"I tried to follow them, but at a point, one of them said, 'Madam, please if you don't go back now, we will shoot.' They parked the vehicles very far from the house."
Titilayo Adeyeun, the wife of a computer programmer, Michael Imoleayo, whisked away from his house on Friday morning by security operatives, said the men, some of whom were dressed in military camouflage, tore the net to their room and threatened to shoot them.
Titilayo said the men switched off the streetlight before surrounding the house.
In an exclusive interview with SaharaReporters, she said the military men had their helmets on while others were clothed in black bulletproof. According to her, only two of the men were in plain clothes.
"I heard footsteps at the back of my room around 2:30 am," she says. "The footsteps sounded like people matching in twos. I peeped from the window, but I didn't notice the uniform at first, I just saw men with guns."
Titilayo said she thought that armed robbers had come in. She said she crept out of the room to where her husband was sleeping, informing him of her observation.
"The armed men already awakened Michael as the dogs were barking," she said
Titilayo said her husband took his whistle to inform the whole compound.
"When he blew the whistle, the armed men said from outside, 'you people should not try anything funny, you are outnumbered, just calm down, we are here for questioning," She recalled. "We switched on the light and peeped again….we saw that they were up to 20 armed men in our compound."
"They spoke to us again, but one of them just tore our window net with his gun. The window was half-open. He pointed the gun from the burglarproof. He said, 'you guys should just come out, we are not here to harm you. If you don't come out, we are going to fire.
"When we got outside, the soldiers – they were dressed in their camouflage, had surrounded the whole house.
"One of the men in plain cloth was on the two-seater very close to my husband, he was telling him things. I tried to move closer to hear what he was saying. But two of those armed men came in between us and pointed the gun at me to move back."
The armed men eventually forced her and Michael's aged mother, who was also at the scene, into different rooms and locked up.
Feeling agitated and confused, she broke the door open and saw her husband fully dressed and following the men out of the house.
She added, "I was asking questions, and nobody was replying to me; my husband was looking at me. He couldn't say a word to me.
"Finally, one of them said they were taking him for further questioning and that they would bring him back. They refused to tell me who they were or where they were taking him to and when they would get him back.
"I tried to follow them, but at a point, one of them said, 'Madam, please if you don't go back now, we will shoot.' They parked the vehicles very far from the house."
Titilayo said her husband, Michael, was not on the streets of Abuja during the EndSARS protests.
"I could not believe what was happening, I only see things like this in the movies," she says.
After they whisked her husband away, she said she visited the police divisions in Iddo and Lugbe, as well as the state and federal criminal investigation departments, but none would speak to her.
The arrest of social media commentators is becoming the norm in Nigeria despite the outcry.
In August 2019, a social media critique, Abubakar Idris, was whisked away by unknown men in Kaduna. Security agencies have denied involvement in his disappearance.