“Torture has become such an integral part of policing in Nigeria that many stations have an informal torture officer, Amnesty International says.

“Both the military and police use a wide range of torture methods including beatings, nail and teeth extractions and other sexual violence, it says.”

Nigerian torture

That was in the BBC News report Nigeria ‘uses torture officers to extract confessions’ published September 18, 2014, and the quote is from Amnesty International, who just published an illustrated report entitled Welcome to Hell Fire—Torture and other ill-treatment in Nigeria.

The report immediately reminded me of my friends Michael Griffith and Nancy Grigor. As they were departing Lagos, Nigeria, after a brief business trip, they were tortured with cockroaches. A whole filthy jar of them had been dumped on Nancy.

Michael, accustomed to extracting people from sticky situations, was at a loss. He’d pulled people out of South American prisons, choreographed an American’s escape from a Turkish jail, rescued the wrongly accused and the clearly guilty. Now, as he grabbed his delirious wife by her shoulders and tried to steady her, he saw the same overwhelmed eyes he saw in many of his clients. They bulged with a desperate plea for a savior, and of unspeakable horrors.

When Nancy and Michael told me what had happened, I thought of it as distraction in order for immigration officials to successfully bribe a little extra departure tax. Distraction!

In a new light and long after the fact, I consider what was done to them torture, meant to extract money, not confessions. Nancy certainly found the experience to be torture.

Why and how would Nigerian immigration officials torture departing visitors with cockroaches? Read the story if you dare. Nigerian Nightmare.

Fair warning: you may not sleep well afterwards…