How I was harassed at NAF base by an officer in uniform

Editor Featured, Leading Stories 01/11/2021

Sometime in August 2021, Maryam who currently resides in a Nigeria Airforce (NAF) base in northern Nigeria, was harassed on her way to work.

Maryam narrates how she was harassed below in her own words:

I was rushing to work when an officer in uniform caught up and told me that, someone at the gate was “greeting”. To which I replied, “oh, I did not hear. I’m late for work.”

“Do you know him?” She asked.

“No,” I said.

She looked at me funny. “Really?”

“Yes. I do see him at the gate but I do not know him and I complimented her uniform, she did the same, thanked me and we went our separate ways.

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I make it a point to acknowledge essential workers. Not because I owe them anything but because I just might be making someone’s day. As is usually the case at all military bases in Nigeria, one is stopped at the gate and interrogated. If you are lucky, nobody pays you any heed and you pass. If you are unlucky, you are stopped, harassed, not asked any of the relevant questions, then granted entry. I was the latter on that uneventful day.

Harassed for not greeting

I had already started answering questions from the officer on duty(whose face was hidden behind a mask) when a maskless officer interjected.

“Come, are you not the girl from the morning who refused to greet you and when they call you, you say you are late for work?”

“Yes, I was late for work.” I replied.

“Because you are late for work you cannot come and greet.”

He went on to insist that I hadn’t greeted them that evening too. I stood my ground that I had, because he did not hear does not mean I did not. It was at that moment that my blood started boiling and I wanted to ask him if I worked for him but I maintained silence, giving him a chance to change his line of questioning. He, of course, did not, carried on harassing me.

Major General Farouk Yahaya – Chief of Army Staff (Image credit: BBC News)

“Where was it written that I have to greet you every time I pass here?”

“It was not written but it is culture!”

Seeing that he had no right to make such unfounded claims, I replied, “Well, it is not my culture.”

“You have no manners.” He started softly, but with every repetition, his voice rose. And to every repetition I replied, ok, ok and ok.

Thus followed the threats and accusations, since intimidation did not work.

“I will stop you from entering this base. I will report you!”

“And I will not enter. But I will call my guardian, they will come pick me up right before your eyes and I will enter this base.”

“I will beat you up! Are you a soldier? I will beat you up! Watch the way you talk to me. You cannot say sorry?”

“What did I do wrong? Tell me and I will apologise but I will not apologise for doing nothing .”

Officers using offensive language

And that was when a third soldier interjected, “I don’t care about your fucking greeting but it is courtesy when you come here.”

“Why are you using an offensive word on me?”

“I don’t care about your greeting.”

“If you don’t care about my greeting, why are we having a whole conversation about it?” While he was barking his own line of threats a woman came to ask what was happening and I led her aside. But she was determined to make me learn too. “See, don’t start what you can’t finish.

“No, they started it and now I have to finish it.”

I narrated the whole story to her; at first she was unwilling to listen to my side until I asked her if her colleague was doing the job he was assigned well. How is it that he could recognise my face several hours later, given the number of faces they see in a single day? Are they there to nurse resentments or to guard and protect?”

“These people, they spend so much time protecting you…….” A wasted effort on a guilt trip.

“No, they are there to intimidate; why did they threaten to slap and beat me up? Why were they asking me such baseless and invalid questions if their main duties and concern are to protect the lives of Nigerian citizens?” Before we parted, I told her, “Go and tell him that I am not intimidated by him and I pass this gate twice everyday and I will still not greet him”, she asked for my name , then apologised.

Abuse of power

The apparent abuse of power was what I could not let go of in my head for days. During that exchange, I kept looking between their eyes and their guns, waiting for them to cock them and asking myself; what would you do, Maryam?

My friends commended the bravery but cautioned me, “they will do something to you”, thereby igniting fear in me. Naturally, the question that disturbed me for days was, “why did I have to live in fear of the armed forces just because I know they have the tendency of hurting me, not because I knew deep down that I had done something wrong? I have since set up Emergency SOS on my phone, should I be in danger.

Every single day I go out, I am looked at as supernatural; because I live in the base, mostly by Napep drivers. Almost every single one of them has had a terrible experience with military men. So they know that my residency in the base gives me immunity, and I acknowledge this privilege but what happens to Nigerians who dare stand for their rights, who are without privileges?

It took me days to get this on paper; the very recollection of it was triggering and so I would write the title, stare at it and close my book. To answer my own question, “what would you do, if you had gotten yourself shot? I would have been proud that not only did I stand my ground, I stood up for my right.

Have you been harassed before by a security personnel or had a similar experience you would like to share?

Waiting for you in the comments…