Beyond Frank Omenka’s moonlight tales, By Olusegun Adeniyi

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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 cannot count the number of people who have forwarded to me the interview granted by Colonel Frank Omenka (published by Premium Times, among others), where he made copious references to me. In the first part, 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.”

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In another part, he 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. The person whose name I gave, I think must be the wife, or the girlfriend then. He sat down. So, he came early. He wasn’t detained. Ask him whether he was detained in my office.” In yet another part of the interview, Omenka again made allusion to me: “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 Second Republic Kwara State Governor, Chief Cornelius Olatunji Adebayo (who died last year) in his rented three-bedroom flat in Surulere, Lagos. I was then an Assistant Editor at Sunday Concord, with Mr Tunji Bello (currently the Chief Executive Officer of the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission) as the Editor. A prominent NADECO member, Adebayo — who later served as a minister under President Olusegun Obasanjo — had been arrested along with the late Chief Anthony Enahoro, and detained first in Abuja and then later in Calabar Prison for eight months. A few weeks after regaining freedom, Adebayo was forewarned that Abacha’s gunmen were after him, so he fled the country, first to Abidjan, Cote D’Ivoire, before he eventually ended up in Canada, where he took up asylum. It was while in Abidjan that his Personal Assistant, the late Mr Jonathan Olalere Laiyemo, visited him. On the way back to Nigeria, Laiyemo was arrested at the Seme border by security people, who found all the letters he (Adebayo) wrote to NADECO/Afenifere colleagues (Chiefs Abraham Adesanya, Ayo Adebanjo and Olanihun Ajayi, who are now of blessed memories) and family members, including me. I was also to deliver the other letters. That was how I entered Omenka’s frame.

“…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 5p.m. to endure verbal abuse, bullying and threats in the name of interrogation that lasted five days.”

However, contrary to Omenka’s claim, I have never shared my DMI experience in any of my books. But it is true that he neither hit me nor did I see him or any of his men physically assault anybody throughout the period I was in their office. Eight years ago, on the 20th anniversary of the death of General Sani Abacha, and one year to the 2019 general election in which the late President Muhammadu Buhari was seeking a second term, I used that memorable encounter with Omenka to make a critical point in my column in THISDAY. That point is as valid today as it was eight years ago: 

“…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 5p.m. 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…” 

I wrote the foregoing on 7th June 2018 in my THISDAY column, and I hope some people would still get the message as they plot their ‘rehearsals’ for the 2027 general election. To Colonel Frank Omenka, please accept my sympathy. This ‘small boy’ has since moved on with his life. But no matter how hard you try, you cannot rewrite history!

NOTE: In that same column of eight years ago in THISDAY, ’20 Years after Abacha: Lest we Forget,’ this was my conclusion:

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“Given the internal contradictions that have led to convulsions within the ruling APC, the orgy of violence in certain theatres across the country and the manner in which institutions of state are now being used to fight personal battles, there are genuine reasons to be apprehensive as democracy loses its meaning when mob passion or crude coercion overwhelms the rule of law and public decency. Yet, if there is any lesson we must learn from the Abacha era, it is that when the security and law enforcement institutions become extensions of the political agenda of the incumbent and the political elite cannot see beyond its narrow interests, the society can never advance or be peaceful.

As we therefore approach the 2019 general election, with the security agencies preoccupied with regime protection, at a time a cult of personality has effectively been built around the president by an uncritical mob, the answer to the question Abacha posed to our system (before the divine intervention of 8th June 1988) lies in the people not letting down their guards. Eternal vigilance, as the old saying goes, is the price of liberty!”

ENDNOTE: I wrote the foregoing on 7th June 2018 in my THISDAY column, and I hope some people would still get the message as they plot their ‘rehearsals’ for the 2027 general election. To Colonel Frank Omenka, please accept my sympathy. This ‘small boy’ has since moved on with his life. But no matter how hard you try, you cannot rewrite history!

Olusegun Adeniyi, a former presidential spokesman, is currently the Chairman of THISDAY Editorial Board.