The Untold Story of the AEPB, Abuja’s Uniformed Female Harassment Unit

“They brought out two girls from the van and asked for money, those that didn’t have money were all raped by the police, anyone that paid was allowed to go and from the van, if you had no money you’d be raped before they left you go off the van.”

When Cynthia (name has been changed) went out with a group of her friends in Abuja on April 26, 2019, she probably envisaged a nice Friday night out with the girls after a hard week at work. Like many other single women living in Abuja, Cynthia was attracted to the relatively dynamic economy and vibrant, cosmopolitan lifestyle available in the federal capital. Unlike many other places in Nigeria where simply coming out at night is an extreme sport, the seat of Nigeria’s federal government offered a semblance of normalcy.

The group of friends settled for a club called ‘Cloud 9’ at the Nadrem Emporium on 3rd Avenue, Gwarimpa. Suddenly the party was broken up by a large group of men who barged in, demanding that Cynthia and her friends stand up and follow them outside immediately. When they naturally resisted this unwanted intrusion on their evening outing, they were dragged outside along with the other women in the club. Outside they saw a convoy of law enforcement and armed forces vehicles including police, NSCDC, army, immigration and even the prisons service.

Cynthia didn’t know it yet, but this would be the start of a 4-day ordeal in the hands of the police at the behest of the Abuja Environmental Protection Board (AEPB), a hitherto little-known agency which has since gained a fearsome reputation in the city, for its singular commitment to rape, extortion and harassment of young women. Over the ensuing 96 hours, she and at least 70 other young female detainees were tear gassed in a locked police cell, denied food, water or sanitary provisions and raped by police officers if they could not pay for their freedom.

Their crime? 

Apparently existing while female in Abuja.

Abuja’s Targeted Female Raids: Officially Sanctioned Rape and Extortion Racketeering

While putting this story together, I spoke to six different victims of these raids, all of whom came from markedly different backgrounds and circumstances. While Cynthia was hanging out with her friends Patricia, Mary and Judith at a club (all names have been changed), Mercy was standing at the roadside waiting for a “keke” while Peace was at a hotel for a friend’s birthday. None of these women was doing anything particularly out of the ordinary, much less wrong. Yet they all had more or less the same story, give or take a few details.

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Mercy was accosted while waiting for a keke and abducted by a group of touts working for the AEPB. From going about her normal business, she found herself in police detention facing verbal and physical violence for no reason at all in the space of a few minutes. Even worse as she said to my mounting amazement, she has been abducted under similar circumstances three times this year alone. For added incredulity, she revealed that on one such occasion, she was taken to the FCT High Court at Zuba and instructed to plead guilty to whatever she was charged with, lest she risk going to Suleja prison.

My mouth nearly fell open when she said that she actually did so. Apparently, it really was a choice between pleading guilty to a nonsensical charge or finding herself remanded in a notorious prison in Niger State – for absolutely no reason. It did not escape my notice that this practise of scaring innocent people into pleading guilty to charges they do not understand could mean that a significant population of Suleja prison probably consists of innocent young women abducted from the streets of Abuja and forced to plead guilty to…anything including murder, terrorism and robbery.

Mercy got off fairly lightly, because she was charged only with “causing nuisance” – an offense which, while completely nonsensical, at least let her regain her freedom immediately. Peace on the other hand, was not so lucky. Of all the victims; horrible stories, hers perhaps was the most pitiful of the bunch because of how unlikely it was. A regular middle-class professional working a 9-5 job, she was lodged in her hotel room celebrating a friend’s birthday when she decided to buy water from the reception. Nobody answered the intercom, so she stepped out of her room to go downstairs herself. She did not even lock the door.

Describing what happened next she said:

Immediately I got to the reception, one woman came and held my hands and insisted that I should follow her and I was like “Ma, what happened?” She then said I should just respect myself and follow her, she continued dragging me until when we got outside, I saw cameras and a large crowd with people videoing with their phones, I saw so many hilux [sic] with police, immigration civil defence, military, etc. They were just so many along with touts in reflective jackets. I saw other girls being dragged into the buses. They even went to the extent of knocking the hotel rooms, they will knock the hotel doors and if you open the door and you happen to be a lady, they will drag you out of the rooms into the buses, it got to one girl, they did not only drag her out of the hotel room, they dragged her and pull her clothes before the cameras and took a naked picture of her, they took her clothes off and she was naked and took pictures of her.”

peace

The Curious Case of “Hajiya Safiya,” Mastermind Behind the Abduction of Abuja women

Through the course of the difficult conversations with all six women, one name kept coming up persistently as a chief protagonist of the newfangled rule-of-rape regime – a certain “Hajiya Safiya.” A search on Google reveals some important things about this person. First of all, she appears to be a ghost. Despite currently being a high profile public servant in the nation’s capital, Acting Secretary to the FCT Social Development Secretariat (SDS) Hajiya Safiya Umar, alias “Hajiya Safiya” has no pictures online, in the time honoured tradition of human rights luminaries like Col. Frank Omenka.

Second, Mrs. Umar appears to be something of a hypocrite. She is on record for criticising Senator Elisha Abbo for assaulting a woman in July this year. Three months before that episode however, she directly and openly coordinated one of the worst human rights violations in the history of Nigerian democracy. Under her instruction, hundreds of women including nursing mothers were raped, assaulted, kidnapped and unlawfully detained in filthy conditions. She continues to defend her actions, while publicly condemning a woman-beater.

I mentioned that to properly contextualise the type of human being Mrs. Umar is, to all intents and purposes. One of those people.

Cynthia’s description of her encounter with Hajiya Safiya  mentioned that while she was lucky enough to get out on Friday night, she came back on Saturday morning to bail out her friends, only to be thrown into the cell on the orders of this “Hajiya Safiya.” Describing how it happened, she told me that upon getting to the station, she spotted a livid woman only known as “Hajiya Safiya,” who wanted to know why the police granted bail to some of the girls from the previous night’s raid. The lady did not want to know how the police did it, but she had one simple message for them:

“GET THOSE GIRLS BACK!”

hajiya safiya umar

Due to the sheer misfortune of being present at the police station then, Cynthia was promptly rearrested, notwithstanding the N3,000 she had already paid to bail herself out the previous night – a sum that was not refunded to her.. Later that night, the police went out again on Hajiya Safiya’s orders, abducting and detaining more women including a nursing mother with a two-month old baby.

When she appeared before the National Human Rights Commission on May 16 to explain the events of April 26, Mrs. Umar delivered the dismissive, nauseatingly self-righteous performance typical of Nigerian public office holders who think they are doing the country a favour by being in office. Responding to the well-established and widespread reports of rape and brutality that accompanied the Abuja raids, she flatly denied  them and conveniently feigned ignorance of any such possibility. Presumably, it was a stretch to imagine that the famously professional and well-behaved lower ranks of the police could do such things when given free reign and assisted by civilian touts. 

In between the gratuitous dishonesty though, she did freely admit to being one of the principal brains behind the April raids that launched the AEPB into its ferocious new phase of existence as a sort of female-focused SARS. In her view, these raids were necessa