When Jogesh Chandra Das and Mohammad Towab Alam left Okaka medium security prison, even the grass of the field missed them. The two Indians were the only ones among the lot to be seen walking round the field repeatedly in two sessions, morning and evening. They did that for as long as they stayed in the prison yard. It was the only form of exercise they could find to do, the only preoccupation to take their minds away from the worries of the day.
Das and Alam often walked side by side and covered the same distance every time the cell was open, until the clang of the bell sent everyone back inside for the nightly lock up. Sometimes they chatted about the progress of their case, sometimes they simply kept quiet and listened to the swish of their naked feet striding through the short green grass and over the sandy portions of the field. I joined them one day and got talking with them.
Mohammed, born on 5 May 1978, attended an Hindi school as a boy. A devout Muslim, he read the Koran daily after a long walk around the field. That was the only other thing he did back in his cell, sitting on his fancifully embroidered Arabian mat, and comforted by the hold of his fingers on the brown rosary.
Mohammed is happy to know that his mother and father are alive and praying for him to get out of this mess. He is second in line in the entire family. He has six brothers and three sisters. He is able to talk to them weekly, in spite of the restriction against the use of phones in the prison.
He misses his two children, Mohammed Taha, 6, and Hamza, 3. He equally misses his wife, Aram Fatima. ‘They are with my mother in Alhaba District, Kabir Udim village in India’, he says wistfully. He had never been in prison before, except for one week of being behind the counter at the police station for choking traffic.
In India, that was a serious offence. Mohammed lived in Dubai between 2006 and 2012 as a dock worker. In all that time, he was never found wanting. Nursing his left leg, he recalls what happened on the high seas at Brass, when he was ordered to jump from the cargo vessel to the gun boat.
“The Navy, JTF (Joint Task Force), Coast Guard and Police came as a team. They demanded twenty thousand dollars to let us go. After the 24 hour deadline expired and we couldn’t pay, they took two of us away into their boat. Then off to the Navy Base at Formosa where we stayed for a week before being taken to Port Harcourt where we were handed over to the EFCC (Economic and Financial Crimes Commission).
‘Again, we sought to be free, and a price tag of two hundred thousand dollars was named. We stayed there for three months because we failed to pay. Then we were taken to court on 28 October 2014, and remanded on the same day at Okaka’.
Like the others, Mohammed Alam is cross with the Nigerian government and frustrated over the long wait for justice. ‘Why is it like this in this country? Justice doesn’t have to be delayed for so long’, he says. “The last time we were expected to appear in court was 8 and 9 January 2015. But the court didn’t seat because they said Governor Dickson invaded the judiciary like a bull on rampage. Why should that be’?
Mohammed Alam and Chandra Das were sometimes joined on the field for the long walk by Wilfred Fianu, the old Ghanaian who suffered from swollen feet. Willie is proud of the meaning of his surname. Fianu means “king’s property” in his language. He hails from Tegbie, Volta Region, Ghana. He is used to life along the coast. Born on 26 December 1959, Willie chose to be a sailor early in life.
Willie said: ‘I’m from the coast. Sea going is our everyday job. Fishing brings my daily bread. My father, Gaminaga Fianu, was a fisherman. I’m the seventh son, and the sailor. Some of my brothers are sea-going too, but they have retired’.
Willie Fianu is the father of three adult children. His wife is a petty trader. The family lives in Accra while he lives in Tema, eighteen miles apart, in the south. Fianu boarded MT Maro as Chief Officer in July 2014, two days before the vessel was arrested.
He was second to the captain. But he was so distressed by his plight that sometimes he forgot the name of the ship that got him into trouble. He pauses until he remembers again, and confirms how it happened.
‘The name of the ship is MT Maro. We are a crew of 16. On our way to Cameroun, we had engine problem. Brass was the closest piece of land, so we floated close to anchor, to rectify the fault and leave.
‘But the navy intercepted us. They asked about our mission. We told them. They said we didn’t ask permission, and we were not flying the Nigerian flag, green white green. So they arrested us. They took us to the naval base, then to EFCC, then to court, and to prison. There was nothing on board the vessel. It was empty of anything contraband, yet the EFCC is charging us for conspiracy to deal in illegal petroleum products’, he said.
Wilfred Fianu had a severe health challenge in prison. He was often to be seen walking slowly to and from the clinic. But after a while, Willie cut off completely from the clinic because he couldn’t get the drugs prescribed for his condition. His feet were overly swollen and his varicose veins stood out like the gnarled roots of an old tree.
Willie’s plight came to an end when he agreed that Segun, a Yoruba inmate who had an idea about local medication, should go ahead and scarify his feet with a blade to let out the bad blood and rub in some peppery concoction. The inmates gathered round as Segun performed the operation in the open, staining the front of the Indian cell with the old man’s blood. Two weeks later, with a consistent application of anti-biotics, Wilfred Fianu was well and smiling again.
‘I don’t eat the prison food’, he declares out of the blue. ‘When they send me money, I buy foodstuff and cook. My pot of beans is on the stove right now. Someone’s looking after it, my brother Robert Gakpetor, the captain of the ship. I didn’t even dream of this experience, to be abandoned like this. No word from ship owner, none from the court. It’s terrible’.
That story changed completely on Thursday 30 June 2016. The case received its final hearing at the Federal High Court sitting in Calabar, and the entire MT Maro crew were discharged. The Indians, except for Sailish Kumar, captain of MT Akshay, have since gone back home to their country, happy to reunite with their beloved ones.
