The report documented 42 named victims, at least 200 deaths in custody, multiple cases of enforced disappearance involving both adults and children, and systematic torture between 2021 and 26th December 2025, with no officer held accountable.
For years, the Imo State Police Anti-Kidnapping Unit, popularly known as Tiger Base, has been described by survivors, families of victims, lawyers, and human-rights monitors not as a law-enforcement facility but as a black site where constitutional protections collapse.
SaharaReporters was told that suspects disappear without trace, detainees are tortured into confessions or death, children are separated from their mothers, and court orders are treated with open contempt.
A comprehensive victims’ documentation compiled by the Coalition Against Tiger Base Police Impunity (CAPTI) provides the most extensive account yet of what occurs inside the facility.
The report documented 42 named victims, at least 200 deaths in custody, multiple cases of enforced disappearance involving both adults and children, and systematic torture between 2021 and 26th December 2025, with no officer held accountable.
“This is not dysfunction,” the report stated. “This is designed impunity.”
Among the documented cases is that of Japhet Njoku, a 32-year-old security guard arrested in March 2025 over an unsubstantiated allegation that he stole ₦15million while working at Alaba Market.
According to the report, SaharaReporters obtained on Monday, Njoku was detained at Tiger Base and tortured for nearly two months as officers demanded ₦300,000 for his release.
He died in custody on May 5, 2025. His family was never notified of his death.
“They only found out he was dead when a detainee who was released told them,” the report notes.
When a Coroner’s Court ordered an autopsy and summoned implicated officers to testify on June 5, 2025, the officers allegedly refused to appear on three separate occasions, preventing the autopsy from being conducted.
Instead, witnesses were reportedly charged on fabricated allegations. No officer was suspended. Three months later, the unit’s commander, ACP Oladimeji Adeyeyiwa, was promoted and later awarded “Best Crime Buster 2024.”
In another case, Magnus Ejiogu was arrested on September 23, 2025, at a motor park in Owerri and held incommunicado. The National Human Rights Commission intervened four days later, documenting signs of torture. On September 29, the Inspector-General of Police approved Ejiogu’s transfer to Abuja, but officers at Tiger Base allegedly defied the directive. Ejiogu died in custody on October 27, 2025.
The police attributed his death to “sudden illness.” No independent autopsy was conducted. “No officer was suspended. No investigation was opened,” the report stated.
Former detainees interviewed by CAPTI described what they characterised as routine nightly executions.
“Between January 2022 and November 2025, former detainees described executions of between three and 20 people per night,” the report says.
According to their accounts, bodies were removed under cover of darkness, with no death certificates issued, no autopsies conducted, and no families notified.
At least 200 deaths in custody were documented during this period, a figure the report says likely represents only a fraction of the true toll.
One of the most disturbing testimonies involves Pastor Chinedu Nwachukwu Egole, who served as a spiritual leader among detainees.
“He led nightly prayers for over 800 detainees,” the report states. In June 2021, his name was called alongside eight others selected for execution.
A former detainee recalled that “he walked to his death shaking, his trousers soaked in urine.” His family was never informed of his death, and his body was never returned.
The report also documents the arrest of Reverend Cletus Nwachukwu Egole, his wife Ifeyinwa, and their eight children during a pre-dawn raid on February 13, 2021, by a joint team of police officers and soldiers. Their home and church were burned during the operation.
Ifeyinwa Egole later told investigators, “When we arrived in Abuja, that was the last time I saw my husband.” She was detained in chains for one year and four months before being released.
Her husband was never charged, produced in court, or officially declared dead, though reports indicate he was extrajudicially killed in July 2021. Several of their children remain missing.
Women and children feature prominently among the victims. Melody Eberechi Anyanwu was 21 and four months pregnant when she was arrested with her father in May 2021 after police failed to locate her boyfriend.
According to the report, she was stomped on during interrogation and lost her pregnancy.
From her cell, she heard her father, Linus Onyewuchi Anyanwu, 62, crying for help. “Then there was silence,” she said. “Later, I saw them removing his body.”
No investigation followed. In another case, Chinaza Ifeanyi was arrested in November 2024 with her two-month-old baby.
Her husband was later extrajudicially executed by Tiger Base officers. Her infant son, Chidiuto Paul, has been missing for more than a year.
The report identifies at least seven women who were detained for periods ranging from one to two years without trial, many after attempting to negotiate bail for relatives. Nkechinyere Ogu paid a total of ₦1.65million in extortion demands and was still not released.
She was eventually arraigned on December 16, 2025, one day after the launch of the #TigerBaseMustFall campaign.
Across the cases, CAPTI documents repeated defiance of judicial and oversight institutions. Coroner’s Court orders were ignored.
Bail orders were disregarded. Interventions by the National Human Rights Commission were dismissed. Directives from the Inspector-General of Police were openly disobeyed.
In the case of Levi Opara, an autopsy confirmed death by torture and starvation, and the Director of Public Prosecutions recommended murder charges against two officers in March 2024. Twenty-two months later, the officers remain in active service.
Six officers, including the unit’s commander, are specifically named in the report for involvement in torture, enforced disappearances, and deaths in custody. None has been suspended, investigated, or prosecuted.
CAPTI’s conclusion is unequivocal: “This table documents 42 named victims plus at least 200 deaths, five missing children, and systematic torture with zero accountability. Officers named in murders, torture, and enforced disappearances continue serving. One was promoted and awarded.”
Human-rights lawyers say the Tiger Base cases illustrate the collapse of police accountability in Nigeria. For families still searching for missing children and for survivors living with permanent physical and psychological injuries, justice remains elusive.
As one former detainee told investigators, “If you enter Tiger Base, the law no longer exists.”
The Imo State Police Command, through its spokesperson Henry Okoye, has denied the report, demanding that victims should come forward with their complaints and evidence against its officers, adding that a police unit has been inaugurated to look into the allegations.