Disappearing into Nigeria’s security architecture: Who accounts for southeast detainees?
By Okechukwu Nwanguma
There is an important story to be told about people who have disappeared amid security operations and separatist violence in Nigeria’s Southeast. But it should not be framed merely as a question of “missing persons.”
The broader concern is a security system in which people may be arrested, transferred between agencies and facilities, detained for years without access to their families or lawyers, and sometimes die in custody without a credible official account of what happened to them.
RULAAC’s work, complaints from families, and reports by human rights organisations and investigative journalists reveal recurring allegations of arbitrary arrest, incommunicado detention, torture, enforced disappearance and custodial death.
Amnesty International’s 2025 report documented unlawful killings, arbitrary detention, torture and enforced disappearances in the Southeast between 2021 and 2024. It recorded at least 1,844 deaths between January 2021 and June 2023.
That figure must be accurately understood. It represents deaths linked to the conflict, not 1,844 missing persons or people killed by security forces. Amnesty documented abuses by state agencies, IPOB/ESN, unknown gunmen, vigilantes, cult groups and Ebube Agu.
Any credible investigation must therefore follow the evidence rather than assume that every disappearance was caused by the military, DSS or police. However, where a person was last seen being taken away by state agents, the state bears a heightened obligation to account for that person.
The Wawa connection
Recent reporting on Wawa Military Cantonment in Niger State raises the possibility that some people who disappeared following security operations in the Southeast were transferred to detention facilities far outside the region.
HumAngle’s investigation, based on interviews with former detainees, documentary evidence, open-source intelligence and satellite imagery, identified Wawa as a military detention facility holding persons associated with different conflicts. Its reporting included detainees from the Southeast, including people allegedly arrested in connection with IPOB/ESN activities and the security operations in Obigbo, Rivers State.
The critical issue is not merely that Wawa exists. It is the movement of detainees across jurisdictions and institutions without transparency.
A person may be arrested in Imo, Abia, Anambra or Rivers State, held initially at a police or military facility, transferred to Abuja and eventually moved to Niger State. If the family is not informed and there is no accessible custody record, the person effectively disappears, even while remaining in state custody.
Intersociety previously reported that more than 100 Obigbo residents taken into military custody after the 2020 security operations in Rivers State were subsequently located in Niger State. It alleged that some died in custody while others were released after prolonged detention. These claims require independent verification, but they point to a pattern deserving investigation: arrest in or near the Southeast, transfer outside the region, and prolonged difficulty in establishing the detainee’s whereabouts.
Calista and Sunday Ifedi
The reported case of Calista and Sunday Ifedi illustrates the devastating human cost of this accountability failure.
In a public statement following his meeting with Sunday and the couple’s daughter, Merit, human rights activist Omoyele Sowore said DSS operatives arrested the couple in 2021 following allegations that they were IPOB operatives. They were reportedly transferred to Wawa.
Sowore alleged that the DSS initially denied arresting or detaining them. Sunday reportedly spent more than four years in custody before his release in December 2025. Calista did not return alive.
According to Sowore, Calista died at Wawa and was buried in a shallow grave. He also alleged that the DSS later acknowledged that she had been wrongly accused. These are extremely grave claims that require independent verification and formal responses from the DSS, the military and the Federal Government.
The authorities must disclose when and how Calista died, the medical cause of death, whether an autopsy was conducted, where her remains were buried and whether her family was notified. They must also explain whether she and Sunday were ever charged, brought before a court or detained pursuant to valid remand orders.
The consequences extended to their children. Merit was reportedly a teenager when both parents were taken away. She and her siblings lost their mother, their father’s presence and crucial years of education.
If these allegations are substantiated, the family deserves an official acknowledgement, the recovery and dignified burial of Calista’s remains, appropriate compensation and support for the children. Any officers responsible for unlawful detention, concealment, abuse or death in custody must be held accountable.
Reconstructing the custody chain
The strongest investigation would not begin and end with disputed claims that hundreds or thousands have disappeared. It would select several cases in which there is credible evidence that state agents made the arrest and reconstruct the custody chain:
Last known location; circumstances of arrest; arresting agency; first detention facility; subsequent transfers; court proceedings; family and lawyers’ enquiries; and eventual release, death or continuing disappearance.
Relevant evidence may be found in police occurrence books, detention registers, arrest reports, transfer orders, remand warrants, court files, correctional records, lawyers’ correspondence, petitions to the National Human Rights Commission, hospital and mortuary records, death certificates and family communications.
For each detainee, the authorities should answer:
– Who authorised the arrest?
– Where was the person first detained?
– Who authorised each transfer?
– What was the legal basis for the detention?
– Was the person brought before a court?
– If the person died, when, where and how?
– Where is the body?
– If released, when and to whom?
The absence of data is itself a finding
Nigeria appears to have no authoritative, publicly accessible database of persons arrested, transferred, charged, released or deceased in connection with security operations against separatist violence in the Southeast.
Instead, fragmented lists are maintained by families, lawyers, journalists and human rights organisations. These should be reconciled to establish who appears on multiple lists, who was released or charged, who died, who remains unaccounted for and who can be independently linked to a particular detention facility.
The absence of reliable records is not merely a research problem. It is an institutional failure. A state that deprives people of their liberty must be able to account for them at every stage.
Families trapped between hope and grief
When a death is acknowledged, a family can mourn and seek justice. When detention is confirmed, relatives can pursue legal remedies. But when the state neither confirms nor denies custody, families can spend years searching police stations, military formations, DSS offices, correctional centres, courts, hospitals and mortuaries.
That uncertainty is itself a grave human rights harm.
The question is not simply whether Wawa is a “secret prison.” The more precise question is whether people are detained there without judicial oversight, access to lawyers and families, or proper records of their arrest, transfer, release or death.
National security does not extinguish constitutional rights. If a person is suspected of terrorism or membership of an armed group, the state must investigate and prosecute that person according to law. If there is insufficient evidence, the person must be released. If a detainee is transferred, the transfer must be recorded. If the person dies, the death must be independently investigated and the family notified.
The central question is therefore this: What happens after the Nigerian state arrests a person during a security operation, and can it account for every stage of that person’s journey until prosecution, release or death?
If the state cannot answer that question, Wawa is only one part of a much larger problem – a security architecture into which citizens can disappear while their families are denied truth, justice and closure.
Nwanguma is the executive director, Rule of Law and Accountability Advocacy Centre (RULAAC).
