Disappearing into Nigeria’s security architecture: Who accounts for Southeast detainees?

There is an important story to be told about people who have disappeared amid security operations and separatist violence in Nigeria’s Southeast. 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.

Work by the Rule of Law and Accountability Advocacy Centre (RULAAC), complaints from families, and reports by human rights organisations reveal recurring allegations of arbitrary arrest, incommunicado detention, torture, enforced disappearance and custodial death. Amnesty International’s 2025 report documented at least 1,844 deaths linked to conflict in the Southeast between January 2021 and June 2023, involving state agencies, IPOB/ESN, unknown gunmen, and vigilante groups.

The Wawa Military Cantonment 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. Investigations identified Wawa as a military detention facility holding persons associated with different conflicts, including people allegedly arrested in connection with IPOB/ESN activities and security operations in Obigbo, Rivers State.

The critical issue is the movement of detainees across jurisdictions and institutions without transparency. A person may be arrested in Imo, Abia, Anambra, or Rivers State and moved through multiple facilities 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 2020 security operations were subsequently located in Niger State. While these claims require independent verification, they point to a pattern of arrest in or near the Southeast, transfer outside the region, and prolonged difficulty in establishing the detainee’s whereabouts.

The Case of Calista and Sunday Ifedi

The reported case of Calista and Sunday Ifedi illustrates the devastating human cost of this accountability failure. Human rights activist Omoyele Sowore stated that DSS operatives arrested the couple in 2021 following allegations that they were IPOB operatives, after which they were reportedly transferred to Wawa.

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.

— Omoyele Sowore, Human Rights Activist

Sowore alleged that Calista died at Wawa and was buried in a shallow grave, further claiming the DSS later acknowledged she had been wrongly accused. These grave claims require formal responses from the DSS, the military, and the Federal Government. Authorities must disclose the medical cause of death, whether an autopsy was conducted, and if her family was ever formally notified of her burial.

Reconstructing the Custody Chain

A credible investigation must reconstruct the custody chain by selecting cases where there is evidence state agents made the arrest. Relevant evidence may be found in police occurrence books, detention registers, transfer orders, and court files. For each detainee, the authorities should be required to answer specific questions:

• 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?

Nigeria currently appears to have no authoritative, publicly accessible database of persons arrested, transferred, or deceased in connection with security operations in the Southeast. This absence of reliable records is an institutional failure, as a state that deprives people of their liberty must be able to account for them at every stage.

Denial of Truth and Justice

When the state neither confirms nor denies custody, families spend years searching police stations, military formations, and mortuaries. This uncertainty is itself a grave human rights harm. National security does not extinguish constitutional rights; if a person is suspected of a crime, the state must investigate and prosecute according to law.

If the state cannot account for every stage of a person's journey from arrest to prosecution or release, then facilities like Wawa are only part of a larger problem. It represents a security architecture into which citizens can disappear while their families are denied truth, justice, and closure.