I had a similar experience – Oshiomhole says as he recounts how DSS arrested him and dragged on tarmac when he was NLC chairman

Adams Oshiomhole, the senator representing Edo North and former Governor of Edo State, has recounted his encounter with the Department of State Services (DSS) from his time as the chairman of the Nigerian Labour Congress.

Addressing the recent attack on NLC President Joe Ajaero during a Channels Television interview, Oshiomhole disclosed that he too had experienced assault by DSS operatives while serving as the NLC President from 1999 to 2007.

He said;

“I had a similar experience… I was on my way to Delta State and I went to the airport. The then director of SSS ordered that I should be arrested and stopped from travelling because we had given an ultimatum to the then Federal Government headed by President Olusegun Obasanjo.”

“They dragged me on the tarmac and I had my cuts all over the place. They forcefully prevented me from flying and took me back to the DSS director general’s office — then Col. [Kayode] Are.

“He offered to take me to their own hospital and I said, ‘No, I can’t even trust a government that has inflicted this kind of wound on me to treat me. They might as well poison my blood.’ I said I wasn’t going to do that.

“[For] at least 48 hours, the NLC couldn’t locate me. When eventually I was let out, the bandage on my arm with the blood and all that, I told my colleagues, ‘This blood would rather reinforce and whet my appetite for the struggle for justice.”