Before the lawless Department of State Services drove Mrs. Calista Ifedi to her death at Wawa Barracks, she repeatedly complained of severe chest pains. Instead of receiving proper medical attention, she was dismissed, mocked, and occasionally given ulcer medication. Her cries for help were treated as a pretense. The indifference was cruel, deliberate, and ultimately fatal, a result that appears to have been intended from the inception of her detention. Even when Amnesty International Nigeria pushed for her release, the DSS cruelly denied she was in their custody.
Today, I spoke with her daughter, Merit. In disbelief and grief, she asked whether it was truly possible that her mother had been wasted in detention, whether the woman who raised her would no longer be present at her wedding. It was a heartbreaking conversation, one that laid bare the human cost of Nigeria’s state brutality beyond official statements and cold admissions by the lawless DSS. The agency’s Director General, Tosin Ajayi, has since recruited an army of fake influencers on Twitter to defend and sanitize this cruelty against humanity.
Merit also revealed that the DSS has threatened her father, Sunday Ifedi, through a so-called non-disclosure threat, warning him never to speak publicly about what he endured or about the circumstances surrounding his wife’s detention and death. Silence, it seems, is the final cruelty the state seeks to impose after unlawful arrest, prolonged detention, medical neglect, and the death of an innocent food vendor.
This is not merely the story of one innocent woman whose life was unlawfully taken. It is an indictment of a system that dehumanizes, intimidates, and kills, then attempts to bury the truth through fear and official intimidation. Mrs. Calista Ifedi’s life mattered. Her death must not be reduced to a footnote, and her family must not be forced into silence. Justice demands truth, accountability, and an end to the lawlessness that claimed her life, including the punishment of all those who participated in this cruelty, from the former Director General of the DSS, Yusuf Bichi, to the Attorney General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami, SAN, who provided legal cover, and every DSS official who supervised or enabled her death./Omoyele Sowore
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