Pa Joseph Fakayode, an 84-year-old leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Osun State could not have imagined what befell him on Friday August 8, 2014. That was the eve of the Osun State gubernatorial election.
For one, the octogenarian was bereaved. He had just lost his 40-year-old daughter; so he was in deep mourning. So, naturally, what he deserved at the point was empathy and that was what a horde of family members, APC supporters and others, who gathered at his residence, No 5, Oduduwa Street, Oke-Ila, Osun State, came to offer him.
But the security forces, who were deployed in the state on the orders of President Goodluck Jonathan supposedly to enforce peace, thought otherwise. The octogenarian was visited with such savagery you could only expect in a typically vicious military regime.
The case of the octogenarian was just one of many APC supporters who were brutalised as the security forces went on the rampage on the eve of that poll, which witnessed one of the worst militarisations in the history of elections in Nigeria.
At every stage of this brutalisation process, the security forces would first send terror into people in the vicinity of their operation with ceaseless bursts of gun fire, then create mayhem by breaking into their targeted residence, and at gun-point, order residents to lie face down on the floor. As this terrorist operation was in progress, other security agents would be screaming orders that anybody who attempted to escape would be killed.
Shortly before this terrorist attack on Pa Fakayode’s residence, Alhaja Abibat Oladapo aka Mama Nuru, an agent of the APC for Ifedayo Local Government Area of the state, had also come to condole with Pa Fakayode. So it was in her presence that the soldiers came calling.
The Alhaja had no premonition that she would be a victim of the terror she experienced that night in the hands of the security operatives. As terror swept the entire building and people were screaming for help, an agitated Pa Fakayode came downstairs only to find out that soldiers and other security agents were everywhere pointing guns at the heads of people who had come to sympathise with him over the death of his daughter.
Before he could say a word, the soldiers ordered him to put both hands on his head and sit on the open ground in the rain like the others.
The 84-year-old man had no choice. In utter fright, he slowly went down and suffered the humiliation of his life in the hands of Nigerian security agents, who had ostensibly come to keep the peace in an election that the President’s party, the PDP, were obviously desperate to win at all costs.
Alhaja Abibat Oladapo, who had prepared to perform her civic responsibility for his party in furtherance of democracy in the country on August 9 as an APC agent in the local government, was soon to have a very bitter experience of what the Federal Government’s intentions actually were when they sent soldiers to “keep the peace” in Osun governorship election.
She had heard Pa Fakayode screaming and as she rushed down to help, she was confronted by a civil defence operative, who cocked and pointed his gun at her. She was terrified. But as she pleaded for mercy, other security operatives rained slaps on her face and head, and in spite of this assault, she summoned the courage to ask: “What crime have we committed to deserve this cruel treatment?”
“Shut up!”, the civil defence man growled and ordered the Alhaja to sit on the open ground like the others. As she found a place on the ground to sit, security operatives rushed upstairs to Pa Fakayode’s sitting room and vandalised the furniture, after they had forcibly opened the doors and broken into the old man’s flat. One of the DSS operatives in this assault gang was heard shouting in rage: “You stupid people. If you want to die, you will die now. All of you are sheepishly following Aregbesola because he promised you N500. We shall waste your lives here and nothing will happen.”
To illustrate the political nature of the security operation in Osun before, during and after the election, sources said those who led soldiers and other security operatives to Pa Fakayode’s residence were PDP supporters allegedly led by one Hon. Funmi, a former female PDP member of the Osun State House of Assembly in company of one Segun, a staff of the State House of Assembly and one Bukola , a sanitation officer at the local government. There were five others, three of whom were on motor-bike.
In all, 38 people were arrested that night from Pa Fakayode’s compound and over a dozen of them were APC polling agents. Others were sympathisers who had come to condole with the old man on the death of his daughter. There were several ladies and young women, including Alhaja Oladapo, and other women leaders of the APC. Between Oke-Ila and Osogbo, where they eventually ended up, some of these women were allegedly assaulted by some of the operatives.
After this terrorist operation at Pa Fakayode’s residence, the 38 APC supporters were herded into a truck. This process did not end before a heart-breaking event occurred. The 84-year-old Pa Fakayode lost grip and fell helplessly to the ground twice as he attempted to climb into the truck. Alhaja Abibat Oladapo was beside herself with grief watching as Pa Fakayode was being humiliated by the security forces.
As the convoy took off from the compound, another bizarre event occurred. Three PDP supporters, one Segun, Tosin and Oke, who had led the security squad to Pa Fakayode’s house, followed the convoy on their motor bikes. One of the soldiers, in a fit of rage, pointed his gun at the trio threatening to kill them if they did not stop following. It took a mobile policeman in the squad to dissuade the soldier from shooting, pointing out that the three men were PDP agents who had earlier led the squad to the APC leader’s house to arrest the victims.
Surprisingly, however, rather than the truck conveying the APC supporters heading for Osogbo at about mid-night, it allegedly diverted and was moving in the wrong direction to Ora, a town 10 kilometers away from Oke-Ila. Alhaja Oladapo became apprehensive and secretly made a phone call to Hon. Abiodun Idowu, one of APC’s leaders in the area. For three hours between midnight and 3am, the whereabouts of these APC leaders and agents were unknown until they birthed at the military facility in Ede.
In the process, another sad event was said to have occurred. Pa Fakayode, the 84-year-old man, who had allegedly been brutalised in his own compound and made to sit on the ground in the rain, now came under pressure to urinate. He was said to have pleaded with his captors to stop and allow him urinate with some decency and dignity. But the brutishness in such security reportedly ignored the old man’s plea. Now under extreme pressure, the octogenarian took his singlet from under the pyjamas that he wore when he was arrested, made it into the shape of a bowl and urinated into it while the truck was in motion.
Again, at 11am on August 9 when the election had already started, these APC supporters, who were in varying degrees of fear, humiliation and torture, were conveyed from Ede military facility to Osogbo. On arrival at the DSS Headquarters in Osogbo, they were all allegedly ordered to lie face down on the open ground. Some of the young men and women quickly complied, but Pa Fakayode, who was frail from age and the torture of the events from Oke-Ila through Ede to Osogbo, was slow to comply with the order.
A security operative went berserk and descended on Pa Fakayode with a horse-whip, which he furiously lashed several times on the head of the old man until a soldier with a human heart, who could not take it anymore, physically brought the assault of the operative to a halt. The soldier then turned to the officer, rebuking him for allegedly maltreating a very old man. But the officer was allegedly unrepentant. “What kind of old man is he?”, he queried the soldier. “Why is he still in politics and supporting Aregbesola? Let him call that Aregbesola to come and rescue him now”, the officer said. Many of the victims who watched this brutish display of inhumanity were said to have burst into tears. The women wailed and the men cursed.
Before this humiliation of Pa Fakayode, there had been an orgy of alleged beating of men, women and children at the agency’s headquarters as they alighted from the truck that brought them from the military facility in Ede. A boy, identified as Seun, who had complained of cold the previous night in Ede, was slapped several times by a mobile policeman, who allegedly ordered him to remove his clothes and had cold water poured on his naked body; and after the treatment, he was subjected again to kicks with jack boots.
It was this demonstration of alleged bias of the security forces that led one of the soldiers, who rescued Pa Fakayode from the security officer, to wonder aloud when he asked: “What kind of politics are we playing in this country that we subject even innocent old men to barbaric and wicked treatment?”
“What was totally inscrutable was that many Osun citizens who were arrested and brutalised by the security forces between August 8 and 9 were either APC leaders or their agents and supporters,” sources said, adding: “The PDP people who were apprehended by vigilant citizens for committing serious electoral fraud and handed over to the Police and DSS officers were promptly released and safely returned to PDP leaders. The Police argued that their release was ordered ‘from above’. On August 8, especially, dozens of APC leaders were arrested throughout the state between 10pm on the eve of the election and 6am on August 9, the day of the governorship election proper. They were randomly picked up in some cases.”
Citing a pathetic case, the source said a father and his 14-year-old son, Adebayo Kolawole, met at the DSS facility in Osogbo on August 9. The son was picked up at Pa Fakayode’s residence (father and son were tenants of Pa Fakayode), while the father was in another batch of those arrested in the same town. The re-union in detention was heart-rending because apart from being brutalised, both also had the misfortune of watching how another little boy was manhandled.
“When those arrested were asked to lie face down on the ground, the boy after a while, raised his head to get some fresh air but in a flash, a Policeman descended on this little boy, beating him black and blue. There was an unwritten code in security detention that you don’t look at officers who are brutalising you. If you tried, you got the beating of your life. This little boy was suspected to be trying to identify the faces of his oppressors. He nearly lost his eyes in the process.
“As you read this, not a single case has been brought against any of the APC officials and supporters, which in effect means they committed no crime for which they were ruthlessly manhandled, assaulted and brutally humiliated by the very same security forces President Goodluck Jonathan sent to Osun to keep the peace.”
However, instances were cited in which some noble soldiers and a few exceptional policemen openly expressed disgust at the treatment being meted out to those arrested. One police officer at INEC’s office on seeing the number of old people arrested was said to have wondered aloud: “These old men couldn’t have been thugs. It is wrong to mistreat them simply because they belong to a political party.”
At the military facility in Ede, one soldier was so compassionate about the age of Pa Fakayode that he was claimed to have removed his cap and offered it to the octogenarian to cover his head in the cold, while the Alhaja, who was arrested with him, removed her head tie to keep the old man warm from the cold. And at the DSS office, another soldier even intervened to stop a DSS officer who repeatedly used horsewhip to lash at the head of the 84-year-old Pa Fakayode.
Another instance was cited of the level of the brutishness and impunity with which suspected PDP thugs and the security forces manhandled people in Osun over the August 9 election. It was the story of a young man allegedly cut down in his prime in Ilesha. The young man, identified simply as Tolu, had just concluded the naming ceremony of his child and was wheeling back the generator used to the owner when he met his cruel fate; a squad of uniformed people (nobody could determine whether they were PDP thugs or men of the security forces) were also driving past.
Immediately this armed squad observed that the young man had the Aregbesola campaign vest on, they allegedly opened fire on the poor boy. He was said to have died on the spot.
Reacting to the gale of arrests on the eve of the Osun poll, however, the spokesperson of DSS, Marilyn Oga, said the agency’s operatives were in Osun to ensure peace, adding that they were only arresting suspected thugs and criminals who were allegedly violating the law and attempting to disrupt the election.
She said the APC spokesman, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, who was also arrested, was nabbed because he was moving about at the wee hours on the eve of the election. According to Oga, who spoke on a popular television station, the earlier gubernatorial elections in Ondo, Anambra and Ekiti were successfully conducted because security forces were also deployed to maintain peace in those places.
She defended the agency against the public outrage, which trailed the wearing of hoods by its operatives in the Osun election, saying it was the normal practice for the operatives to be masked during ‘special operations’ so that they would not be compromised.
But the APC took the DSS spokesman to task, wondering if Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the former governor of Osun State, Senator Isiaka Adeleke, who was placed virtually on house arrest until he outwitted the security men and slipped away from the soldiers and other security operatives who had surrounded his residence, and other APC leaders and supporters, who were picked up in their homes on the eve of the election, were also criminals.
