STATE Security Services (SSS) woman who introduced herself as a Chief Superintendent of Police and the SSS man who accompanied her, arrested me in my home at 7.00 p.m. on Monday July 10, 1988. Both of them were armed. The woman did the talking. She had instructions, she said, to pick me up for a chat with her boss. Couldn’t the chat wait until the next morning?

“No”, she said. Her boss was waiting. In any case, I would be back home in about an hour and to prove that she was sincere, my wife and other friends could accompany me to the SSS headquarters, so we all went (my wife, three friends) with them to the headquarters which the SSS shares with the Police in the Government Reservation Area, GRA, in Benin.

The police officer to whom an SSS man handed me over three hours later, waved a sheet of paper in the air. The SSS woman and the man who had picked me up had disappeared as soon as they brought me in. That’s your detention order” the officer declared. You are going into the cell”.”Cell?”Pull your clothes!”

“Why am l going into the cell? I am not a criminal” The officer looked at me maliciously. “This paper”, he said, waving the piece of paper in front of his nose this time as if to fan himself with it, says you are to be detained. If you are not a criminal, why are you here? Now, pull your clothes.”

The police officer put the key in the lock and turned it, “Head of State”, he sang out and a fairly wide-chested man turned his head, rather disinterestedly but all the more deadly. “Make sure you handle him with iron hands”.

I stared at the police officer. “What do you mean by that?” He opened the iron grating. The irons clanged against each other “Go inside”, the man ordered now and stood aside. I took one final good look at him and told myself that come what may, someday, I would need to identify and even scores with him. “What is your name?” one voice behind me demands. Why are you here?” Another one to my left demands.Answer us! another to my right demands, And then, blows to my body, my head, my face. I was slapped repeatedly. I tried to protect my face and then l was slapped even more for doing so.

In a few minutes, my eyes were swollen. “Remove your pant,” one of my attackers with the neck of a bull ordered. I hesitated, for which I received two slaps at once. My eyes sting me, my ears sting me. I see stars flying round me. “Sit on the floor”, one of the voices commands. I dimly see the blackened raw floor, wet slimmy.

The man with the neck of a bull lowers his fingers and raises the rag which had once been a pant, away from his scrotum and scratches it viciously. Another one of them begins to seratch his back, with the same viciousness but quite unconsciously. Then a third, until like a yawn, all the detainees around me begin to Scratch, Scratch and scratch. Legs, hands, sides, backs, scrotums, necks. I shiver inwardly. “No, re move your pant first”, the man with the neck of a bull orders me. I lower my pant. Laughter. “Look at it”, one of them cries out. It has gone inside already, see by how much it has gone inside.” More laughter.

“Sit on the floor.”I sat on the floor. It was like sitting on a wet blanket of gravel. The scratching starts again, going round like a convulsive yawn. My eyes were smarting under the pain now and the water came out and ran down my cheeks. I was not crying but yet, I couldn’t hold back the water. One of them took a look at me. “Didn’t I say we shouldn’t hit him in the face?” he asked generally. “What is it now?, another asked. “Stand up”, a third voice commands. I stood up. Faces peer into my face. “Generally, we do not hit anybody in the face. Is it very painful?” Not really”, l answer back, surprised at the change that seems to have come over them.

“Now sit down”, another voice commands. I sit down again on the wet blanket of gravel.
“Tell us why you are here,” one of the men who I now understand to be a Minister demands.
I tell them very briefly about the ASUU strike, how the regime had responded to the strikes by proscribing the union and then detaining its leaders. “But you said you are no longer in the university,” one of the ministers observes.Yes.

“WHERE do you want to be? he asks. I do not understand him “Do you want to be put with the tigers or with the lions?” “I told you I would bring you some money tomorrow.” “If l put you with the lions”, he tells me, “even your father will not recognise you tomorrow”. I do not say anything but walked behind him along the corridor.

He comes to a particular cage and stops “The lions are in there”, he points. “Seven of them were brought here from Kwale. They killed, shot four people, raped one woman. They would want to have you”. I look at him. “Sit down here”, he snaps and point at a place in the Corridor already occupied by a pair of legs. “The people in this corridor are the tigers”.

He begins to walk back towards the circle of ministers,Head State and State House.” I looked at the place he had indicated in the corridor and several pairs of eyes tooked up at me.
“Make space for him to sit down,” one of the voices tells the others and gratefully, I sit down on the he blanket of gravel, more wet, more cold, more slimy…

The cell is a smelling house, there is a corridor about four feet six inches across and some 24 feet that separates the two rows of cages. The cages on the left are multiple ones. They are 80 in number and were buiit to accommodate two inmates only. Each of these cages now holds about 12 or more detainees who are padlocked inside.

To get out to ease themselves, they must bang the door of the cage several times before one of the personal gúards to the “Head of State” will come up with the keys.

On the left hand side of the corridor are the single cages. There are five of them And in three of them, there are at least three detainees. The last two single cages have been converted to toilets.The detainees urinate and excrete here on the floor or into plastic basins.

I sit down in pant and examine the faces. Each face looks like a ghost, each person looks like a character from Michael Jackson’s thriller. The only difference is that these people are real whereas Jackson’s characters are the products of fiction.

In that 24 feet of corridor, there are 51 of us and in each of the cages meant for two inmates, there are at least 12 inmates, while each of the single cages holds between three and four detainees. The entire corridor is lit by two candles. One of the candles is already one quarter burnt out, the other almost half way.

The smell in this part of the cell is so strong that each detainee can taste it. The smell comes from the last two single cages to the right which have been converted to spaces where detainees can clean themselves up, urinate or excrete. There is no water in the cell. There is no toilet. The urinary and the toilet are the three basins placed each in the two cages and one of the bare floor three feet away from my feet on the corridor. The bare floor of one of the cages is also used as toilet. Each detainee has to decide between the basin and the floor. He can urinate into the basin but he can excrete either in the basin or on the bare floor.

Several of the detainees are completely naked and lying stretched out as best as they can along the coridor. Many of them cough incessantly. All of them scratch their bodies.

I was brought into the cell at about 10.00 p.m. At about 11.30 p.m., a voice shouted from the other side of the cell,”prepare the cell for sleep”, and a few seconds later, two of the personal guards of the “Head of State”walked down the corridor, brooms in their hands and began to arrange the detainees in the order in which they would sleep.

Detainees are reluctant to move directly opposite the two single cells and the space on the corridor which hold urine and the excréta. To make sure that they move, the personal guard to the “Head of State” use the brooms in lashing out at the bodies and feet of detainees.

The detainees move. We lie down on our sides. Lying down on our backs would take too much space. The sleeping arrangement is also such that we are arranged like sardines in a can, detainees have to lie down with their heads in opposite directions so that their legs would cross each other.

I attempt to sleep but cannot and sometimes in the small hours of the morning, the man in front of me who has coughed throughout the night said without turning, “you cannot sleep?”
“No”
“This is your first night in the cell?” “Yes”. “It’s always like that”, he said philosophically, “I didn’t sleep the first night they brought me here”.
“How long ago was that? “Six months”.
“Six months?” “Yes.” The man behind you has been here five months. He is a student”
“Student?” “Yes. He is almost mad now. You will see it in the morning”

“You mean you have been that long?”
“Yes. Some longer, others not so long”
“Clean up the cell!” The detainees begin to get up one by one. One of the personal guards of the “Head of State” comes over to me. “Get up” he says to me. I stand up,
“You are to take the basins outside”
“Me?” “
Yes.”
“Look here” one of the detainees intervenes. Don’t you know this man? Can you pretend that you do not know him?”
“And so what”.
“Find somebody else to carry the basins”
“What will he give us?” The detainee who has intervened on my behalf turned to me and
then looked at him.

“He will get you two loaves of bread”. “Okay then, the personal guard agrees and then opens one of the cages and orders three of its inmates to come out. I watch them as they drag out the three big basins from cages. I watch them as they begin to gather up the faeces on the floor with their bare hands and throw them into the basins. I watch them walking down the corridor with the basins on their head. I see the iron grated door to the cell opened. I watch them to go out. About 10 minutes passed and then they came back dripping with water.

“What happened?” Prince Muda, the man who had intervened on my behalf turns to me.
“Sometimes, some of the detainees ask to be allowed to carry the basins outside so they can have access to water to take their bath. That is the only way in which anybody can have a bath here.”
“You don’t mean it”.
“Of course, l do.”