The period between 2005 and 2007 is one that opposition groups and supporters of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) in Osun State, particularly the political associates of Governor Rauf Aregbesola, will not forget in a hurry. It was a time that many of them suffered harsh treatment in the hands of the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP), led by the then Governor Olagunsoye Oyinlola. For acting according to their conscience, members of the opposition parties, particularly those of the ACN, were rewarded with holidays in prison custody. For opposition groups, the environment was far from being clement; a situation that forced the lucky ones among them to flee the state for refuge elsewhere. And those who were not so lucky were consumed by the political crises that engulfed the state. Majority of the victims of the political upheaval have put the experiences behind them, but they have not forgotten the period described by some of them as the years of the locust. Some of the actors who claimed to have seen hell before a ruling by the Appeal Court nullified Oyinlola’s election as the governor of the state relive their experiences to GBENGA ADERANTI, as Governor Aregbesola marks the second anniversary of his administration.
The Owonikoko family
The story of the Owonikoko family is as shocking as it is interesting. For them, the period between 2005 and 2010 was a trying one. How else would they describe a situation where three members of the family were clamped into detention at the same time?
One of them, Quadri, was remanded in prison for several years over an offence he insists he knew nothing about. His brother was also convicted of murder and he was awaiting the hangman’s noose before he was set free.
An elderly member of the family, 71-year-old Suleiman Owoniko, was arrested a day after the April 14, 2007 governorship election in Osun State. According to him, he was arrested at about 1: 45 am and was taken to the police station. “There, I was tortured on a daily basis. The police were beating me with hot machete on a daily basis for 10 days before they sent me to Ilesha Prison. After spending 11 days in prison, I was set free,” he recalled.
Suleiman was rearrested on November 11, 2009. This time, he was accused of killing somebody and was again remanded at Ilesha Prison.
He said: “I spent three years, three months and nine days there. I was there when my mother died. I did not hear about my mother’s death until nine months after.
“I fell sick. I was operated upon, yet I was not allowed any bail. I was at the General Hospital, Ilesha for four months and 14 days without being granted bail. But later, I was discharged and acquitted.”
Today, Suleiman still bears the scar of the doctor’s knife on his stomach. But he is full of praises for Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesla who footed the bill for his treatment.
Recalling how his son, Ahmed, was sentenced to death, he said: “I begged them to let me take his place but they would not listen.” The aged man said life has not been the same for him again because the power that be in Osun State between 2005 and 2007 ruined him. He said his businesses were crippled as a result of long term detention and the physical damages he suffered.
Showing our correspondent the remnants of broken chairs which formed part of his rental business and the carcasses of his grinding machine that were left of his business, he said: “As at today, I am yet to recover. The thugs that invaded my house destroyed everything.”
If Quadri had known the fate that awaited his family, he probably would have faced his cocoa business instead of dabbling into the murky waters of politics. But his resolve to serve his Oba Oke community in Olorunda Local Government Area as a councillor pushed him into politics.
His problem started when the PDP took over the reins of government in Osun in 2003. He was the only candidate in his local government elected on the platform of the Alliance for Democracy (AD) after the 2003 election. According to him, his colleagues in the PDP chose not to have anything to do with him.
His problem started when the PDP discovered that he had pitched his tent with Aregbesola in the ACN, which was then considered as the party’s arch rival.
He said: “I saw hell from 2004 when the PDP took over the reins of power in Osun. In July 2004, my house was torched by PDP thugs. The house was completely burnt down.”
Quadri was also one of the people manhandled during the 2005 Oroki Day celebration in Osogbo. In the melee that occurred during the event, Quadri was stripped naked by thugs believed to be loyal to the PDP.
And after the 2007 governorship election in the state, events took a turn for the worse for Qaudri. He was declared wanted by the police. With his party winning the governorship election, thugs of the then PDP connived with security agents to invade his house.
He said: “On April 17, I heard it on the radio that I was one of the people declared wanted by the police. By 2 am, a policeman led a team of Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) to my house. I scaled through the fence and walked a long distance to another town before I went to Lagos.”
Since he was convinced that he did not commit any crime, he later returned to Osogbo and surrendered himself to the police alongside other ACN members like Alhaji Moshood Adeoti, who was the chairman of the party and now Secretary to the State Government; Prince Gboyega Famodun who is the current Secretary of the party; the late Hon. Biyi Adedotun and Alhaji Suleiman Aderemi.
Unfortunately, they were remanded in prison.
He said: “In my own case, the witness that police brought said I inflicted injuries on him on April 21, whereas I was nowhere near Osogbo on the said date. I left Osun State on April 17. I challenged the police to show me where I had inflicted bodily harm to their witness. Rather than listening to me, they detained us. In the morning, we were taken to the Magistrate’s Court. From there, we were remanded in Ilesha Prisons where we spent a week before we were sent to the Ife Prisons where we spent another 49 days before we were granted bail. The first three days we got to prison, none of us could sleep because the spirit of prison is something I can’t describe.”
Although he was freed, he was later rearrested and he spent about three years in prison before Aregbesola came to his rescue.
Besides the psychological trauma he went through, he said he lost money too. The house he rebuilt but was torched the second time by the PDP thugs remains in ruins. His cocoa store was destroyed and the thugs made away with N1.1 million worth of coacoa seeds. This was besides the two scales they damaged while his store was raided.
“Since then I have not been able to rebuild the store and the house,” Quadri said.
Ahmed has every cause to thank God. He had been sentenced to death but escaped the hangman by a whisker. Fully dressed in a Muslim outfit on a Monday morning, he cut the image of a man that would not hurt a fly. But for providence, he would have been killed for a crime he said he knew nothing about.
He said: “It was on April 15 that SARS men invaded our house at Oba Oke. I was arrested and detained for three days in their office. They said I burnt somebody’s house in Osogbo. But when they could not pin anything on me, I was released. But that was not until they had made me to suffer.”
If Ahmed had thought that was the end of the case, he was mistaken. On November 10, 2007, persons suspected to be PDP thugs allegedly invaded his shop, beat him up and arrested him alongside his father. He was accused of murder and they were remanded in prison. Ahmed was eventually convicted of murder. It was in the process of waiting for the hangman that he regained his freedom. He spent four years in prison.
Recalling his prison experience, he said: “The situation in the prison yard was hellish. There was a thing we called ‘bound over’ or ‘no talking tone’. If you are sentenced to no talking tone, you weren’t allowed to talk or be talked to. It is only people that God really loves that go to prison and come back alive and are still useful to themselves and the society.”
Ahmed said he knew from the time his case started that his travails would not consume him because he had shut his mind against his problems. “When I was sentenced to death, I said I was embarking on a journey and I would still return home. I did not kill anybody. I knew I was not going to die but live. The first thing I did was to shut my mind out of the good things of life and my wife, my children and material things that I possessed. I knew that if I had to think about those things I could die suddenly.”
Ahmed is not happy that many who benefitted directly from their travails have looked the other way. “If not for the governor (Aregbesola), things would have been too tough for the family,” he said.
Sunday Akere, Commissioner for Information
Sunday Akere was the Director of Information and Strategy of the ACN between 2004 and 2011. Among the ACN chieftains, he would qualify as the most loathed by the PDP. A fearless man, Akere, who would most likely have been a gladiator in the old Roman Empire, was a thorn in the flesh of the PDP during the early days of the struggle to reclaim Aregbesola’s mandate.
He was in charge of most of the articles and stories the ACN published in the media. For every move made by the ruling party, he had a counter-move, and he did this effectively. He was famous for saying things that hit the opponents where it hurt most.
Several times, he was fortunate to escape from the claws of security agents and those who planned to ‘take care’ of him. He would have been arrested and detained long before the October 17 episode, but he was always lucky to have his ears close to the ground, especially in the camp of the then ruling party_.
Right from the time that INEC declared that the ACN had lost the election, Akere knew there could be trouble for the ACN leaders. His fear was confirmed earlier than he had thought.
He said: “I was in my house when the journalists that were covering the Magistrate’s Court called me and said the Magistrate had just declared me wanted and that I should be arrested anywhere they saw me. I did not take anything from my house that day. I could not drive into town again, so the only thing I did was to get two or three pieces of clothes and left the town.”
For the about three and a half months that this lasted, Akere became a persona non grata in his homeland, and could not walk the streets of the state as a free man.
“On the day I was to be arrested, as I was driving, I saw a Peugeot Boxer car coming behind me. The night before, I learnt that they arrested one of our leaders. I told my brother who was sitting beside me that the bus belonged to the police and I was sure they were coming for me. As I accelerated, they did the same thing. I slowed down and they did the same thing. And suddenly, four of them came down fully armed. They said I was under arrest. It was Sunday, September 17, 2008. I said they could not take me away unless I saw an arrest warrant. The man showed me the folder he was holding and brought out the arrest warrant that was signed by a Magistrate.” To his surprise, the warrant had been signed five months before the day he was arrested.
As he was being taken away, he was not sure of what was going to happen. They all wore bullet-proof jackets and were carrying AK 47 guns. It was a harrowing experience. “Unfortunately, the day I was arrested, I was wearing a pair of shorts. And in detention, it was extremely cold. So, I had nothing to cover myself. I just squatted until morning. The detention room was full of faeces and smelled badly. I was put in the midst of the people that had been tortured by the police and were nursing their wounds.”
It was a success of sorts for the special force because Akere was a big catch. Not minding his big frame, he was put in an overcrowded cell where sitting down or standing up was a luxury. At that point, for the first time since the struggle, Akere thought he might not survive. “Within minutes, they opened the detention camp where they were keeping hardened criminals and dropped me there. The following day, around 2 pm, the other leaders and I were arraigned. The Magistrate said a formal application for bail should be made. He said pending when the bail would be perfected, we should be remanded at Ile Ife Prisons.”
But whatever hope Akere and his lawyer shared about his bail soon came to naught when they realised that the Magistrate had changed his earlier stance and refused to grant Akere and his co-accused persons bail. After the formal application had been perfected, there came another shocker for Akere.
“The Magistrate said he had no formal jurisdiction, and that we should be remanded. Two weeks after they remanded us, we decided that our lawyer should go to the high court to fight for the enforcement of our human rights and he went.”
It was a harrowing experience for Akere and his partners in prison. He said from the way they were being treated in detention, it was obvious that they wanted him dead. He said overtures were made to a fellow leader who was arrested with him to be released on bail while leaving Akere in the detention. Rather than consenting to what could be described as an easy way out, the man, according to Akere, insisted that the two of them were brought in together and would leave together.
“They transferred the doctor at the clinic because he recommended that they should give us bail.
“After four weeks, the High Court granted bail to the two of us, but with different conditions. While my partner was granted immediate bail, they said a public office holder, preferably a member of the House of Assembly, must sign my bail bond. Unfortunately, all the members of the House of Assembly then were on vacation in the US.
“___You needed to be at the prison that day; it was an emotional thing when my partner insisted that he would not leave the prison; that he would prefer to stay with me. “Everybody was crying. I said it was just for seven days and that we have people who do all- round fasting for 21 or 41 days. I decided not to take any food from anybody except my blood relations for those seven days. But to the glory of God, it was an experience.”
Gboyega Famodun, ACN scribe
Soft-spoken Gboyega Famodun is the Secretary of the Action Congress of Nigeria in Osun State. He is a prince with the mien of a reverend gentleman. But his gentility is akin to that of a tiger, which is said to be no indication of timidity. He _ has the gift of displaying candour in the face of threat and oppression. And like Oyeduntan, he is not easily intimidated.
Famodun was one of the arrowheads of the party when it started, which soon began to attract serious and deep-seated concern from the ruling party. “When we were eventually permitted to hold gatherings and rallies, they were done with fear. Most of the time, we were attacked,” he said while stating the plight of the ACN.
As a way of intimidating the leaders of the ACN, they were declared wanted by the police, who claimed that they instigated the protest that followed the announcement of the results of the governorship election.
This singular act forced the majority of the leaders of the ACN out of the town for three and a half years. Matters got to a head when 14 of the ACN leaders were declared wanted by the police.
“I could recall one nasty incident. One day, after I had left home, about 20 policemen converged here looking for me. They came in the middle of the night, and when they did not see me, they returned very early in the morning. A lot of leaders and people died as a result of all these happenings. So, for three and a half years, one could recall some events and some others we couldn’t because the momentum was so high that about three times, we were put in prison for frivolous charges.
“They used all the tricks in the books to get the leaders of ACN behind bars. The most ridiculous of all the charges was the issue of the explosion at the Osun State Secretariat, which was blamed on the ACN leaders. They were charged with attempted murder, arson, and when they were eventually detained, “the experiences were not too good,” Famodun said.
He continued: “The situation looked like a script from the children television cartoon series, Tom and Jerry. They used other sinister and covert means to monitor the activities of the ACN leaders. For instance, the telephone lines of most of the leaders were bugged. But unknown to the PDP, the ACN leaders knew that their telephones were no longer safe to discuss strategies. We had to employ another strategy.”
Famodun said the night before his house was invaded, he had received a warning from the most unlikely quarters. A stranger, who knew the details of the invasion plot called and asked him to run, warning him of the dire consequences of his failure to heed the advice.
Fatai Oyedele, ACN chieftain
Alhaji Fatai Oyedele aka Diekola was arrested at the wrong time. The two-time chairman of Osogbo Local Government was battling serious health problems when he was arrested. He was a chieftain of the PDP before he moved to the ACN.
He said: “When I met Aregbesola in 2005, I told him that it was not going to be easy for us. They were ready for battle the moment they realised that I had pitched my tent with the ACN.
“It was a long process. There were intimidations before the election. Even I had a meeting with Oyinlola a week to the election. I said: ‘Look, I don’t look back.’ As far as I was concerned, we were going to meet at the April 14 election.”
He left for Lagos after he had made sure that his party won in his constituency. This angered the government and he was declared wanted. Because they were unable to arrest Diekola, his father was picked up. The old man was in detention for three weeks.
Diekola was hauled into prison the day after he surrendered himself to the police. He was there for two weeks. “But they were very cautious because at that time, my health condition was bad. I told them that if I died there, their government was finished because I believed that my people would not allow that to go in vain.” He was later released.
Israel Oyagbile, an activist
Sixty-year-old pharmacist human rights activist, Israel Oyagbile, is excited that he is alive to tell the story of the trying times in Osun State. Oyagbile said it was a bad period for human rights activists, as they were molested not only by the government but security agencies too.
“They molested us. Twenty four of us were arrested. We spent five days in police cell before they decided to take us to court,” he recalled.
He said at a time, 24 of members of the human rights community in the state were clamped into Ilesha Prisons for participating in a protest against the government. He recalled that after they were released the first time, they became regular visitors to the prison yards in the state.
“They were sending us to prison whenever there was going to be judgment at the tribunal, thinking that we would make trouble. Each time there was going to be judgment, they would cancel our bail and send us to prison,” he said
Some of them would not forget in a hurry how they missed their examinations and the risks they had to take to attend court sessions in Osogbo from their hideouts in Lagos and other parts of the country. “But the spirit was there,” Oyagbile said with excitement.
Sunday Laoye, deputy governor’s brother
Sunday Laoye is the elder brother of the Osun State deputy governor, Titi Laoye-Tomori. The Gestapo invasion of his home at about 3.30 am on Tuesday, April 15, 2008 over the June 14, 2007 bomb blast at the Osun State Government Secretariat irked his friends and foes. Many were shocked that the old man could be linked to a bomb explosion at the Governor’s Office.
On the day he was arrested, the 10 armed policemen who invaded his house in the early hours of the day didn’t disclose their identities or where they were taking him to. Those who were conversant with the political chess game that was playing out in Osun were not surprised because they saw it coming. He was a big factor as far as Osun politics was concerned.
Laoye, a kingmaker of sorts in Osun State, had been a big loss to the PDP. His Renaissance Front was a force to reckon with in Osun. At the risk of being tagged boastful, he is not afraid to flaunt his influence.
Recalling his travails, he said: “I was picked up by the police. They wanted me to implicate my good friend, my leader, the governor of Osun State, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, but I refused to do so. They took my statement away.
“The following day, they sat me down. I was surrounded by three AK-43 guns, during interrogation.”
After 33 days as a guest of SARS, he was taken back to the Magistrate’s Court. From there, he was sent to Ife Prisons. At Ife Prisons where he spent another 30 days, the experience changed. He was to share a cell with 32 other inmates in Cell B, Awaiting Trial Male (ATM).
Having stayed with prison inmates for more than 30 days, he had become accustomed to prison life. So, when it was time to go, it became a problem of sorts. Although it was not the first time he would be detained, this time around, he had developed emotional attachment to the inmates. It became very difficult for him to leave the prison yard. It took some scolding from his wife to summon the courage to leave the prison yard.
Recalling the experience, he said, “I was almost weeping. There was this emotional attachment.” In fact, he still has not forgiven himself that he did not say goodbye to the people that ‘accommodated’ him for more than 30 days in Ife Prisons.
Gbenga Fayemiwo, Aregbe’s ex-media aide
Fayemiwo knew the near-death implication of his actions when he decided to team up with the Aregbesola group to confront the opposition. As Aregbesola’s spokesperson during the turbulent times, the opposition gave him close monitoring.
He said: “I was in my house on a certain night in 2006 when I received a strange telephone call. The person just called me, saying, ‘Gbenga, where are you?’ and I said I was in my house. Then he asked, ‘What are you doing?’ I said I was trying to sleep. He then said, ‘Leave that house now with your wife and children.’ Strangely, he hung up.”
Shortly after the call, memories of what Aregbesola told the party members at the beginning of the struggle started flushing back. He did not need a seer to tell him that the brief encounter with a stranger, if not addressed, could spell doom. He knew he was in big trouble. Consequently, he became a nomad, moving from one place to another at the shortest notice.
After surviving the first attempt on his life and those of his family, he started playing hide-and-seek with his assailants. But he was arrested while reporting a case to the police.
According to him, “We got to the police headquarters in Osogbo so that I could report an incident I considered a crime. I thought I had a right to protect the law as a citizen. But immediately a police chief saw me, he ordered my arrest. I was taken back to Ibokun for detention.”
All efforts to explain his actions to the police chief fell on deaf ears. At Ibokun, the accuser became the accused. “My ordeal started from there. They ordered me to write a statement. I wrote a statement and I was transferred to the state’s CID, where the case was being investigated. Consequently, the accused person that we brought now turned to be a witness against me.”
He was later left off the hook. He had a long spell of freedom before he was arrested and detained again in 2009.
Layi Oyeduntan, former commissioner
Those who know Layi Oyeduntan, a former health commissioner and local government chairman in Osun State, would tell you that he does not brook nonsense. A devout Muslim, Oyeduntan has been described by close associates as having the spine of steel.
Unfortunately for Oyeduntan, he also became a target. And it was an open secret that he was Aregbesola’s friend.
He said: “There were assassination attempts, threats and, of course, all kinds of harassment. This continued until we won the nomination of the party and then it became full blown. During the campaign for the governorship, we were attacked with guns and cutlasses.
“We experienced all manner of harassments to the extent that at the Oroki Day 2006 celebration, our candidate, Aregbesola, was virtually manhandled and prevented from honouring my invitation to the festival.”
Knowing that coming to the PDP would weaken the opposition, entreaties were made to him to defect. But rather than do so, he acted his conscience and stayed put in the ACN. Unfortunately, the bubble burst on the evening of October 18, 2008 when at about 8 pm, some men invaded his house.
“They came to my house early evening, around 7:30 pm and with blazing guns. They shot their way into my premises, killed my guard dog and put the residents under severe and terrible intimidation at gun point. Fortunately for me, they were unable to get into the house.”
It was in the heat of the invasion that he called his friend, the then governor, Prince Oyinlola, for assistance. Although Oyinlola was then outside the country, he promised to help.
“By the way, Oyinlola is a friend, and he is still a friend. I had known him even before Osun; we played golf together. He is a friend of quite a large number of people. I refused to join the PDP.
“At that time, I thought I was being attacked by armed robbers. I made calls to several people, including the Commissioner of Police. A lot of people from outside the state started making calls, seeking to know what was going on and whether to mobilise the police to my side.”
He was shocked when he discovered later that the intruders were working in tandem with the police. “The police told me they knew they were arresting me. There were witnesses to the assault. I was never invited by the police. There was no warrant of arrest.”
With the gunmen gaining access into his compound and his guard dog killed, it was still impossible to arrest him. The steel doors of his house were too much of a task for the them to break down. As this was going on, the ‘drama’ was being reported on TVC.
“When they were frustrated and some neighbours came out and it was impossible for them to continue the dastardly act anymore, I surrendered and was taken away from the house.
“From about 9 pm to10 pm, they could not determine what to do with me. It was around 3 am that they decided to charge me with throwing bombs.
“It was so strange. I was told to write a statement on the bomb explosion that occurred at the Secretariat, and I kept asking, ‘Which bomb? What bomb in Osogbo?
“They asked me to write a statement on bombs. I was never a soldier, and I couldn’t imagine bomb. I became frustrated and refused to write any statement. I spent two days in detention before I was sent to jail. We were remanded in the prison, where we spent 33 days.’’_
