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By Odinkalu
When I first met Elechi Larry Igwe early in 1991, he was safely ensconced in the bowels of a mortuary in Lagos.
Elechi, a resident of the United States of America, had flown into the Murtala Mohammed International Airport for the Christmas and New Year holidays in 1990 into 1991 on his way to his village in Abiriba, now in Abia State in South-East Nigeria. He neither made it home nor did he return to the USA. His journey ended in the Surulere Police Station. On his way from the airport to his hotel layover, some police men waylaid Elechi, abducted him to the police station and, having tortured him to their hearts’ content, mercifully put a bullet to his mouth shattering his mandibles, his facial structure and the lives that depended on him.
Elechi was one of a multitude of victims whose ordeals at the hands of the Nigeria Police Force and the security services defined my early life as a legal professional in Nigeria. All of them were either survivors…
