Rights activist and lawyer, Inibehe Effiong, has narrated his ordeal during his incarceration at the Ikot Ekpene Medium Custodial Centre.
Effiong alleged that a prison official, with Facebook name Enobong Eyoren, threatened to “finish” him while torturing him in prison.
“Eyoren tortured and subjected me to the most humiliating and traumatic experience of my life for merely asking that the Assistant Controller of Corrections in Ikot Ekpene prison, ACC Edet Akpan, should give me time to arrange myself and have my bath, as I was not a criminal, when they wanted to transfer me from Ikot Ekpene to Uyo prison on August 10, 2022.”
He said that the ACC took this as an insult, saying “ACC Akpan angrily left and immediately unleashed Eyoren to deal with me. He knows why he choose Eyoren for the ‘job.’ He said these in a statement he shared on Wednesday.
The PUNCH reported that Effiong was committed to prison on July 27 by Justice Ekaette Obot for contempt. The lawyer spent one month in prison and came out August 26, 2022.
“I never offended Eyoren or looked for his trouble. Prior to August 10, I never had any form of confrontation or conversation with him.
“Yet, Eyoren treated me in the most violent, insolent and vindictive manner. As he was torturing me, he kept taunting me to look at his name. He said nothing would happen. He said repeatedly that he was going to “finish me” (a threat to my life). He even had the audacity to make a video record of me while I was being brutally shaved.
“He insisted that the beards and the hairs in my head should be completely shaved. Even when the barber (a fellow inmate) whom he brought and ordered to shave me against my wish wanted to stop, he shouted at him to shave me completely and was mocking me as I sat on the dirty bare floor. The current hairs on my head and the little beards that you’re seeing on me presently started growing from August 10. I was completely shaved,” he said, sharing the pictures of the said official.
“I expressly told Eyoren that I didn’t want to be shaved, but he became more violent. If I had physically resisted him, only God knows what would have happened.
“Eyoren grabbed me by the neck with the help of another officer, and they both dragged me by the neck from my cell in Ikot Ekepene Custodial Centre to outside where a van was stationed. I could barely breath.
“It was drizzling. Yet, Eyoren did not allow me to sit inside the van. He didn’t even allow me to enter the back of the van on my own. Eyoren and the other officer carried me up and flung me inside the back of the van like a piece of unused material. Even though two armed officers were also seated in the back of the van, Eyoren chained my left hand to the van. All the officers in Ikot Ekpene came out and were watching. Officers who pleaded with Eyoren to treat me with decency were snubbed.
“Was I going to run or what? If he thought that I could jump out and escape, why didn’t he just allow me to sit inside the van? Why did he have to chain me to the van like a dog despite that I didn’t resist in anyway? He didn’t even allow me to button up my shirt.
“Amb Armstrong Moses, a fellow inmate who was in the front of the van, pleaded with him to allow me to come to the front since there was space. But Eyoren rebuffed him. By the way, Moses Armstrong’s beards are about five to ten times more and longer than the beards that I kept before Eyoren had me shaved.
“Armstrong left the prison with his beards fully intact. Even Uduak Frank Akpan, who was convicted for the murder of the job seeker Iniubong Umoren had beards the day I arrived at the Uyo Medium Custodial Centre.
“After we arrived Uyo, Eyoren who works in Ikot Ekpene refused to leave despite being asked by the officers on duty in Uyo prison to let me be as I was then in their custody. Immediately the Uyo prison gate was opened, Eyoren ordered me to sit on the floor and continued his violent behaviour towards me. Some officers on duty in Uyo Custodial Centre pleaded with him to leave since he does not work in Uyo, but he started making frantic calls and the officers on duty had to back down; ostensibly after getting orders from above.
“Some people have said that I should let this matter go because Eyoren is a ”very dangerous man”, and may attack me with his fraternity “members. Others have said that I should forgive him. But how do I forgive a man who publicly violated my person and has not apologised publicly? I made it clear to the authorities of the Correctional Service that I wanted genuine remorse. Instead of apologising to me publicly, their Public Relations Officer in Akwa Ibom, Richard Metong, has been busy issuing false and provocative public statements against me. He publicly denied that I was tortured, and even claimed that I consented to be shaved, and that it was for security reasons. Where then is the genuine remorse?
“What I want is not peace; what I want is justice. No matter how powerful or violent you may be as a cultist, you should not believe that the whole world is afraid of you and as such you can do whatever you like to anyone without consequences,” the statement partly read.
He asked Eyoren to “explain to Nigerians how and when he plans to ‘finish me’. I am putting out his photos and this additional information for the world to know that this Eyoren threatened my life while assaulting me, and is yet to be punished for what he did to me.”
