Daily Trust
Ibrahim Ali has an ugly scar on his left wrist and a bloody right eye. He is a drug user with a frail frame, sallow skin and a wobbly gait.
“I have been taking drugs for 12 years. I thought I was doing it for recreation but look at me now, I am sick and I need treatment but I can’t afford it. Worst of all, I am perceived as a criminal and not as a sick person. The police are always after people like me, even when we don’t commit crime(s),” he said in Hausa.
Ali is one of scores of young men and women who use drugs across Nigeria and have had hostile encounters with the police. On a daily basis, they are arrested, often tortured and incarcerated for smoking cannabis sativa, locally known as hemp, or taking other psychoactive substances. This investigation, alongside interviews with YouthRISE Nigeria, an Abuja based NonGovernmental Organization (NGO), working with international partners to improve the human rights of people who use drugs, has made startling revelations.
Operating under the cover of enforcing anti-drug laws, the police make arbitrary arrests of people who use drugs, in the process, torturing and injuring some, and violating their human rights.
Ali explained that he was shot in the wrist by the police near Sabon Gari Stadium, in January of 2018, but was abandoned at the Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital, by the same police who took him there. His parents and relations had to foot the medical bills.
“I was also arrested during the Eidel Fitr Sallah Durbar at State Road alongside 29 others. I was beaten up by the Kano State Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) and got injured in the eye. On that day, we were not smoking neither were we taking any substances. When they saw us hanging around watching the durbar, they pounced on us, claiming that we were hoodlums and ‘drug addicts’. We spent two days in the SARS detention facility and we were taken to court. But they told us that they did not have any case against us so anyone who had money should bail himself out. I paid N50,000 to regain my freedom,” he added.
Muhammadu Jamilu, 24, lives in Yankaba and is also drug dependent. He said he had been doing drugs for six years and he had been arrested many times by the police, either smoking hemp in the neighbourhood or while buying it.
“The police arrested me on Sallah day when I went to buy N100 worth of substances. When I saw them coming towards my direction, I started running and while they were chasing me, I tripped and fell. Then they arrested me and took me to Koki police station in Kano metropolis where I was detained for two days before my parents bailed me out with N4,500. But before I was released, I was flogged with a horsewhip; you can see the scars on my back,” he said.
He also said on another occasion, he was arrested by a policeman who was smoking hemp with him. He said he had a disagreement with his friend and he threatened to stab the friend, then the policeman who was allegedly smoking with them arrested him and took him to Farm Centre Police Station where he was detained for a day and taken to court at No Man’s Land.
He, however, said he was afraid to report the policeman to authorities. “I knew I wouldn’t get justice against a police officer,” he said.
“The court remanded me for six months but the governor pardoned me before I could complete the six months. While I was in prison, I could still get drugs,” he added.
But the Kano police command’s public relations officer, DSP Magaji Majia, told our reporter on phone that the areas mentioned in the report were black spots for crime. He said when police raid such places, they treat people whom they arrest there as criminals.
He added that those who use drugs in Kano were criminals and that the command would not relent in its efforts to rid the city of criminals.
“These people you are talking about are criminals. Each time our officers and men go to arrest them, they are armed with dangerous weapons. Even last week they killed an inspector in Yankaba,” he said.
Ibrahim Isa, 23, on his part alleged that he was arrested by National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) operatives early this year at Yankaba and driven to Wudil road. He said he did not have any substances on him but the NDLEA agents tortured him for being a ‘drug addict’ and they extorted N2,000 from him.
Responding to the allegations against the NDLEA agents, the Kano State commandant of the agency, Hamza Umar, said his officers do not torture suspects, adding that there were fake agents out there impersonating officers of the agency to extort money from unsuspecting members of the public.