I’ve Not Seen My Husband Since 2021 – Nigerian Woman Alleges DSS Abduction Of Spouse While She Was Pregnant

Amnesty International has voiced alarm over the enforced disappearance of 47-year-old Chidiebere Luke Echefu, a father of five from Umugwano Umuchekekwe in Onuimo Local Government Area of Imo State, who has been missing since 2021 after reportedly being taken by Nigerian security agents.

In a post shared on X on Friday, Amnesty International revealed that Echefu was abducted from his residence in Owerri by a team of security personnel before his pregnant wife and had since disappeared without any trace or arraignment in any court of law.

According to the organisation, he was allegedly abducted for being a member of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), a group campaigning for the restoration of the sovereign state of Biafra in Southeast Nigeria.

The group, which interviewed the wife, a 41-year-old schoolteacher who witnessed the abduction that took place around 3 am on that fateful day, noted that Echefu, like hundreds of others, has not been seen since then.

“My husband, Chidiebere Luke Echefu, was abducted from our residence in Owerri on November 7, 2021 at about 3:00 am," Amnesty International quoted the woman to have recounted.

"About six men in uniform broke our flat door and entered our house. When my husband came out, the first thing they asked him is: ‘Where is your phone!?’”

Lamenting the continued disappearance of her husband, she added, "My children were all panicky, so I left our room and went to their room to calm them down. They got the phone and started interrogating him. I said to them: ‘Sir, you have not even identified yourselves. Who are you? Why are you in our house?’ They handcuffed him and whisked him away.

“We went to all the police stations in Owerri to search for him. They said he was not in their custody. We also went to the DSS office at Owerri, but they denied having him in their custody."

She, however, noted that it was only on January 2, 2022, that she received a call from a lawyer who told her that he saw her husband “at the DSS headquarters in Abuja”.

“When we went there, the DSS denied having him in their custody. Nobody saw him. Nobody knows his whereabouts,” she said.

“I was four months pregnant when he was abducted. The child is a year and four months old now, but my husband has not seen the child, and they have not allowed any member of the family to have access to him.”

Amnesty International, in a recent report titled ‘A Decade of Impunity: Attacks and Unlawful Killings in South-East Nigeria’, revealed a series of human rights violations and abuses committed by various state and non-state actors in the South-East between January 2021 and December 2024.

The report revealed that both government-backed forces and armed groups have been responsible for a decade-long violent attacks and killings of over 1,800 people and widespread human rights abuses in Nigeria’s South-East, with several hundred people disappearing without a trace by security agencies. The report notably identified DSS and the Nigerian military in the enforced disappearance operations.