Life was hard as a female prisoner, says ex-con – Recalls day female prisoners rioted

Alice Atama was an artiste who used to perform in Nicon Hilton some years ago. She was known as Lady Talma back then. She was doing well in her chosen profession until she met friends who lured her into sniffing cocaine. “They told me that as a musician, if I took it, it would make […]

Alice Atama was an artiste who used to perform in Nicon Hilton some years ago. She was known as Lady Talma back then. She was doing well in her chosen profession until she met friends who lured her into sniffing cocaine. “They told me that as a musician, if I took it, it would make me to perform better on stage. So I decided to try it and the more I took it, the more I got addicted.”

Alice said she quit her lucrative career and sold her property and SUV for N400,000. The NICON also paid her off with N500,000 which she also squandered on cocaine.

“Along the way, I became a scrap-hunter and started going from place to place. One day, I met a lady and she looked like someone who was also into drugs. I asked her where I could get ‘smoke;’ she understood and took me to Dagba in Area 1, Abuja. On getting there, I met the real drug barons. I became part of them but eventually ran out of money. We were given cocaine on credit and N100 as transport fare, so that we could go and steal and come back and pay for the cocaine. On one of our missions at the Federal Secretariat, we got caught. Some escaped and those who had connections were bailed out with N200,000.

“I had nobody, so I was sentenced to jail and I think it was a good way to get me out of that dangerous life.”

Life in prison

Alice was sentenced to three years in prison and did her term at the Suleja prison. She recounts the pains and travails that she went through.

“Life in prison was a different world entirely and I must say that more than half of the people whose relatives are looking for them are dying in several prisons across the country.

“Anyone who goes to prison and refuses to change is doomed, as there is no way one can go to prison without changing his or her bad ways. We were living like animals. We hardly take our bath. If you are fortunate and a friend of yours visits, she might give you two sachets of pure water, which you use to wash up and you simply wait till another day when someone else visits and is willing to give you another sachet of pure water. We sleep with faeces around us.”

Alice described the food that they are served with as one that even dogs would reject. We were always served with gruel and it was usually not well-cooked. And anytime we’re eating, we’d see cockroaches and maggots. In the afternoon, we were usually served with beans, which were not usually picked to remove the chaff and pebbles and they were cooked like that without salt or Maggi. Even when they put pepper, it is not ground or pounded, because while we’re eating, we’d see bulbs of pepper in the food.

“As for the taste, when an inmate is visited, Maggi is sometimes brought for them and a group of ten inmates would share one Maggi cube to give their food taste. At night, we got served corn flour and miyan kuka, which sometimes has gone bad. But if we do not eat, what other alternative wouold we have?

“It was terrible,” she said in tears. At this point, she could no longer control herself again as she sobbed profusely while recounting the pain and agony she went through for three years.

“There are different categories of people in the prison. Some have been there for years that they are now walking with walking sticks and might end up dying there because they have no one to fight their cause,” she said.

Prison wardens

The prison wardens, according to Alice, add to inmates’ ordeals as they become inhuman and brutal. She said “the treatment we get from the wardens was terrible and very inhuman. Some of them were very barbaric and inhuman. They were treating us like animals.  

“For instance, there was a time two inmates fought and one of them was pregnant. They were locked up in a dark room for some hours. One of the ladies started shouting that the other was about to give birth and the pregnant one was also screaming, but they were ignored.

“Not even the pleading of other fellow inmates made them to change their minds and they left them there for the whole day. When they finally opened the darkroom, the woman and the child she gave birth to were already dead.

“That day, we rioted but we were brought under control. It was just not fair as the woman was brought in for something very petty, but because of the negligence of the prison wardens and their brutal nature, the woman and her baby died. We were criminals, we knew, but we should have been given a chance to at least change. They treated us as if we were doomed forever. I must appeal to the relevant authorities to please change their attitude towards prisoners if they really want them to change,” said Alice soberly.  

Changed life

“I got closer to my creator when I was in prison; we had people who came to the prison to preach the word of God to us from both religions – Christianity and Islam.

“For now, I am homeless and I know that my life is in danger because for what I have revealed about Dagba in Area 1, they will be after me. However, I really do not care as I want the whole system to be sanitised. God has given me a talent, and if given another chance, I will use it to praise and glorify him no matter what and fight the cause against hard drugs even if some of the warlords there are untouchables,” she vowed.

“I decided to come out and talk, so that people will know what is going on in the city and for parents to beware of the kinds of friends their kids keep, because I have been there and know what goes on inside prisons as some even come and plan with us to go and rob their parents all because they want the money for cocaine.

“My biggest problem and fear now is if anybody will accept me, not to talk of the society giving me a second chance for a better life,” she said, in tears.