Colonel Frank Omenka's Comments on My Past

Many people have sent me the interview Colonel Frank Omenka gave, published by Premium Times and others, where he talked about me. He said, “There are many approaches to interrogation. It depends on the condition. I didn’t touch anybody with the ones I used. There’s this boy, Olusegun Adeniyi. He’s a pressman like you people. When I took over the Security Group, I think he had been invited before I took over. But he came. I looked at him. I said, such a small boy. He came there because he was arrested for being a courier for one Cornelius Adebayo or something. I said, don’t do this. This is not good. When he left, what did he do? He wrote a book, saying that I was hostile to him. Yes, people are mad because they suffered.”

In another part of the interview, Omenka said, “When Olusegun Adeniyi was released, I begged him not to do anything that had to do with being a courier or a drug peddler, carrying cocaine or something. Don’t put yourself in trouble. I said, go. Come back tomorrow by 10 o’clock. Ask him. As he was about to go, I just said, just one minute. Please come back. Don’t put us in trouble. In any case, if you don’t come back, we are going to arrest this person. I gave a name that we had done a job on before. He sat down in my office, sweating. I said, no, you can just go. Tomorrow, come back around 10 A.M.” The next day, he came back before 10. He wasn’t detained. Ask him whether he was detained in my office.” Omenka also mentioned, “This other boy, Adeniyi, I think he was doing courier job for, not NADECO per se, but for the agitators.”

My encounter with Omenka happened 30 years ago when I was living with former Kwara State Governor, Chief Cornelius Olatunji Adebayo, who passed away last year. I stayed in his rented three-bedroom flat in Surulere, Lagos. At that time, I was an Assistant Editor at Sunday Concord with Mr Tunji Bello as the Editor. Adebayo was a well-known NADECO member and later served as a Minister under President Olusegun Obasanjo. He was arrested with the late Chief Anthony Enahoro and detained for eight months. A few weeks after he was released, Adebayo learned that Abacha’s men were after him. He fled to Abidjan, Cote D’Ivoire, and then to Canada for asylum. While in Abidjan, his Personal Assistant, the late Mr Jonathan Olalere Laiyemo, visited him. On his way back to Nigeria, Laiyemo was arrested at the Seme border by security agents who found letters meant for NADECO/Afenifere colleagues and family members, including me. That was how I got involved with Omenka.

Contrary to Omenka’s claims, I have never shared my DMI experience in any of my books. But it is true that he never hit me, nor did I see him or his men physically harm anyone while I was at their office. Eight years ago, on the 20th anniversary of General Sani Abacha’s death, I wrote about my encounter with Omenka in my column in THISDAY. The point I made then still stands today:

…As an assistant editor at Sunday Concord, I was arrested around 3 a.m. in October 1996 by truckloads of soldiers who were shocked to see a “small boy” and became sympathetic the moment they realised I was a journalist (they told me they thought I was a ‘419’ kingpin since no reason was given them for the arrest). Dumped at the DMI dungeon in Apapa at that ungodly time of the day, I did not get to meet the much-dreaded DMI Director, Col Frank Omenka until around 5pm to endure verbal abuse, bullying and threats in the name of interrogation that lasted five days. While I will tell my story if I live long enough to write a biography, I can never forget that, right in my presence, a man was hurled into the room to whom Omenka threatened: “I will detain you here tonight and organise some boys to go and rape your wife at home.”

After the distraught man had been dragged away, Omenka now turned to me. “I will let you go home tonight but you must come back tomorrow with everything you have ever written, including your latest piece where you compared General Abacha with Idi Amin. Meanwhile, greet your wife for me.” When I replied that I was not married, he countered: “I know that already. But you have a fiancée who is undergoing her youth service in Ogun State.” Seeing how shocked I was, Omenka pressed his advantage. “I know everything about you. You are a lucky boy because my instruction before I left office yesterday was that my men should arrest and dump you in the underground cell for two months before bringing you to me but when I came this morning and I saw you asleep on the sofa, I had pity on you. But don’t push your luck because, as you must be aware, I stammer and I am already provoked. Since you are a small boy, maybe I can still mend you. And if I cannot, I will make your mother to weep over you…”

In my column eight years ago in THISDAY, ‘20 Years after Abacha: Lest we Forget,’ I concluded:

The internal issues within the ruling APC, the violence in some areas, and the way state institutions are used for personal battles show that democracy is losing its meaning. If there is any lesson from the Abacha era, it is that when security and law enforcement agencies become tools for political agendas, society cannot progress or find peace.

As we approach the 2019 elections, with security agencies focused on protecting the regime, the question Abacha posed before the divine intervention of 8th June 1988 is still relevant. The people must not lower their guard. Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom!

ENDNOTE: I wrote this on 7th June 2018 in my THISDAY column, and I hope some people still understand the message as they prepare for the 2027 elections. To Colonel Frank Omenka, my sympathy goes to you. This ‘small boy’ has moved on with his life. But no matter how hard you try, you cannot change the past!