I'm not writing this as a lawyer or activist. I'm writing as someone who lives here and has watched what this place has done to ordi...
I'm not writing this as a lawyer or activist. I'm writing as someone who lives here and has watched what this place has done to ordinary people. In the last few years, Tiger Base stopped being "that police unit in Owerri". It became something families warn their children about. Once a person is taken there, life changes for everyone connected to them. Even if the person comes back alive, nothing ever goes back to normal.
Let's start with what people don't talk about enough. The damage that continues long after the arrest. When a breadwinner is taken, the house goes quiet in a different way. Rent doesn't wait. School fees don't pause. Shops close because the owner is gone. I know women who sold their wrappers, phones, even land, to raise money because they were told, quietly, "If you bring something, your person can come out." Some paid, but their people still didn't return alive.
Children will start taking on responsibilities they shouldn't. A boy stops going to school because classmates call his father a criminal. A girl wakes up crying because she remembers the night armed men broke down the door and dragged her brother away, and the brother never returned. These things don't show up in any police reports, but they live with us in the community.
There are also people who saw things from angles we don't usually hear. A court worker told someone close to me that case files linked to certain arrests don't show up in court. A church leader said families keep coming to ask for prayers, not for release, but to "at least see the body of their murdered children." Even mortuary workers whisper about patterns of sudden intakes with no names, no follow-up.
Then there's time. Time tells its own story.
Some people were held for weeks without charges. Some for months and others for years. In some cases, families only heard anything after a death. Petitions were written and submitted. Weeks passed. Nothing. Letters came back unanswered. When answers finally came, they were vague, or they came too late. If this is how policing is supposed to work, why all the delays? Why the silence?
Money is another part nobody wants to touch openly. People didn't just suffer physically, they were drained financially. Bail that should be lawful turned into a negotiation, in the millions. Items were seized without records and confiscated. Families were asked to "cooperate" if they wanted progress. Many are still paying debts for loved ones who never came home. All of this has done one terrible thing: people now fear the police more than criminals. When something happens in the neighborhood, residents hesitate before calling for help. They ask themselves, "What if this brings trouble to my house?" That fear is not security. It is danger.
This is why I am saying "investigate" is no longer enough.
Tiger Base should be shut down immediately.
Not renovated.
Not renamed.
Not defended with press tours.
Shut down.
Every detainee moved to known, traceable facilities.
Every officer removed pending a full, independent investigation.
Every death accounted for, with proper records and autopsies.
Every missing person's case reopened, publicly.
Every financial demand investigated, including where the money went.
A place that has caused this much harm cannot be trusted to correct itself. Closing Tiger Base is not an attack on policing. It is a step toward saving it because no police unit has the right to destroy families, bankrupt communities, and rule through fear. People are not asking for miracles. They are asking for their loved ones. They are asking for the truth. They are asking for an end to a place that has already taken too much.
Enough is enough". He concluded
Written by
Nwaugwu E
Edited by
Chidi Ibe
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