- Spends weeks in hospital, suffers hearing impairment after release from torture chamber
It is not unusual for business transactions to run into hitches. Most times, the issues are resolved amicably or the aggrieved party resorts to legal means to resolve the impasse. In this report, GBENGA ADERANTI writes about the unusual experience of a Nigerian businessman allegedly abducted over a business transaction.
Adekeye Adeyemi, an auto dealer and shipping magnate, looked suave and neat, but trepidation was written all over him. His facial appearance cut the picture of someone who had not had good sleep for days.
As he spoke in an air-conditioned office, he intermittently wiped the beads of sweat that welled up on his face with a white handkerchief.
He had every cause to be worried. Peace has taken a flight from his life since late last year when he was abducted and subjected to torture by the agents of a foreign- based customer identified simply as Owolabi, from whom he had got a call to clear two vehicles at the Apapa port in Lagos.
According to him, he had worked as a clearing agent for years without any problem until the two vehicles his new client asked to clear entered demurrage.
Adeyemi recalled how Owolabi sent a proxy to him to find out what was going on with the vehicles following which he took the proxy to the agent in charge of the said vehicles at the port who confirmed that there was indeed a demurrage on the vehicles and that the vehicles would be released once the demurrage on them was cleared.
Unknown to Adeyemi, Owolabi was not pleased with the explanation. So as he (Adeyemi) left Lagos for Osun a few days later, he had barely arrived at his destination when he got a call from an elder brother of Owolabi, asking him to return to Lagos immediately as they were ready to pay the demurrage on the vehicles.
Adeyemi said he told them to make payment to the agent at the port, but they insisted that he should come hence he rushed back to Lagos excited that the impasse was about to be resolved. As it turned out, Adeyemi was confronted with the greatest shock of his life when he met his callers in Lagos.
He said: “They told me to stop at Berger and from there take a motorbike to Sabo Bus Stop. I did and met my client’s friends and proxies who directed me to enter a house within the vicinity.
“On entering the house, I met two guys who asked me to sit down. Not long after I sat down, a guy named Wale came in and sat behind me.
“As Wale was settling down, another guy named Rogba also came in and said: ‘Mr. Yemi (Adeyemi), ‘Eko te wa, eti si rin o’, meaning your coming to Lagos was a misadventure.”
He said as he was trying to make sense of the hostile statement, his hosts told him that the vehicles in question had been cleared from the port.
“I asked them why they asked me to come when they knew that the vehicle had been taken out of the port.
“I then put a call through to the agent at the port, who confirmed that he had cleared the vehicles with his own money and would only release them when he was paid.
“I turned to them and asked whether they heard what the agent had said but the next thing I got was a dirty slap.”
That became the beginning of Adeyemi’s agonising experience with his client’s proxies turned abductors.
He said: “The next thing was that Rogba punched me in the mouth. Then they told me to stand up and stripped me naked.
Meanwhile, they were doing a video recording of all the torture they meted out to me.
“They also forcibly transferred some money from my bank account after they had collected the cash I had on me and robbed me of my jewellery and phones.
“Then Wale brought out a rope from the back of the fridge in his room and they tied my hands while different sets of guys were coming in to punch me.
“Others were there smoking Indian hemp and doing as if nothing was happening.
“At some point, they brought out a golf stick and started hitting me all over my body. Wale then said it was my last scene and I concluded that the end had come.
“My fears were worsened as Rogba brought out his phone and started showing me pictures of other people they had treated the same way. There were more than 10 such pictures.
“At that point, I said, ‘God, if you are still alive, everything is in your hand.”
Adeyemi recalled that Wale later made a video call with Owolabi from his base in Turkey, saying, “This is Mr. Yemi. You can see how we tied him,” while Owolabi expressed disappointment that he had not seen blood in the video.
“He said they should get a blade and tear my back apart because he wanted to see blood. Fortunately, they said it had not got to that yet, that they were going to use me to kidnap the agent that cleared the vehicles and forcibly collect them from him.
“They said they would remove whatever part they needed in my body and throw the carcass into water.
“At that point, my phone started ringing. Nobody knew my whereabouts, so my family, everybody started calling.”
Adeyemi said the following day, his abductors called in some soldiers, who asked him what happened and he explained to them. To his surprise, however, the soldiers said he was a thief.
“I told them that I was not a thief but that we only had a business deal. The soldiers said I should call the agent and pretend that nothing had happened to me.
“They said I should speak well with him on the phone and agree with him on where we could meet.
“I cooperated with them because I had no choice. I called the agent and we agreed to meet at Ago Palace in Isolo.
“They took me in their car and we drove to Ago Palace.
“The soldiers were four in number and occupied a car while I was in another car with my abductors. My hands and legs were still tied.
“On getting to Ago Palace, they released the rope and called the agent with my phone.”
Adeyemi as soon as they sighted the agent, one of his abductors came out of the vehicle and warned him not to attract any attention.
He said: “By the time we got to Ago Palace, they untied me because the agent was around. But they threatened me not to raise any alarm.
“They said some of their people were already in front of my house in Ikeja and would kill everyone in my house if I raised any alarm.
“The agent eventually came and as we got talking, the soldiers pounced on him and threw him into the car and they started taking us on another ride to nowhere.
Narrow escape
Unknown to the soldiers and Adeyemi’s abductors, the agent had come to the scene with a friend, who on seeing what was going on, rushed to Ago Palace Police Station to alert the police that someone had been kidnapped.
The policemen responded promptly and intercepted Adeyemi and others.
The agent however thought it was Adeyemi that set him up for abduction.
“He kept pointing at me, saying I was the one that masterminded his abduction. So, the DPO told his men to go and lock me up,” Adeyemi said.
Unknown to Adeyemi’s family members, he had gone through the ordeal for four days until last Easter Monday when the police told him that he would be taken to court the following day.
“The soldiers were arrested and released to the military police.
“Immediately after the IPO left, the DPO of Ago Palace Police Station came and asked to see me. She brought out her phone, showed me the video in which I was being tortured on a Whatsapp group, and asked if I was the one in the video.
“I told her I was the one, and she said is this what they did to you and you did not say anything? I said nobody gave me the chance to talk.”
Adeyemi was then brought out of the cell and he explained all that had transpired between him and his abductors.
He said the DPO was angry after listening to his story while his mother, who was indisposed and undergoing treatment in a hospital in the United States also saw the video and was traumatised.
Adeyemi said he demanded to know where the DPO got the video from and he was told that it was sent in from the state command. “That was my saving grace. She said I should go and treat myself,” Adeyemi said.
Adeyemi said a lot of damage had been done to his health by the time he was released. His hearing was impaired and he was no longer his old self.
He said he spent two weeks in the first private hospital he visited but the doctors could not figure out what was wrong with him.
“They then referred me to the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH) where I did a series of tests and spent millions of naira. I am just beginning to hear with my right ear,” he said.
Move to resolve the imbroglio
After visiting the Police Command, Adeyemi filed a petition.
He said: “The day they were supposed to make an arrest, a signal came from Zone 2. The agent too had probably made a complaint and Zone 2 took over the case.”
The accused persons, he said, were detained but later released on bail while he and his assailants were advised to go and settle whatever problem they had between them.
But about a month later, Owolabi, Adeyemi’s client and owner of the two vehicles in question, arrived in Nigeria from Turkey.
Adeyemi said unknown to him, Owolabi had approached the police at Zone 2 to effect his arrest.
“A policeman just walked up to me and showed me his ID card. He said he was from FIB and that I was under arrest,” he said.
But for the officer in charge of anti-kidnapping, Adeyemi would probably have been whisked away.
The officer said it was wrong to arrest Adeyemi without an invitation.
Hell-bent on arresting him, Adeyemi said they quickly went to do an invitation, but the AIG insisted that he would not hand the matter over to anyone.
“He said he would resolve the matter since we are all young guys. There would always be business misunderstandings, but there should be a way we can talk to ourselves.”
Adeyemi however said the matter could not be resolved, prompting the AIG to ask that the matter be taken to court.
“Everybody knew it was a clear case of kidnapping. But one year after the gory incident, the dust is yet to settle,” Adeyemi said.
In a chat with journalists, he recalled that one DIG Adeleke played a great role in ensuring that he got justice. “He played a fatherly role in trying to settle the matter. But some forces within the system are trying to trivialize the crime.
“From what my lawyer found out, my assailants are now being charged with ‘tying and fist blowing’ two months after the same Directorate of Public Prosecution charged them for kidnapping.
“I don’t know what changed between then and now. But I suspect some people are being manipulated in the system,” he said.
Adeyemi is afraid that something unseemly could happen to him because while he was in the torture chamber of his assailants, they boasted that more than 10 other people had undergone the same kind of treatment at their hands and his would not be the last.
“As it stands, my life is still in danger. I had to abandon my house in Ikeja and also take my wife and son elsewhere. I sleep around now as if I don’t have a house,”
Adeyemi lamented
He, however, said his assailants had extended an olive branch to him, asking that the matter be settled amicably but he told them they must pay him the money he had spent treating himself and also return all the items that were taken from him.
He said after much persuasion for an amicable settlement, he told his assailants that he had spent a total sum of N6,790,000 since the problem started and would like to be refunded.
“They started begging me, saying they don’t have this, they don’t have that. I said give me N5 million, which is below what I have lost, but they were still begging, and I told them that was the best I could do.”
Armed with sundry evidence, Adeyemi said he was poised for a legal battle with his assailants.
