Adeniyi Ademola, one of the federal judges arrested in the illegal crackdown by the Department of State Security Services, DSS, last week has revealed disturbing details of the midnight operation by agents of the secret police.
In a letter dated Tuesday, October 11, 2026 to the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Mahmud Mohammed, Justice Ademola, a royal prince of Egbaland, recounts the nightmarish attack on his home by the rampaging DSS operatives.
The document, exclusively obtained by The Trent, contains chilling details of how DSS operatives broke into his house in the night. At several points in the 6-hour operation, Justice Ademola was threatened at gunpoint to sign documents – whose content he doesn’t know.
The DSS agent, said to be up to 45- pointed guns at him at least twice and threatened to shoot the federal judge. One of the agents even said that if they killed him, there was no record of them being at his home and he ” just would die for nothing”.
According to Justice Ademola, when the agents knocked down his doors and finally gained entry into his bedroom. They told him that they had already recovered undisclosed amounts of cash in the visitor’s room downstairs.
The DSS agents refused to disclose the amount of cash they recovered, but went on to force him to sign a document admitting certain items that were found in his house. He says he was never allowed to read the document to know its content and signed the document at gunpoint, just to save his life.
At a point, one of the agents sneered at Justice Ademola and disclosed that the DSS action against him was because he granted bail to Sambo Dasuki, a former national security adviser, and Nnamdi Kanu, the leader of secessionist group, the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB. Both Dasuki and Kanu remain incarcerated by the Buhari government in disobedience to the court orders granting them bail.
Ordinarily, The Trent would not publish this document because of its sensitive nature. But, we are compelled to make this available to the Nigerian public by the far-reaching implications of the anti-democratic strong arm tactics of the Muhammadu Buhari-led government on the democracy of Nigeria.
Human rights groups like Intersociety have documented the arrests, of what could be hundreds of citizens, by the DSS. Arrests were carried out in similar fashion by the secret police. Most of them are just struggling citizens who happen to either be advocating for a free republic of Biafra or associated with politicians believed to be in opposition to the Buhari government or his party, the All Progressives Congress.
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Justice Ademola’s great grandfather, Oba Ladapo Ademola II, was one of the foremost post independence monarchs in Nigeria. He is a royal prince of Egba Kingdom in Yorubaland. He comes from a lineage of tough leaders who serve with integrity.
His grandfather, Sir Adetokunbo Ademola, was the first ever Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Nigeria, he was also the first Nigerian to be appointed a judge. His father was Justice Nekan Ademola, an erudite appeal court judge.
Justice Ademola is a member of the core Yoruba elite. The Ademolas are loved, respected, in fact, revered in Yorubaland. Our investigations reveal that he is a very loved and distinguished person who is upright and had built a reputation for being incorruptible and fearless in interpreting the law.
He accuses the DSS attack on him to be a revenge mission orchestrated by Abubakar Malami, the attorney-general of the federation over an old grievance Malami, a senior advocate of Nigeria, has against him. He denies all allegations against him planted in the press by the DSS and seeks leave to pursue legal action against the DSS.
Ademola is one of seven federal judges, including two justices of the Supreme Court, whose homes were invaded and burgled by the DSS acting on the orders of President Muhammadu Buhari on the night of Friday, October 7, 2016.
Following outcry from Nigerians, the DSS issued a statement claiming the judges were subjects of a ‘sting operation’ aimed at “cleaning the judiciary of corruption”.
However, a statement released by the National Judicial Council, NJC, revealed that the claims by the DSS are false and unsubstantiated. The judiciary declared the DSS action unconstitutional saying that the the DSS went outside its mandate and that the operation was aimed at intimidating the judiciary into submitting the whims of the DSS.
The full document can be downloaded HERE.
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