‘We Thought We Were Facing Firing Squad’ - APC Data Officers

‘We Thought We Were Facing Firing Squad’ - APC Data Officers 

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All Progressives Congress (APC) Data Centre workers recount ordeal in the hands of Directorate of State Security (DSS) officials who smashed their way into the facility and bundled them into detention without a charge. The spoke with Bunmi Ogunmodede and Salawudeen Suleiman.

THEIR plan was to reunite with members of their families after their night shift
duty in the early hours of November 22 but the invasion of their office by some
armed operatives of the Directorate of the State Security (DSS) nullified that.
They never returned home until 10 days when a Federal High Court sitting in
Lagos ordered the DSS to let go of Mr. Olaposi Fayemi, Mr. Chinedu Atuche, Mr.
Onuchukwu Chika, Mrs. Esther Enemuwe and Mrs Ebun Ilori.
But it will take a longer time to get them on the telephone as their handsets are
still being held by the Directorate pending the conclusion of investigations.
For them, it was a tale of somebody who had gone through the valley of the
shadow of the death as they felt they were facing the firing squad.
All five were among the 26 workers whisked away from the No 10, Bola Ajibola
Street, Data Centre of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the wee hours of
November 2 over an unproven allegation that they hacked into the website of the
Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to clone voter cards.
Twenty-one others, who work as agents, were allowed to go home after
preliminary investigations by interrogators at the Shangisha, Magodo headquarters
of the Service in Lagos.
The trio of Fayemi, Atuche and Mrs. Ilori work as Data Entry Supervisors at the
APC Office while Mr. Chika and Mrs. Enemuwe are Information Technology (IT)
Support Officer and Systems Administrator.
They were rounding off their shift duty on the fateful day when the armed DSS
personnel – armed with a Search Warrant – stormed the premises on allegation
that unwholesome activity was on-going in the building to compromise the 2015
general elections.
Though DSS spokesperson Marylin Ogar said there was nothing suggestive that
the office belonged to the APC but the traumatised guests insisted that the party
hung conspicuously a banner, bearing its name and logo on the facility.
The security personnel, who carted away 31 bags containing APC membership
cards, server, hard discs, personal computers and external drives of personal
computers on their first raid on November 22, returned to the centre on Monday
(December 1) and made away with additional 30 bags, all filled with the party’s
membership cards.
It is believed that the raids had successfully aborted the attempt by the APC to
get an accurate data base for its members across the country. The party started
the process in February.
The APC, through its spokesman, Alhaji Lai Mohammed has challenged the
Directorate to state what it found in the centre after the raid.
During interrogations, the Directorate sort to know if the ‘suspects’ are on the
payroll of money bags and if political bigwigs and expatriates ever visited their
office to confirm if their operation was designed to undermine the electoral
umpire’s preparation for free, fair and credible polls next February.
They told their interrogators, who engaged them, at least, twice on daily, for the
10 days their detention at the Lagos and Abuja offices of the Service lasted.
Going by their tales, what they went through between Saturday, November 22 and
Monday, November 24 was a child play when considered to the horror they
experienced in Abuja where they spent seven days. They told The Nation
yesterday that the echoes of those seven days will remain painful for the rest of
their lives.
After their interrogators told them in Lagos that were changing location, they were
driven straight to the Presidential Wing of the Muritala Mohammed International
Airport (MMIA), Lagos from where they boarded military plane marked NAF 918.
On arrival at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja, they were asked to
mask their faces with their singlets. “They (security operatives) put handcuffs on
our hands and chained our legs after hounding us into a Coaster bus with tinted
glass,” the ‘suspects recalled.
Scared with the reckless way the driver drove and the way the operatives that
received them spoke in coded language, they felt the end had come.
Fayemi said: “We thought we were going to face the firing squad. The driver
drove the bus with neck-breaking speed. They made a mockery of us and called
us unprintable names, such as ‘monkeys’, ‘hackers’ and ‘presidential suspects’
among others.”
The Data Entry Supervisor said neither he, nor any of his colleagues knew the
location in which they spent a week in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).
According to him, they were allowed to remove their veils only when they entered
the bathroom or in the cells. Their interrogations, he said, were either in oral or
written format, depending on the mood of the interrogators.
They alleged that their interrogators tried all they could to work toward a prepared
answer just to justify the invasion.
They recalled how their interrogators asked them if cases of multiple and under-
aged registration were ever reported to security agencies.
According to Fayemi, a document tagged: Ojo Local Government, Araromi Ward,
was thrown at him by an officer to peruse. The document, he alleged, had
columns for the names and telephone lines of voters from the ward.
He told the officer that such document has no correlation with their operation at
the APC Data Centre.
Alleging that the interrogation was to justify their arrest and detention, Fayemi
said: “In the room where they gave me the document to browse, I saw a file to
which all our written statements are attached. It is marked C.F. 1811 . They wrote
Case File of the Investigation of the APC/INEC Cloning Centre.
“So, they have concluded our matter even before the conclusion of the
investigation. They asked us to come back today (yesterday) but our lawyer is
handling that.”
Fayemi, who led others to recount their ordeal, said there was no civility in the
way they were arrested.
Dawn invasion
His story: “I work at the place as a data entry supervisor. We were on night shift.
This fateful day we resumed as usual at the normal time on the November 21 and
worked as usual till the early hours of November 22. Just as we were about
rounding off our work, we noticed some people were banging at the gate and our
colleagues were trooping in and we sought to know the cause.
“We were making the final cleaning of our work when we saw these very hefty,
fully armed men ordering us out. ‘Go outside, go, go’. On getting down, we saw
our subordinates – the agents. They had already been lined up, sitting on the
floor. They asked us where we kept the tool box.
“They came with their own box containing assorted tools. In fact, they were fully
armed with all manners of tools. They brought the tools out and asked me to
bring out the server. Before I did that, they were hurrying me and video recording
me. They were also taking my photograhs.
“As I was removing the devices of the systems, they were putting them in a sack
which they sealed and labeled as exhibit bag. Asking us, ‘do you see it now?’
They later took us to their headquarters at Magodo and kept us in three different
rooms. I was in one of the rooms with three interrogators. I never knew them
before but got to know all of them in the course of the interrogation. They were
very secretive people.
“I told the lead interrogator that if I were to be a politician, I would have gone to
jail to let him know that I was not afraid of being jailed. He later left me with his
two colleagues.
“They were threatening me with jail as I spoke. They wanted me to say things
that I didn’t see or do. They would ask me questions and wanted me to answer
same in their own way.
“They said my grammar was too much and that I should make my answers brief.
It was all a systematic way of putting us in psychological torture. They asked so
many questions about our operations; about our bosses and where they live and
we were answering them.
“One of the hefty men who came to raid our office came in. He was not a Yoruba
man. He started to calm us down in tones of regrets. He said; ‘sorry you people.
We got an information that you were doing something unwholesome but we
discovered that to be untrue. I perceived regrets in the way he spoke.
“We thought at that point, that the matter had become simple. That perhaps they
had realized what was on ground. But it turned out not to be so. I became weak
and dehydrated. I needed rest. They knew it and gave me water. As we did all
these, guns were being pointed at us.
“They didn’t anything carrying INEC label as they expected and that disappointed
them.
“As I was answering one question, they asked another just to intimidate me,”
Fayemi recounted.
On whether the operatives ‘ raid has affected their operation, Fayemi said: “It
would be difficult for just one person to account for the havoc they wreaked
because so many things happened simultaneously.

Different accounts

“What my colleagues saw was different from what I saw but I was at the store
when they broke into it. I did not see what happened inside the project manager’s
office and the coordinator’s office. Mrs. Ilori, who witnessed that didn’t see the
destruction of the facilities store. They forcefully broke into the store and carted
away APC membership forms in 31 bags of Ghana-must-go bags.
“I also saw the computer they took away from the project manager’s office. It is
whitish in colour. They tried to break into the coordinator’s office but they were
unsuccessful. They also broke the door to the server’s room and went away with
the server.
“I also heard when they asked my colleague to destroy the agent’s system. They
took us from their Magodo Office on November 24 in a vehicle with tinted glasses
and as we crossed to the Oregun-Opebi Link Bridge at about 1.45pm, I thought
perhaps they were going to our own office.
“When they drove past the Customs Office, I knew we were going towards the
airport. I whispered to my colleague that perhaps they were taking us out of
Lagos. They did not tell us anything. They soon moved us to the airport. They
held talks and the assistant director told us we were being moved to Abuja and
that we would be back the same day. They filed us into a military aircraft marked
NAF 918.
“At their Abuja office, they started barking at us. As one told us to ‘move here,
move like this, go like that, another officer asked ‘where are these monkeys
coming from? We had hardly left the airport when they started speaking in coded
language.
“One of them whispered into my ears if I was wearing any underwear. I told him
yes. I was asked to remove my shirt and I did. Before we knew it, we were
already blindfolded and marched into a Coaster bus.
“They took our hands and handcuffed us. They also chained our legs. Legs
chained, hands cuffed and blindfolded! It was a terrible experience for us all. We
were treated like criminals for offences we never committed. At this point, we
started thinking they were taking us to the firing squad. The vehicle moved at a
horrible speed as though they wanted to drive us to death. At one point it
appeared we were climbing a hill, at another, negotiating a sharp bend and again
descending a slope.
“An officer we suspected was a director started to bowl, howl and bark orders. It
was in his office that they asked me my username and password which I dictated
to them. They asked what they will see if they logged into my system and I told
them that they would see an array of data arranged to show the form number,
name of the member, age, sex, phone, state, the local government, the ward, and
the name of the data agent who entered the data.
“They later moved me to another investigator who ordered me to do so many
things at the same time. He shouted ‘Stand up, move, turn left, turn right. Move!
Move!! As I tried to tell him that I was at the wall, he cut me short with another
shout move. I started moving and I was actually knocking my head and body
against the wall. When satisfied, he said I should continue to write my report.
They took us through various indignities and made us to think we were going to
be klilled,’ recounted.
Fayemi also recalled how one of their cell pitied them.
He said: “Our cell mates told us later that we were innocent. Even our
interrogators confided informally in us that they were only doing their work and
that we were innocent. They said on the eve of Sunday that they never had rest
since our arrest and that the whole thing was politically motivated.
“These people are just fighting themselves but we just have to do our work,”
Fayemi reported the interrogators as saying.
He went on: “In the morning of Sunday, they said they were moving us to the
other side. We were left guessing as we did not know what that meant.”
In her own account, Mrs. Ilori said the assailants made eye contacts to express
regrets over their action.
She said: “And we could see they were disappointed for not having found
something incriminating. It was like they told themselves ‘what we are looking for
we did not get.’ As they were harassing the data entry people, one of them came
to me and asked what exactly my job was. I told him that as a data entry
supervisor, I monitor data that enters the system. That I try to correct any error
that I notice, I bring the agent’s attention to forestall a reoccurrence. After, I had
written a statement on what transpired in the morning, he asked if that was all
and I said yes.
“He then countered that I was lying and insisted that there was more to what we
do in our office. I then asked if he wanted me to lie,” Mrs. Ilori said.
She recounted how the atmosphere became charged when the news on the raid
and the arrests were aired on Television Continental (TVC). Her words: “They
actually wanted to do everything secretly and left us. Upon that development, the
guy now called me and said, ‘madam, we have to video you. I asked him why. He
said that was the only option for him then.
“He said they would have to record everything they did in their office as the APC
has alleged that they vandalised their office. I told them that I was there the
office of my project manager’s office was vandalised.
Data process aborted
He exclaimed, ‘did we destroy your server?’ and I told him I was not there. And
cannot account for what I don’t know.”
Atuche recalled the assailants took away the server, the hard drives, the two
personal laptops, personal external hard drives, and a total of 61 Ghana-must-go
bags containing APC membership registration forms
He said: “We were like asking ourselves at a point if we would be allowed to go.
We also asked them to know if they were going to let us go. They said we should
just hold on. They kept communicating with each other. But the way they were
doing showed they were expecting an order from above.
Mrs. Enemuwe, whose arrest was effected when her spouse (Onuchukwu) led
detectives to her home, corroborated the invasion allegations.
She was off duty when the operatives stormed the office.
Her words: “We kept on calling all their numbers, all switched off. After like three
four hours, he (the husband) and like five of the DSS officers came to the house
and they told me I was the one they were looking for and I asked why anybody
should be looking for me. “They said I would know why when I got to their office
and that I should come along to make a statement and that they didn’t come to
arrest me.
“On our way, one of them was interrogating me. He asked if I knew that the
project we were doing was perceived to be an enemy or threat to the people. I
asked how since I was sure I was not involved in any dubious activity.”
Onuchukwu said: The operatives thought my wife took the hard disc home and
had password to the serve and they compelled me to take them home to fetch
her.”
He believed one of the agents disclosed his identity as the spouse of Mrs.
Enemuwe.

Report from the Nation, Bunmi Ogunmodede and Salawudeen Suleiman o