Chaplain Darlington Ajitemsan is a former prison Chaplain and a human right activist. He is also an anti-drug crusader and General overseer of Open Channel Bible Church, Gowon Estate, Lagos State.
In this encounter with JULIANA FRANCIS, he reveals his past, especially his life as an assassin. The interview is going to run in two series. First is his life as a killer. Second is his story of how he, allegedly, infiltrated Boko Haram’s camp.
He also suggests how to neutralise the sect. Excerpts:
What do you mean by saying you were once a professional hired killer?
What I mean is what I said! You hire me to ‘clear’ people and I ‘clear’ them off, no matter who they are. When I was abroad, I was much younger than this. Let’s say the age of 20. I was in Bombay, India, America, London, Brussels and Jamaica.
I was a wanted man. I was a student in Bombay. If you wanted to ‘clear’ anybody, no matter the security around the person, I would get the person. Let the person be surrounded by security men, or let armoured cars surround the person; I would clear whomever I was hired to clear. I have different passports here to show you how I was deported from one country to another.
How did you become a hired assassin, and which year are we looking at?
That was early 80’s and I was still in my 20’s. Now I am above 50, though I look younger than that. What happened was that I was intimidated because we were black students back then in a foreign land. We were the first pioneer in India, Bombay as a student.
We suffered discrimination despite the fact that India was a third world country. We found that to eat became difficult for some of us. I went into show business, from show business to movie star and I acted in some popular India films. I started building up and eventually I became a society person.
I became the first African movie star, and I also did some English movies too and some other dramas. I was the only black man in world renowned drama called “Evita” in those days.
A time came, and I felt that the intimidation from other students was too much just because I was black. I noticed a deep discrimination. What made it worse for me was that I had a mark on my face. I am an Urhobo – Itsekiri man. They believed that I must have been living on top of trees, and I fought with an animal that ripped off my face badly. Not only that, they thought that we could not spell our names. I happened to be one of the best students of my time. I also excelled in all the colleges I attended. Here we say Universities, but over there, it is colleges.
I went from prison to prison, jail to jail, for various crimes you could think of. From kidnapping to sheer violence and brutality. I have done worse things. I was a Don, mafia king. The highest cocaine then in Bombay was then found in my room as a student.
A time came when I felt I needed to graduate, then I went into the business of hired killing. I did all these due to anger; the discrimination against those of us that were blacks pissed me off!
Give me an instance where you killed. Who hired you, and did you carry out the killing?
You know something? I am now a born-again! In Bombay, I had a girl who looked like you. Ilona by name. She was a German girl. She was 36 years old, and I was a younger guy. She was an exceedingly, unusually, and abnormally beautiful lady. She was an agent for an organisation. The organisation was like what most people know as the KGB. I had never in my life befriended an older lady, and after her, I had never been with an older lady again. That was like a principle I made. I never knew that she was a spy. That was how the police charged me with espionage because I was with her.
Now, as a Don, whatever any person wanted, be it human parts, I would get it for the person! If you wanted sex, I would get a lady for you. My name then was PARI J. There were these Arab people that came, and Ilona played a funny game, and they gave me the name Don. Although my real name is Darlington.
When these guys came to me, they came through some channels. I mean there were guys you meet first before you could come to me. We don’t ask questions. If you wanted to destroy country, just come to me but I am born again now.
So they came to you to eliminate that lady?
And she was eliminated; it was not Ilona that I eliminated. No! Ilona was my baby but the Arab guys that came then wanted me to eliminate a lady for them and it was through Ilona that they contacted me. We didn’t ask questions on what offence the person had committed. Once we are paid to carry out a job, the job was done!
The lady I was asked to eliminate, I first of all dated her before I finally eliminated her. She fell in love with me because I was a player, a mover, and a dancer. There was no lady that I could not break down, but I was not a lady man, but I was a player, a Casanova. No matter how difficult a lady was, when she saw me, she would fall for me.
How did you finally eliminate this lady? Did you use a knife, gun, poison or what?
As a professional killer, the gun is a last resort. We didn’t use guns because they used to be loud. Guns were for kids, we didn’t use guns. We didn’t use poison either. We just held or squeezed the part of the body that’s connected to the shoulder, and the person is gone!
The killer would not be traced. We didn’t use poison because it could be traced, and it was one of the instruments used as a component of death, but we didn’t do that; it was for kids, elementary.
Were you trained to become a hired killer, or was it a hobby you developed?
It was not a hobby but something developed out of anger at discrimination. I was with a lady called Takago; she was a Japanese lady, a highly trained killer. When I was in St Xavier’s College in Bombay, we fell in love. Through her, I got and developed the heart of killing, while through Ilona I learnt the art of moving.
I was trained, but I didn’t last long in that trade because I also had other trades that I was making millions from. I was also a pimp. I had beautiful ladies whom I gave to Arab men. I made money. Apart from that, I was also a gigolo. In the pimp business, the girls were professionals, educated, but drug addicts. We didn’t call them harlots, we called them casino girls.
I was a DJ and a dancer, and these girls were always around, and whenever these Arab men were around, they came to me as a mover. I dressed in flashy clothes. Whenever they wanted a babe for sex or any kind of sex, even with animals, I arranged it.
I was a male prostitute, not a homosexual. You pay me money and you tell me how many rounds you want, and I will give you the satisfaction, be it 10 rounds! However you wanted it, if you wanted sperm inside, I put it in, but if you didn’t, I withdrew. Another thing was that there was no pleasure in doing it; it was just for survival.
Was it at Bombay that you met Christ?
Ha! Ha! Ha! This girl, you’re funny. You’ve changed the topic; I thought we were discussing a security matter. Anyway, I didn’t meet Christ in that way. I was to be sentenced to death for espionage at Bombay. I was to be sentenced to death. I was 24 years old, the reason being that as an African student, I had no origin. There was no Nigerian on my form of state of Origin. I was a student, a movie star, a model, and the police began to put two and two together, and I was moving from place to place. Living in the most expensive hotel, the Taj Mahal. This was one of the most expensive hotels in the world, and the security agents always saw me there, performing live in these hotels, from New Delhi to Bombay.
They did their addition and discovered I was involved with Vadana Barucha. Her father was one of the most influential people in Asia and that she was his only daughter. I messed her up publicly in anywhere you could think of, that was where the taboo of a thing came in.
According to the Indian tradition, then, I am talking about the late 70’s or 80’s, black people were considered the lowest of the casts. They called us Harijans. We were considered untouchable. Imagine we were considered as some kind of animal, and I am talking about the whites of India, whiter than some Europeans.
I had sex with her on the road, took her to different disco halls, so you could now know the anger of the Indian community against me. But then you could not touch me because I was a Don. I was loved by the youths. I was almost worshipped as a god, so you could not touch me. I used different names in different places, but my real name was Darlington. The place was not like Nigeria, where you could do things, and nobody would know who you were. You could change passports, then you had a fingerprint, then you had a face scan. Once your face comes up, your real name comes up; all the other names were fake. The police came and charged me with espionage.
Espionage cases didn’t go to court. The offenders were killed immediately. But I didn’t know anything about that crime. I was not culpable. I was going to be killed in Bombay prison, so I began to talk to God. The prison I went to was worse than hell. There were over 2000 inmates in the prison, and I was the only black man there.
I was a very young boy then, because I left this country when I was very young, and I was told at the prison that they were going to homosexualise me. You see in the prison, there’s what we call a welcome party.
I had been to so many prisons in different parts of the world. My number happened to be 54 at this very prison. I was told that I was going to be homo sexualized by seven different people and apart from that, I was going to suck their penis and swallow their sperm.
So right there and there, I knew that I was going to die. I was not a homosexual. I had always been an advocate against homo-sexual and I now saw myself in such a situation. Right there, I began to think about Jesus. I remembered my background as a Roman Catholic.
How I loved this Jesus. I began to make a covenant with this Jesus that if he could save me from this death and also homosexualism… I know I would kill the first person that would try to homo sexualize me.
I was going to kill because I am a trained fighter, I am a nerve fighter, I touched nerves to kill, I don’t punch! I knew I was going to die, so I began to pray.
I wept to God that he should remember that I was not arrested, but rather I was kidnapped on the road by the CID, which we called ‘Shadows.’
Nobody knew where Darlington was, so I said, God, if you could save me, and bring me out of this, all the days of my life, I would work in prison as a preacher. I would preach to prostitutes, the destitute, drug addicts and criminals.
I wept, and I cried, and I cried. Then, three days later, I started practising, knowing that there was going to be a war to fight. I met a man in one of the workshops, and he said, Are you a Nigerian? People used to think I was from Jamaica. I told him, yeah, that I was a Nigerian. And he said, Oh, I was in your country before, and I was treated well. He asked me what brought me to the prison, I told him everything. He promised to bring me out under one condition: that I would carry cocaine for him. I said okay.
So, he got me the best lawyer in India, called Dr Irani. This lawyer didn’t see me before he came to bail me; he was one of the best in the world. In prison, nobody calls you by name. They call you by your cell number. On the day I was supposed to be initiated by force into homosexuality, my cell number was called.
I think my number was 54. That very day was the day some inmates intended to do what they had been threatening to do. I was coming out, our cell leader was supposed to push me to activate the rape scene, then I heard ‘Kalia Darlington Idaro’ which mean ‘Black man, Darlington come here’. I was told that I had been granted bail. I remembered God and I said, ‘Thank you, God, I will serve you.’ That was how I was born again.
I met Jesus, but I still went back to crime after that. I went back to crime and became a wanted man. I was a wanted man again, and I was on the run. I had to escape from Indian because of the police. My name was on computers everywhere in Bombay, and our plane was to leave by 12.30. Over there, you go to immigration with your passport before they allow you to travel back to your country. I was to travel back on Sunday, and since I was a wanted man, I thought fast on what to do. On Saturday night, I went to the house of an immigration officer to ask for assistance, but he asked me to come on Monday.
I told him that I had already booked for Sunday. I knew that they could not be computer screening, face scanning. He did it for me and on Sunday night, a minute to go, I came to the Airport. One thing was this, I was a wanted man, and I had a tribal mark, so what do I do?
I painted my face with eyelid and put plaster on my fore head and the tribal mark could not be seen. What they saw was a new person and that was how I was able to board the plane. I came back to Nigeria and on the same day I came to Nigeria, I went to Jamaica.
After that, I came to Nigeria. My aunt Patience, she is my cousin, she advised me to go for the National Youth Service. I was posted to Ilorin; there I got involved in plotting coup against Idiagbon regime. That was between 1984 and 1985. I got involved in the coup because I was a master planner. I think his mother lived at House number 3b or 5b, Emir’s Road.
I did my youth corps there. I did my primary assignment with the Nigerian Army School of education Sobi. Why I was sent to the Army was because anywhere I was sent to, I caused riot. I fought with soldiers during our orientation camp. I was sent to the army where I was the only civilian to be involved in a coup…
FIRST PUBLISHED ON 10/10/12
6:23 PM
