Isaiah Chukwuema, a father of two from Ebonyi State, was killed by operatives of the Anti-Kidnapping Unit of the Imo State Police Command, better known as Tiger Base, after his arrest 27 months ago, according to those familiar with the case.

Arrested on September 23, 2023, Chukwuema was kept incommunicado in a cell at the facility in Owerri, prevented from speaking with his wife, two kids and relatives.

The police unit alleged that he was an armed robber and kidnapper, dispossessing people of their vehicles and other valuables.

Abel, the suspect’s brother, told FIJ that the officers in charge of the case demanded N15 million for his release.

Read Also: My Tiger Base Owerri experience, By Chinedu Agu

Despite the allegations and the unit’s confident assertion that the suspect was involved in various crimes, they failed to produce him in court for a lawful prosecution.

Instead, he was kept in ‘Cell One’, which FIJ learnt is meant for suspects whose fate is death.

Abel, the suspect’s brother, told FIJ about the failure of the family’s efforts to secure his release or get the police to legally prosecute him.

“Even after involving Aboki Danjuma, the Imo police commissioner then; and the assistant inspector general of police at Zone 9 in Umuahia, the unit declined to obey the directives to arraign my brother,” Abel told FIJ on Wednesday.

FIJ earlier reported how Abel was detained at the facility for one month and six days after visiting his brother.

Chidi Igwe, an inspector, was the investigating police officer (IPO) over Abel’s case. A petition by Abel spurred Danjuma to invite him and the IPO into his office.

“Danjuma asked Igwe why I was detained, he said it was for investigation and that they had released me because they could not establish any case against me,” Abel said.

“The commissioner then directed Igwe to charge my brother to court. But this did not happen. My brother remained in the cell.”

According to the source, Isaiah was a car dealer. The police retrieved a vehicle they claimed belonged to a man who was robbed and murdered. But Isaiah told the police that the car was sold to him by a customer.

The police decided to use the suspect as bait to arrest the said seller, so they asked him to call the seller for another business.

“But the seller overheard their conversation in the background, got a hint of why my brother was calling and he escaped,” said Abel.

“My brother told the police he did not know the seller’s home address as their relationship was strictly business. On the day I was released, I bought garri, bread, water and other items for him and others in their cell. Until this point, I did not know the exact cell he was in.

“I just bought the groceries and told the policeman on duty who I wanted to give them to and he asked me to write down his name. When he said the name, he said Eeyah and you don’t know your brother is in this cell o.’”

He added that the police rebuffed the family lawyers’ enquiries about Isaiah’s presence at the facility until he paid N600,000 in cash.

“Even when lawyers were going there, they denied he was in their cell. Moreover, his name was not on the suspect board. They put him in ‘Cell One’, also called ‘Commander Cell’. Anyone inside it is not meant to live. If they put you in that place, you already know you are gone.

“The money made the officers allow people access to my brother. Considering their modus operandi, I doubt they are normal police officers because they take laws into their own hands.”

ISAIAH’s DEATH

Earlier this year, David Erinma, a lawyer, was at the station to press for the arraignment of Isaiah, but he received a shocking announcement from Oladimeji Odeyeyiwa, head of the station, known as ‘Commander Ola’.

“I don’t want to talk about it because I am highly disappointed in the police. It was an unfortunate incident when they said the guy was late. Where is his body?” Erinma told FIJ on Wednesday.

“Ola said it in the presence of Abel and Isaiah’s wife. Ola told us that we should not come to the station again. This is not a hearsay. I was there as their lawyer. Isaiah spent more than two years in detention. A lot of things are happening in that place.

“The CP even ordered the commander to charge the matter to court but he did not. My position as a lawyer was that they should take him to court with their evidence.”

Abel also corroborated the lawyer’s statement, adding that “they said my brother was sick and could not make it”.

“Was the family informed of my brother’s so-called sickness? Was the family informed of his death? And where was his body?”

Another lawyer who was also detained by Tiger Base in 2024 told FIJ he saw Isaiah in detention.

“I met Isaiah in the cell last year when I was in detention. When Abel went to check on him at Tiger Base and seek his bail, the police bundled him inside the cell and he spent over 1 month in detention before they released him after extorting huge amounts of money from him,” said the lawyer, who later challenged his own detention at the station in court and won.

‘I CAN’T TELL ABOUT HIS WHEREABOUTS’

Speaking on the phone on Thursday, Igwe, the officer responsible for the two brothers’ detention, said he could not tell FIJ where Isaiah was.

“There was a suspected murder incident in Imo State on August 16, 2023. The victims were one Akachukwu and Chubuike, who has not been seen since then but his vehicle was found with Isaiah in Edo State,” said Igwe.

“Before his arrest, he conspired with some people, attacked and killed one man. An autopsy was conducted. I have videos about all his criminal activities. Through tactical intelligence and the link we have with the Ebonyi State Police Command, CSP Bruno arrested Isaiah with the vehicle in Ebonyi.

“When the Ebonyi command could not get enough facts, they granted Isaiah bail and Abel stood surety for him. When we requested a transfer of Isaiah to us, they said they had released him.

“While they were making efforts to re-arrest him, he ran away, knowing what he did. They arrested Abel and handed him over to us. Four days after or thereabouts, we arrested Isaiah and released Abel.

“Isaiah confessed to the crimes in the presence of Abel, his wife and lawyer. I don’t want to talk much about this matter. The police authorities are going to react.”

When asked whether the suspect was prosecuted, Igwe said he did not want to tell FIJ “anything about it”.

“As I told you, if you want video evidence, I will show you the details,” he said.

This article was originally written and published by FIJ on 19.12.2025

By Kirsten Okenwa

Minamata Bay is located in the small factory town of Minamata, Kumamoto Prefecture, Japan. The waters of Minamata Bay are calm now. Along the Japanese coastline, tourists stroll past a gleaming ecological museum that documents one of the world’s most devastating industrial disasters. Few traces remain of the invisible poison that once devastated this fishing community. Yet Minamata’s lesson, that mercury poisoning is slow, merciless, and generational, has never been more relevant. Thousands of miles away, Nigeria is confronting its own version of that ghost.

In late November 2025, Nigeria announced it would fully implement the Minamata Convention on Mercury, a global treaty born from Japan’s tragedy. For Africa’s most populous nation, the declaration was more than a diplomatic milestone. It was an acknowledgement that mercury pollution, embedded in artisanal gold mining, imported consumer goods, and fragile waterways, has become a national public health threat. The question now is whether Nigeria can turn promise into protection for millions of vulnerable citizens.

A Tragedy That Shaped Global Law

Minamata’s story is a cautionary tale written in human suffering. From the 1930s to the 1960s, the Chisso Chemical Corporation discharged mercury-laden wastewater into Minamata Bay. Bacteria converted the waste into methylmercury, which accumulated in fish and shellfish, the community’s primary food source. What followed was a slow catastrophe. Cats convulsed and died. Fishermen lost control of their limbs. Children were born with severe neurological deformities.

Despite early warnings from local researchers, official recognition came only in 1968, long after thousands had been poisoned. Minamata became synonymous with corporate negligence and regulatory failure. It also became a catalyst. In 2013, the international community adopted the Minamata Convention on Mercury, a legally binding treaty designed to prevent such disasters by regulating mercury across its entire life cycle.

The convention seeks to phase out mercury-added products, ban new mercury mines, control industrial emissions, and protect populations most at risk. It targets batteries, certain lamps, cosmetics such as skin-lightening creams, pesticides, and medical devices, while also addressing mercury use in artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM), the sector most relevant to Nigeria.

Nigeria’s Long Road to Commitment

Nigeria signed the Minamata Convention in 2013 and ratified it in 2018, formally binding itself to its provisions. Early steps followed a familiar pattern: committees were formed, assessments conducted, and action plans drafted. A National Action Plan for artisanal mining emerged, supported by international partners such as the United Nations Environment Programme and the Global Environment Facility.

But implementation lagged. Mercury remained overshadowed by more visible environmental crises: oil pollution in the Niger Delta, deforestation, and climate stress. That changed in November 2025, when Environment Minister Balarabe Abbas Lawal announced Nigeria’s move toward “full implementation” of the convention. Environmental analysts described the declaration as Nigeria’s most decisive stance yet against a pollutant that has quietly infiltrated homes, markets, and mining communities.

For a country of more than 200 million people, the stakes could not be higher.

A Silent Epidemic in Gold-Rich Soil

Mercury’s most devastating footprint in Nigeria lies in artisanal gold mining. Between half a million and one million Nigerians depend on ASGM for survival, particularly in states such as Zamfara, Niger, Osun, and Kwara. The process is crude and hazardous. Liquid mercury is mixed with crushed ore to bind gold particles into an amalgam, which is then burned over open flames. Mercury vapor fills the air, inhaled by miners, their families, and neighbors, while residues contaminate soil and water.

“You see children playing near processing sites,” says Grace Okon, a public health worker in Zamfara. “They breathe it, touch it, ingest it. Mercury doesn’t stop with the miner; it spreads through the whole community.”

The symptoms are often subtle at first: tremors, memory loss, fatigue, and impaired coordination. Over time, mercury damages the nervous system, kidneys, and developing brains of unborn children. Unlike Minamata, where poisoned seafood offered a clear culprit, Nigeria’s exposure is diffuse and poorly documented, making accountability elusive.

Lives Behind the Statistics

In Bagega, Zamfara State, global attention once focused on lead poisoning linked to gold mining. Mercury followed quietly. Aisha Bello, a 32-year-old mother of four, has never worked in a mine, yet she experiences chronic tremors and numbness. “My husband burns gold in our compound,” she says. “When the smoke comes, we close the door, but it still enters.” Two of her children struggle with delayed speech and learning difficulties.

In Niger State, miner Musa Sadiq admits he learned mercury use from older miners. “We didn’t know it was poison,” he says. Now he complains of blurred vision and coughing blood, but rural clinics lack the capacity to test for mercury exposure.

Urban Nigeria tells a different, quieter story. In Lagos and Aba, doctors continue to treat women with kidney and neurological damage linked to mercury-containing skin-lightening creams. One Lagos physician recalls a 26-year-old fashion retailer whose illness traced back to prolonged cosmetic use. “She wasn’t a miner,” the doctor says. “She was just trying to look lighter.”

Along rivers feeding the Niger and Osun systems, fishermen report declining catches and deformed fish near informal mining zones upstream. Environmental researchers have detected elevated mercury levels in sediments, echoes, however faint, of Minamata Bay.

The Treaty’s Limits and Nigeria’s Test

The Minamata Convention is ambitious, but its effectiveness depends on national enforcement. While it restricts the manufacture and trade of mercury-added products, it does not automatically ban the use of items already in circulation. Countries must go further if they want faster results.

Nigeria’s challenge is immense. More than 80 percent of artisanal mining operates informally, beyond regulatory reach. Mercury remains cheap, accessible, and familiar. Border controls struggle to intercept banned products, while environmental agencies are underfunded and understaffed. Reliable data on mercury emissions and contamination hotspots is scarce.

“We are fighting a ghost we cannot fully see,” admits a mid-level official in the Federal Ministry of Environment.

Yet Nigeria’s 2025 pledge suggests a shift from rhetoric to resolve. Under initiatives such as GEF-GOLD+, miners in pilot communities are being trained in mercury-free techniques like gravity concentration and direct smelting. Retorts, devices that capture mercury vapour, are being introduced as interim risk-reduction tools. Regulators are coordinating more closely to intercept mercury-laced cosmetics and lamps at ports and markets, while public awareness campaigns in local languages are beginning to take root.

Beyond Compliance

True “full implementation” will require Nigeria to go beyond minimum treaty obligations. That means tightening border enforcement, formalising artisanal mining, expanding health surveillance in mining communities, and enacting national bans on the most dangerous mercury-added products still in use. It also means confronting the legacy stockpile: millions of mercury-containing items already in homes and clinics.

If Nigeria succeeds, the implications will reach far beyond its borders. As West Africa’s economic heavyweight, Nigeria could set a regional precedent, attracting international funding and pressuring neighbours to follow suit. Failure, however, would reinforce the notion that global environmental treaties falter where governance is weakest.

A Slow Reckoning

Mercury pollution rarely announces itself with spectacle. It creeps through smoke, dust, water, and skin. Minamata taught the world that delay multiplies suffering. Nigeria now stands at a crossroads, armed with foresight that Japan lacked and with global support forged from past mistakes.

Whether Nigeria’s 2025 declaration becomes a turning point will be decided far from conference halls, in mining pits, border posts, markets, and maternity wards. That is where the true fight against mercury will be won or lost.

The waters of Minamata Bay are finally clean. The lesson they carry is eternal: prevention is not optional, and memory must translate into action. Nigeria has declared it is ready to confront the ghost of Minamata. The world is watching to see if it can lay that ghost to rest.

Kirsten Okenwa is an Industrial Chemist. She is fervent about social enterprise, rural development, agriculture and food systems.

In a discreet corner of London, a centuries-old tradition endures—one strand of horsehair at a time. Beneath the historic storefront of Ede and Ravenscroft, the city’s oldest tailor, artisans continue to craft the wigs that have defined Britain’s legal identity for more than 300 years.

Founded in 1689, Ede and Ravenscroft remains the primary supplier of wigs for barristers, judges and ceremonial occasions. Hidden below street level is the wig room, where each piece is still made largely by hand, following methods that have changed little since the early days of the English courts.

“These aren’t costumes,” Christopher Allan, court and ceremonial manager at Ede and Ravenscroft, told Newsweek. “The legal profession today dresses much the same way it did several hundred years ago.” The system, he explained, is built on hierarchy, symbolism and continuity—values reflected in the wigs themselves.

There are three primary types. Barristers wear the simplest design in open court. Judges don a more elaborate version, while the full-bottom wig—long, flowing and unmistakable—is reserved for ceremonial and state occasions. Each style serves a distinct role, and each requires weeks of painstaking labour.

A standard barrister’s wig takes around three weeks to complete. A full-bottom ceremonial wig can take up to two months. All are made from carefully treated horsehair, which is colour-graded to avoid an unnaturally bright appearance. New barristers often request wigs that appear slightly aged, a subtle way of avoiding any visual suggestion of inexperience.

Beyond tradition, the wigs serve a functional purpose. Andrew Eborn, a barrister since 1985, said there are three reasons they remain essential: to preserve the solemnity of court proceedings, to maintain continuity with the past and, critically, to provide anonymity.

“The wig acts like a uniform,” Eborn explained. “It removes individuality. In court, you are not there as yourself—you are there as a representative of the law.” He likened putting on the wig to “a knight donning his armour.”

For many barristers, that moment marks a rite of passage. After years of training and study, the wig signals a psychological shift—from student to advocate, from observer to defender. Despite broader changes in society and the legal profession, that symbolism has endured.

To outsiders, the practice may seem antiquated, even theatrical. But within the justice system, the wigs remain powerful markers of responsibility and restraint. In an age of fast fashion and digital disruption, their continued use reflects a deep reverence for legal heritage.

From powdered horsehair to polished legal arguments, Britain’s courtroom wigs continue to bridge past and present—an enduring symbol of authority, anonymity and tradition in modern law.

Distinguished members of the press, leaders of civil society, my learned colleagues at the Bar, comrades in the human-rights movement, ladies and gentlemen.

I am grateful to the Coalition Against Police Tigerbase Impunity [CAPTI] for the courage and diligence that produced this report. Today is not merely about unveiling a document; it is about confronting a painful truth that many Nigerians live with daily but are often afraid to articulate. I speak to you as a lawyer, as a former Secretary of the Nigerian Bar Association, Owerri Branch, as a human-rights activist, and more importantly, and as a victim and survivor of police impunity, qualified by lived experience to speak on this matter. What I say today is not conjecture. It is testimony.

In September 2025, I was arrested by the police. I was detained in police custody beyond the constitutionally prescribed period. I was later arraigned and remanded in prison custody for twenty-eight days by *His Worship, Obinna Njemanze,* of the Magistrate Court, Owerri. While in custody, I approached the Federal High Court sitting in Owerri for bail. My application was refused by the court, coram *Honourable Justice Chituru Joy Wigwe-Oreh,* on the ground that there was no pending charge before her upon which bail could be anchored. I recount these facts deliberately and carefully. At no point was I convicted of any offence. At no point was I found guilty by any court of competent jurisdiction. Yet, I lost my liberty. That experience places me not merely as an observer, but as one of the survivors of the high-handedness of law enforcement, a high-handedness that is too often embellished, legitimised, or permitted by systemic failures within the justice architecture.

That experience was not abstract. It was lived. And it exposed me to the grim realities of detention practices in Imo State, particularly as they relate to the operations of the Anti-Kidnapping Unit popularly known as Tigerbase.

While I was in custody, I witnessed something deeply disturbing. On a routine basis, weekly, and sometimes more frequently, Tigerbase operatives brought groups of detainees into the prison. A striking number of them had never been arraigned before any court. Many had spent prolonged periods in custody without formal charges. What was even more troubling was that a significant number of those transferred from the unit to the prison were individuals who could not afford the exorbitant sums running into millions of naira that they were allegedly demanded to pay for their release. In effect, liberty had become monetised. Freedom was no longer tied to innocence or guilt, but to financial capacity. Detention itself had become a tool of coercion and punishment for the poor.

I listened to confessions volunteered to me by fellow inmates, not in the comfort of a lawyer’s office, but in the raw vulnerability of incarceration. Men spoke of brutal beatings, of prolonged suspension, of mock executions, and of crucifixion-style torture, where limbs were stretched, tied, and suspended in positions calculated to break the human body and spirit. They spoke of threats of death, of harm to family members, and of being forced to sign statements they did not write, admitting to crimes they did not commit. These were not isolated allegations. They were recurring patterns, told with the same fear, the same exhaustion, and the same sense of abandonment.

What makes these abuses particularly alarming is that they persist in open defiance of clear provisions of the law. To properly contextualise this, permit me to quote directly from a public broadcast by the Secretary of the NBA Owerri Human Rights Committee, Ikechukwu Godwin Umah, delivered on 10 December 2025 to mark International Human Rights Day. He stated:

“Section 36 of the Administration of Criminal Justice Law of Imo State provides for the Inspection of Police cells by the Chief Magistrates once every month. During this inspection, the chief Magistrates would sit in a location as a full court and hear cases, granting bail in deserving cases and ordering the arraignment of others within a specific time frame. We would usually inspect the detention centres within the premises of the police headquarters as well as divisions within the metropolis. Usually, they would remove the detainees they do not want us to meet and present the ones they want us to see. Most of the featherweight cases would have their detainees relocated from the cells while presenting to us the very serious ones whose bail applications the Chief Magistrate would refuse to grant either for want of jurisdiction or for the severity of their cases.*_

“But guess what? No one dares enter the cells of the anti-kidnapping unit [Tigerbase Unit]. Against extant provisions of the law and without justification whatsoever, the successive officers in charge of the legal unit [OCs Legal] have succeeded in convincing the Commissioner of Police Imo State, Aboki Danjuma, that a minimum of three days’ notice was required to be given to the police before the chief Magistrate could be allowed to visit and inspect the cells. This aberration has given the police enormous opportunity to always relocate detainees of their choice ahead of the inspection. But in the case of the Anti-Kidnapping Unit, the gates of the unit are permanently locked without either entrance or exit until the exercise is over. Chief Magistrates have been locked out of the Tigerbase Unit severally.

_*”The claim by the Imo State Police Command Public Relations Officer that no detainee spent more than two days in the anti-kidnapping unit without a court order is an outright falsehood. It is, however, known that a certain Magistrate, whom I am told retired recently, was in the habit of issuing remand orders without the defendants being arraigned in his court. This has seen some detainees moved straight from the Tigerbase Unit to the prison without stepping foot in any courtroom for arraignment.”*_

That quotation is not rhetoric. It is a factual account from within the justice system itself. It confirms that the Anti-Kidnapping Unit has been deliberately insulated from judicial oversight and placed above the safeguards provided by law.

The consequences of this insulation are already manifest. In Suit *No. CC/GB/35/2025, Ugorji v. Ajurunwa,* a customary court sitting at Mmahu in Ohaji/Egbema Local Government Area of Imo State, delivered judgment in a land dispute. Instead of complying with the judgment or exercising his right of appeal, the judgment debtor employed the services of the Tigerbase Unit. The operatives arrested the judgment creditor, led the judgment debtor to the disputed land, supervised his fencing of the land, and stopped judgment creditor from burying his deceased relative on that land. This occurred despite the judgment creditor informing them that a court of competent jurisdiction had already delivered judgment in the matter. In that moment, a court judgment was rendered useless by police action. When that happens, the rule of law is no longer under threat; it has been suspended.

Let me be clear and fair. Kidnapping is a grave crime and on the rise in Imo State, and we appreciate the efforts of the Tigerbase Unit in combating it. The legitimate successes recorded by them in protecting lives and property are acknowledged. However, no operational achievement can excuse torture, extortion, illegal detention, contempt for court orders, or the systematic erosion of due process. Professional policing and respect for human rights are not competing ideals; they are inseparable obligations. When good work is used as a shield to cover unprofessionalism, corruption, and lawlessness, public trust is destroyed.

What is required is not denial, propaganda, or defensiveness, but a total and transparent overhaul of the Anti-Kidnapping Unit in Imo State; an overhaul that restores judicial oversight, enforces strict compliance with the Administration of Criminal Justice Law, sanctions erring officers, and re-centres human dignity as the foundation of security operations.

My own ordeal did not diminish my faith in the law; it deepened it. This report must not end as a press event. It must mark the beginning of accountability. For when law enforcement operates without restraint, justice becomes accidental, and freedom becomes fragile.

Thank you for listening to me. ■

Being remarks by Chinedu Agu, Esq., on the occasion of the public presentation of the “Tiger Base Files”, a report by the Coalition Against Police Tigerbase Impunity (CAPTI, at Social Action 20 Yalinga Street, Wuse 2, Abuja, on Monday 15th December, 2025.