In Naija speak, I sha know that Interior Minister, Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo would put Nigeria on the reform map. This has nothing to do with the miraculous way he survived the allegations that swept his contemporary, Betta Edu, out of the cabinet. No, as Kamala Harris supporters say to their opponents, ‘no going back’ to the Betta Edu matter. We all agreed that she dropped at a bus stop exceedingly far from her manifest destination. We’re not going back and we hope that Ms. Edu has reunited with her stethoscope.
While Nigerians were praying for the youth in President Tinubu’s cabinet to prove themselves, Mr Tunji-Ojo kept his job on a promise to break the backs of the criminal cartel preventing Nigerians from getting quick and easy passports. Months after that saga, passport applicants have confirmed that it is easier to get a travelling passport these days than it is to get a parking ticket from the shylock parking attendants in Abuja.
One transformation that only the blind would deny the brand-new second-hand interior ministry is that the gulag once known as the Nigerian Prisons has finally lived up to its name as a correctional facility – all thanks to Minister Tunji-Ojo. He might not have been responsible for the name change but anyone conversant with the transformation of one notable prisoner that served a short sentence would agree that indeed, the prisons are dead, long live the correctional facilities.
Anyone that saw an ex-convict, Idris Okuneye, aka Bobrisky board a Black Maria on his way to serve a six-month sentence for treating our national currency, the naira, worse than he treats his tissue paper knows what we’re talking about here. While Mr Okuneye that went to the correctional centre could not be said to be a kwashiorkor patient, the Bobrisky that came out of the correctional facility is the envy of many a so-called hard-working Nigerian. Fat is not politically correct and chubby could be termed body-shaming, but Mr Okuneye couldn’t have had it better if nobody had bothered to charge him for an offence that, in any normal society, should not attract more than a two-hour community service.
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Mr Okuneye who returned home after expectedly serving term, looked like the Israeli after being served manna from heaven. This is not blasphemy, before some sling and stone-wielding zealots start heading for Utako District in the hope of looking for this writer’s uncovered head.
Apart from the stigma associated with the tag of an ex-convict, the reason many dread going to jail is how jail transforms you mentally and physically. Unfortunately, we can no longer ask Nelson Mandela, but Obasanjo is alive and would testify to the amount of flesh he lost serving sentence under the late Sani Abacha. From Fela to the late Chief Gani Fawehinmi, nobody returns from Kirikiri looking as fresh as Bobrisky did when his friends went with aso-ebi, drummers and a convoy to bring him back home. As a socialite, there was no way he could have gone through such an ordeal without throwing a welcome party. That could have been his undoing.
If the law allowed, anatomy and physiognomy students could have just lined up in front of prison gates to do a physical examination of the theories they learnt in class, but our society pretends to be too decent for that. As a reformed ex-convict, our Bobrisky needed an expanded car seat to settle his new frame on his victory lap to his beloved friends and followers who felt he was scape-goated by the system.
Minister Tunji-Ojo could have found no better official poster-boy for the new face of Nigerian correctional centres than the returned Bobrisky. It led us to conclude that Nigerian prisons have truly transformed into correctional centres with better meal plan than antenatal patients. We have been planning to host a congratulatory demonstration in honour of our interior minister for whatever was happening behind the bars.
Our inhibition lies in a particular apprehension that, if things proved to be true, even Bello Turji and Yahaya Bello, two wanted suspects, could finally turn themselves in. Bobrisky’s transformation was reason enough for Saint Abdullahi Ganduje to confirm that Nigeria is indeed better under Tinubu than his enemies would want to portray. After all, a society is gauged by the way it treats its prisoners.
All this was before somebody by the funny sobriquet of Very Dark Man made a strident attempt to bust our bubble of happiness by releasing a recorded conversation in which, a possibly AI-mastered voice bearing an uncanny resemblance to Okuneye’s explained how they served term in a fattening room adjacent to Kirikiri instead of following a lawful court order for a real prison term.
Nigerians then latched on to the rot in the judiciary where the body double of some Lagos tenants are known to plead guilty to eviction notices without ever being in court. Judicial miracles happen in Nigeria every day. This is why we build religious houses on the foundations of factories that once employed real workers.
Our hope is that Okuneye’s accusers are able to win the reverse spin that Artificial Intelligence and Deep Fake were used to mimic his voice. With the kind of judgments rendered from election tribunals, the wrong notion that our judiciary might not be the last hope of the common man must not be sustained. This is because, if we finally lose the slim diet of hope that there is justice in an unjust land, we might all lose it.
If this allegation proves true, then the number of people who might lose their jobs and their dog collar might include the spirit-filled officials of the Olanipekun Olukoyede-led Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC. Taxpayers might have to pay damages to the two correctional officials unjustly suspended over the voice recording. If Bobrisky and others win their case against Martins Otse, then Minister Tunji-Ojo could add pastor to his title if he doesn’t already have one.
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