowunmi, who was secretary, Taiwo Akinola, who was chairman during that period of anti-military struggle.
Q: You were arrested during the military government. What led to your arrest?
A: Everybody knew that the military regime was involved in high level human rights violations, curbing political freedom, undermining press freedom, freedom of association, and freedom of speech in Nigeria. The CD stood against the repressive policies of the military regime, campaigned for the convocation of the Sovereign National Conference (SNC), and the exit of the military from the government and politics. The military regime of that period, from General Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida to General Sani Abacha had manipulated the constitutional process. They were not ready to hand over power to the civilian administration, rather, interested in what political scientists call self-transmutation, to succeed themselves. We stood against that. That was the basis for my incarceration. Indeed, I was accused of seeking foreign assistance to form an army to overthrow the government. It was under the pressure of the Commonwealth that myself, Adeniji Adele, and Fred Eno, Abiola’s aide, Wariebe Agamene, and Amos Idalemo of PENGASSAN were released in December 1995.
Q: How long did you spend in prison?
A: I spent approximately a year. I was arrested in January 1995 and I was released on the eve of 1996. I arrived Lagos around January 1st or 2nd, 1996.
Q: Where did the security operatives pick you?
A: I was picked at the head office of the Campaign for Democracy in Anthony Village, Lagos. I was in the office when they came and raided the office. They came in several convoy of cars. They were armed. They were operatives of the Directorate of Secret Service (DSS), formerly known as State Security Service (SSS). I was carried away and kept in Inter Centre at Ikoyi. They arrested two of my colleagues and me in my office. The reason why they did that was that they were not sure of who I was. Maybe, they didn’t do their intelligence well. They isolated us and found out that the other people were wrongly picked and released them. I denied my identity saying that I wasn’t the secretary general of CD. I would have had my way out but PM News carried the news as a lead story that I have been arrested. The director of SSS brought the paper and said look, your people have exposed you. He asked me why I was denying my identity. He added that after all, man is an architect of his own destiny. That was my long journey to incarceration.
Q: Could you remember what you told your wife when you were leaving the house the day you were picked?
A: Unfortunately, I was a bloody bachelor at the time. I wasn’t married at the time. But the risk of arrest was already there. We knew that anyone could be arrested at any time.
Q: What followed after your identity has been revealed?
A: The first was interrogation. Afterwards, I was moved from Ikoyi SSS office to their detention facility behind Alagbon. I was there for about two to three weeks. One morning, they just came with a vehicle, three of them armed and just took me away. I thought they were taking me away to waste me. I didn’t know where I was going.
Q: Under what condition were you kept at SSS Office?
A: In the SSS office, one will just sleep on the chair. But there was a double bunker bed that are used in the hostel by students at the detention facility. I can’t remember whether there is a foam or not. They have just cleared the place because of the Orkar coup of April 22, 1990. That was where they kept him and the rest of them.
Q: Were you tortured?
A: The thing to me about detention is that the moment you are arrested and understand that you are not free, that is the beginning of your torture; the beginning of psychological torture simultaneously goes with physical torture. I left my office without my shoe, toothpaste, brush and no clothes apart from the one I wore. Bathing was not guaranteed in the prison. The journey to Birinni Kebbi was a long one.
Q: What about food?
A: In Ikoyi office, I can’t remember the food they gave us but I know I was stooling. I then asked them to buy me bread and groundnuts so that it would stop my stooling. In Ikoyi, I managed to get a note out. Afterwards, my cousin brought toothpaste and money, not food. The money was usually given to the good Samaritans among them and they usually help me buy food at Obalende.
Q: Can you shed light on smuggling operation in prison?
A: Our own case wasn’t a case of smuggling, it was a case of people who believed in the course we were fighting and therefore, they were ready to ease our sufferings within the detention facility in their little way, without endangering much of their safety.
Q: Did they beat or physically torture you?
A: There was no beating.
Q: Now can you tell us about your journey to Birnin Kebbi?
A: The used coded language to communication. For instance, if they want to call your name, they would say Ocean, December, India, October, November, that simply means Odion. They came one morning and that was all. You can’t resist because you are already in prison. We just entered one Wagon with three armed men. I didn’t know where I was going. I was not informed and nobody knew I was being moved out of Lagos. We began a long journey. At Lokoja, they bought food for me. We ate. We drove and entered in the night what is now known Zamfara State. We were also careful about the security on the road. At that time, we had the problem of armed robbers not bandits operating today on our roads. They took me to a place called Ankai. It was before Gasau. Interestingly there, it was like a guest house. We slept on a very fine bed but it will interest you that I was in the middle; the SSS men slept on the right and left side of the bed. In the morning, they moved me to Argungun, which is part of Kebbi State. At Argungun, it was a police station. They took me in there. They just dropped me there. They put on the notice board, “suspect”. That suspect is psychologically depressing because whoever sees it will think I am a robber not knowing that I am a political detainee. The DPO there understood who I was and told me that he could have helped to let my people know I was there but I wasn’t going to stay long there. He managed to organise food for me. I ate good “eba” and “ogbono” soup. I spent a night there inside one very dirty cell, bare floor, in the thick of harmattan. That was torturing. For the first time, tears dropped from my face. My only love then was my mother. I was pondering about how my mother was feeling. From what my kid brother told me, she was not eating dinner. I was the first born. So, there was a special attachment. Nobody knew my whereabout until after six months of my incarceration. Consequently, late Chief Anthony Enahoro filed a suit in the Lagos Federal High Court, asking the federal government to either charge me to court or release me. This was part of the pressure put on government to know whether I was still alive or not. There weren’t going to be any court order at that time. The military was very unlawful. I remained there until I managed to smuggle out a note. The first set of note I smuggled out through the person I thought I had gained his confidence was given to the Deputy Controller of Prison (DCP). The following morning, they came and ransacked the whole cell. Since it was a solitary confinement, they emptied the whole compound and moved other prisoners away. I was alone. So, solitary confinement is debilitating. They can unhinge your mind. If you don’t know how to manage it, you can become mentally depressed. This is why reading is very important. One of the earliest works I read when I was in secondary school was Soyinka’s The Man Died. I learnt a lot of survival strategies in that book. For instance, part of the things I did was writing with charcoal on the wall of prison to keep my mindactive. I can spend several hours doing that. The other one I did was that one of the warders smuggled New Testament (Bible) to me to be reading for prayer and I was writing with pencil inside it; ideas, poems and all kind of things. I started planting vegetable within the dormitory I was kept. The warders will bring the seeds for me. They will help me till and I would plant. That vegetable garden, I planted green vegetable and lettuce. Some of the warders would bring fertilizer for me. Sometimes, I would cut and give to the warders. When they bring my food, which is below human standard, I will make small fire and parboil the vegetable to eat with my food. The other traumatic aspect is that one may be poisoned through food. Sometimes, your mind plays this trick. Are you sure this food is not poisoned or is not spoiled? So, when they bring the food, I will first cut part of the food and throw it in the compound. Lizard would then come and eat. After watching the lizard for a while and it is not dancing in circle, I would then eat the food. It is playing the game of death and also being alive. It was a routine for me in the prison. Though, many of them knew that we were not criminals, I was detained in the North. There is this perception among the northerners, they look at the southerners as those who want to take power from them. They believe that Nigeria belongs to them. They see southerners as those who want to usurp power from them. Quite funny that the hegemony is constructed in a way that those who are not benefitting from the hegemonic structure are helping to consolidate that hegemonic structure. Maybe, there is a psychological satisfaction that they get knowing that their people are in power. I don’t know whether the Yoruba’s expression of “Omo wani, e je ko se’ (he is our son, let him do it), could be used to explain that or capture it. One thing I discovered is that North is not monolithic but the media narrative is that we have monolithic North. In Kebbi alone, we have different ethnic groups. The Baluke are not Hausa. The Zuru are not Hausa; they are not Fulani. They are a distinct ethnic group. There are many others like that in that enclave. There is also super discrimination when you don’t belong to the dominant religious sect in that area. Prison food is made of sour dried tomatoes and pepper. We were being fed with camel meat. There is a particular soup called Kuka. It is black in colour. Sometimes, they cook rice without culinary finesse. The mosquitoes that are there are giant mosquitoes. If you enter my cell and you look at the wall, it was red and stained with mosquitoes’ blood. But what do you do? I was never taken to the hospital one day. When I fell sick, there was a warder, a Gwari man, very friendly, at a point, he bought anti malaria drug for me. I had to take the drug not minding whether I could be poisoned through such drug. There was also a time they were doing immunization against meningitis. They came to inject me in the prison. I wasn’t sure whether I wouldn’t end it up like General Shehu Musa Yar’Adua, who was injected and his hairs were falling off. Having taken that injection, you know the way the mind plays on you, you feel something in the body and you start to feel maybe the injection is working to kill you. Not arraigning you is a torture because you don’t know the offence you have committed. When I heard that Ken Saro Wiwa and his colleagues have been executed, I lost hope. Beko Ransome Kuti and I met Ken Saro Wiwa before we were arrested. He was arrested and accused of being part of those who were responsible for the killing of four Ogoni chiefs hence, arrested and executed. His execution was described by John Major, the British Prime Minister as judicial murder. Daily you have to contrive how to survive every day.
Q: How do you get water?
A: You drink their water. It is open well. You don’t have any choice.
Q: Were you given prison uniform?
A: I wasn’t given prison uniform. Only one pant followed me to prison and I wore it throughout my one year stay in prison.
Q: How were you maintaining it?
A: I can’t remember how I manage to wash it. One pant, one trouser, and one shirt. One warder brought something that looks like jacket for me. Nobody knew where I was for six months. My mother was almost dying. People were agitated. Colleagues were going to my town, Ekpoma, to pay solidarity visit to my father, to strengthen his minds, telling him that his son was picked for a good reason, not for anything, not for crime and all of that.
Q: Were you arraigned in the court and at what point were you released?
A: I was never arraigned. You know international pressure on Nigeria was very high. A delegation of Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group (CMAG)) came to have a meeting with Abacha. In order to ease that diplomatic pressure, they released a few of us as I mentioned before.
Q: Can you say now that your sufferings for Nigeria in the hands of the military was worth the while considering the present situation of the country?
A: I think the point is that if we did nothing, maybe, the situation would have been worse than what it is now. Though, the present reality is not our expectation and what we struggled for. Those who didn’t know how we fought are the current beneficiaries of the democracy who are undermining the democratic system, undermining the freedom of Nigerians and undermining the economy. On the national awards, I am not sure what the criteria is. The important thing is to say, I know President Bola Ahmed Tinubu personally and he knows me. He is my friend. I can’t deny the president. I am not really concerned about awards. If they give you an award, it is your prerogative to accept or reject. Like many things, national honours in Nigeria can always be a politicised exercise. People who don’t merit it give themselves awards. I don’t know whether it goes with money or not.
Q: Don’t you think that the civilian administration has not done worse of the things military were accused of?
A: Could it be frame that way or they have done worse than what military government has done? I think on a balance sheet, people will always tell you that rather than military advancing the national interest, they protect their own personal interest. However, the civil rule with all the limitations, still give some windows for self-expression. We know that we have not grown qualitatively in terms of our democracy but only quantitatively. That process has been on for the past 26 years. I think, we, as Nigerians should continue to insist on the best and that the principles of democracy should be maintained and consolidated to move the country forward.
Q: Look at the situation where somebody will say that I don’t need your votes. I’ll win with or without your votes and the person will win as claimed. Look at the situation where power is not residing with the people and the state is so powerful that the voices of people don’t matter. These were things you fought for and we are still where we are today. What is your opinion on this?
A: I think the point to make is that Nigerians should not be taken for granted by the current ruling clique. When people tend to lose hope, something usually gives way in Nigeria. It is better to maintain the democratic process than to reverse back to military rule.
Q: Do you think we still have strong civil society in Nigeria?
A: It is relative. We need to know that the way we fight the military is not the way we fight civilian. It is much more difficult to fight a civil regime than the military. Under the military, if anything happens, you can easily say, this is the entity responsible for it but under civil rule, politicians can send assassin after you. They can do all kinds of things. In your family, you may have members of the ruling party. The individual agency, is constrained or even organisational agency is constrained by those conditions.
Q: Do you think President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is living up to his words?
A: If you look at some of his policies, you may say some have good intention. The others are rash and of course, do not align with the interest of the Nigerian people. Today, I don’t believe that there is oil subsidy. Oil subsidy has always been a scam. If government claims that they were subsidizing to be removed, it should create alternative. Make Nigeria’s four refineries work. With Dangote refinery, we have found out that all the noises about maintenance is fraudulent. It was fiction.
Q: Is it correct to say that Nigerians are suffering for the crime they have not committed under this government?
A: Nigerians cannot claim that they are enjoying under the present administration. Nigerians are suffering. It is obvious to everybody. The currency is heavily devalued. The taxes are growing astronomically high. The security in the country is undermining the individual adventures and initiatives. So, what we basically have is a comatose economy, if you ask me. I think the president should try to address some of these things wholeheartedly.
Q: What is your take on the issue of regionalism?
A: The debate is on. I think Nigeria should adopt a system that minimise cost and entrenches the sovereignty of the people.
Q: But you don’t believe in regionalism?
A: I don’t want to use the word regionalism. Nigeria should be properly federalised.
Q: What should be the component of that federalism?
A: A federal structure is usually a contract between the centre and the units. Nigeria is ethnically composed and territorially segregated. It can be built around the multiple ethnic groups in the country. It can also be built around some clusters of ethnic groups that are willing to come together as a unit. Giving our diversity, you can’t run away from federalism.
Q: What about the state police?
A: We had native authority in those days. State police the way is being agitated is akin to that.
Q: Can you assess the media of today compared to the media in existence when you were arrested?
A: I think Nigeria has had a very vibrant media or press, perhaps the freest in Africa because Nigeria journalists have always exhibited tremendous courage no matter who is in power. There is history to show that they have been very courageous. I think the level of impoverishment today in the country also undermine the media’s independence, and that the traducers of national economy and heritage are those who own some of these media now, going by the ownership structure. So, that constraint the autonomous action, what we may call the ambit of freedom to write what they want to write and express themselves.
Q: How can we reduce bandits, herdsmen, terrorism and killings in the North?
A: I think the Chief of Defence Staff, Gen Christopher Musa said that the banditry in the North West is political – the fight between Fulanis and Hausa is political. You and I know that those who own the North indigenously are the Hausa. So, they should find accommodation. Perhaps, it is a rebellion against the Jihad that super imposed hegemony of the Fulani over the Hausa over there. Why I mentioned that is that we need to understand the dynamic crisis to be able to deal with them. It is true that there is influx of Fulanis into the country. For me, it is intentional; it is not pleading climate change or pleading ethno-religious courses and the rest of that. It is intentional. It is a land grappling policy.
Q: Why is it difficult for the government to fund education properly and what is the effect of underfunding of education in Nigeria?
A: I think it is a question of commitment. The only time education had up to seven percent in the federal budget allocation was under Goodluck Ebele Jonathan’s administration. They are not committed to education. They know that when the nation has educated populace, it will be difficult for them to bleed the country the way they are bleeding it.
Q: What is your last word for the youth?
A: Well, they should not be hopeless. They should define their earthly mission which should not be based on self-interest but to have a community that is embedded in freedom, which can give them the space to develop their skills and meet their societal expectation.
