A legal practitioner from Ebonyi State, Pius Awoke, has narrated the ordeal he passed through in the hands of the DSS for about years.
According to the report by Saturday Sun, Awoke said that he had attended the trial of the leader of the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu, in Abuja on June 26, 2021, and was on his way back when they were intercepted at a checkpoint by the military, who later handed them over to the DSS.
He said that they were accused of possessing a phone that had some strange numbers saved in it, and that after a thorough search, the DSS found nothing on them. He said that despite not finding anything incriminating on them, the DSS refused to release them.
He said that their phones were taken from them, and they were blindfolded and taken to the DSS cell.
He said that they were transferred to different cells, and for three years, they could not reach their family members or friends and nobody knew their whereabouts.
When asked about the people he saw in the DSS cells, Awoke said that he saw several people that were arrested during the EndSARS protest in 2020. He said that all of them are still languishing in the cells, and that he even heard that one of them has died.
When asked how many of them were in the cell altogether, he said that eight of them were arrested that day and taken to Wawa Military Cantonment in Niger State, and that they were later joined by three Igbo persons. He said that out of those three Igbo persons, one of them was arrested in Anambra State at Barrister Ifeanyi Ejiofor's compound in Oraifite.
Speaking during the exclusive interview with Saturday Sun, he added, "The other person was arrested in Lagos. The other Igbo guy was arrested in Adamawa, that one's case was a Boko Haram-related offence.
"But those of us who were arrested in that same vehicle that conveyed us to the military cantonment, we were 10 in number but we met so many other Igbo youths there.
"By the time we got there, those other ones from Port Harcourt, they had already been there for some days. We met them there."