A teenager has revealed how he was allegedly raped several times by inmates while being remanded in Kirikiri Prisons, Lagos.
The victim, simply identified as Bashua (surname withheld), said that the incident occurred in 2014, when he was just 16 years old.
He accused policemen of doctoring his age to ensure that he was arraigned and sent to prison.
Bashua had recently regained his freedom through the intervention of a nongovernmental organization, the Stephen and Solomon Foundation, under the leadership of a Lagos-based human rights lawyer, Mr. Giwa Amu. Bashua, a secondary school student, said he was returning home from a coaching class, when he was arrested by a team of policemen.
According to him, he was later charged to court for an offence he did not commit. He said, “I was remanded at the Kirikiri Prison and experienced being locked with over 100 inmates, who were older than me. I was molested sexually. I was defiled several times in a day.
“They would tell me not to cry. I was in remand for one month and those days were hell for me.
“I was going home from Epe after a coaching class, when a team of policemen on patrol, arrested me at Obalende and took me to Bar Beach Police Station, Victoria Island.
“The police kept me in a cell with other boys and suspects for one week. I was arrested on November 20, 2014.
The policemen told me and the other boys that we belonged to a gang that attacked a team of policemen. I denied the allegation.
“I told the policemen that I’m a secondary school student; I was just 16 years old, but they did not listen to me. They beat us mercilessly and said we should shut up. I was in police custody for one week with the other boys. Our parents were not aware we were in police custody.
“The police arraigned us at Igbosere Magistrates’ Court, Obalende. They doctored my age from 16 to 19 years. The magistrate ordered that we should be remanded in prison.”
Amu said that the case of the 16-year-old boy was most touching, adding, “His age was doctored to be 19. We started rehabilitating him since he was released because he told us that he was kept in the open cell, where there is high activity of homosexuality.
“He is undergoing treatment and we have placed him on scholarship so that he can continue his education.”
The human rights lawyer added that the boys were arraigned in court without being represented by any counsel.
“As part of our prison ministry, we visit the courts regularly to help indigent accused persons with free legal services. We happened to be in court the day they were to be arraigned. It was a dock brief and we found out that they did not have any lawyer,” he said.
