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By 247ureports Enugu/Abuja
A Nigerian woman who spent years locked away without trial at a military-run detention facility in Niger State died in custody, and the Department of State Services (DSS) has now confirmed her death — years after her family and rights advocates first began asking where she was.
Calista Ifedi and her husband, Sunday Ifedi, were taken from their home in Enugu on November 23, 2021, accused of links to the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB). According to multiple accounts credited to Sunday Ifedi, who was only freed in December 2025, their alleged “offence” was that IPOB members had reportedly bought food at the restaurant Calista ran.
The couple was held for months at DSS headquarters before being transferred, in March 2022, to Wawa Barracks — a military facility in Niger State that rights groups have repeatedly flagged as a site of prolonged, unacknowledged detention. It was there that husband and wife were separated. According to accounts from Sunday Ifedi, they were never allowed to see each other again.
Death, then years of silence
While detained, Calista reportedly fell ill and repeatedly complained of severe chest pain. Rather than receive medical care, accounts of her ordeal describe her complaints being dismissed and, at times, met with ridicule; she was said to have occasionally been given only ulcer medication before her condition deteriorated fatally.
Her death was never disclosed to her husband, who remained in detention without knowledge of what had happened to his wife. Human rights activist Omoyele Sowore said he personally telephoned Sunday Ifedi to break the news before making it public, after the DSS eventually confirmed her death in custody.
Sowore, along with Amnesty International Nigeria and lawyer Deji Adeyanju, had campaigned for years to establish the couple’s whereabouts after the DSS initially denied holding them at all. Amnesty International had publicly described the pair as held incommunicado, without access to family or legal counsel, warning that such detention exposed them to a heightened risk of torture and ill-treatment.
Sunday Ifedi was eventually released in December 2025, more than four years after his arrest, without ever having been formally charged or tried.
A father’s meeting after the Enugu Marathon
Following this year’s Enugu Marathon, Sowore met with Sunday Ifedi and his daughter, Merit, who was still a teenager when both her parents were detained. According to Sowore, Merit and her siblings were left without either parent for years and had to abandon their education as a result.
Sowore has called for the closure of the Wawa Barracks facility and for those responsible for the unlawful detention, medical neglect, and death of Calista Ifedi to be identified and prosecuted. He has also called for her body to be produced and an independent autopsy carried out to establish the exact circumstances of her death.
Commentators, including human rights lawyer Abdul Mahmud, have since described Wawa Barracks as functioning as an undisclosed detention site operating outside judicial oversight, arguing that Calista Ifedi’s death reflects a wider pattern of unchecked detention practices within Nigeria’s security apparatus.
As of this report, there is no public indication that the DSS has opened a formal investigation, that any official has been charged, or that Calista Ifedi’s remains have been produced for independent examination.
