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Today, 22 November 2025, a huge sigh of relief swept through Kyado community in Benue State as Mr. Barnabas Sughnen, a family man and local resident, regained his freedom after spending one year and five agonizing months in military and police custody without trial.
Sughnen’s ordeal began in the dead of night on 13 June 2024 when soldiers from the 72 Battalion stormed his home in Kyado while he slept beside his wife. Without explanation, he was whisked away, leaving his young family in shock and fear. For the next 17 months he remained in detention, first under the military and later transferred on 19 November 2025 to the Commissioner of Police through Operation Zenda for what was supposed to be “proper legal processing.”
What followed instead was silence, uncertainty, and fading hope. His wife and children lived under constant anxiety, never knowing if he was alive or when, if ever, he would return. No charges were formally read to him for over a year, no court appearance, no access to a lawyer, just endless months behind bars.
The breakthrough came almost by accident. Earlier today, a concerned citizen visiting the Operation Zenda office in Makurdi stumbled upon Sughnen’s forgotten case file and immediately alerted the office of Engr. Ezra Nyiyongo. What followed was a swift and decisive response. Barrister Tysin Pusa was brought in, the file was reviewed in court, and within hours the judge discharged and acquitted Barnabas Sughnen of all charges, confirming what the family had insisted all along: this was a wrongful arrest.
“He is now a free man,” Engr. Nyiyongo announced, bringing an end to a harrowing chapter that should never have been written.
Seventeen months stolen. Seventeen months of trauma for a man whose only crime appears to have been sleeping in his own house when the military came knocking. While we celebrate his release and the efforts of those who stepped in at the eleventh hour, this case raises uncomfortable questions about arbitrary arrests, prolonged detention without trial, and the erosion of basic rights in parts of our country.
Welcome home, Barnabas Sughnen. May the rest of your days be filled with the peace and freedom you were so cruelly denied.
