The wayo imprisonment of Bobrisky, By Festus Adedayo

Bobrisky

On 18 February, 1947, the Daily Service newspaper published a story whose theme, like the ancient Secretary Bird, has remained with Nigeria ever since. It is a story of the affinity between sex and corruption. The son of Alake of Egbaland and a no-nonsense judge, Justice Adetokunbo Ademola, then of the Lagos Santa Anna Magistrate Court, presided over the matter. After the woto woto of the prosecution and defence, Ademola sentenced a female welfare officer, Ayodele Potts-Johnson, to six months imprisonment, without the option of fine. Potts-Johnson’s crime was in demanding and collecting bribes in the sums of £5.30s and 25s.2d from two prostitutes, Elizabeth Agadagwu and Alice George, in order to stave them off the wrath of the law. Christened by the Nigerian press of the time as a “sensational celebrated official corruption,” the scandal had famous African and British lawyers, led by FRA Williams, and which included EA Akerele, JA Kester, NOA Morgan and VO Munis as defence counsel. In his book, When Sex Threatened The State (2015), Saheed Aderinto, award-winning author, filmmaker and Nigerian American professor of History and African and African Diaspora Studies at Florida International University, doubled down on the story for his hypothesis. It is that the popular notion that bribery and corruption were postcolonial vices that erupted in Nigeria in the wake of military rule, was not only unreal but ahistorical.

Immediately the prostitutes were apprehended, rather than taken to the office, Potts-Johnson escorted them to their homes. There, upon demanding £10 as bribe, the welfare officer was offered £5.30s by Agadagwu’s landlord, one Bakare, who negotiated the bribe sum with Potts-Johnson in Yoruba. Bakare promised Agadagwu would pay the balance later. The other prostitute, George, also offered the welfare officer 5s.2d of the bribe amount demanded. If they hadn’t paid the bribes, upon conviction in court, the prostitutes risked two years in prison, £50 fine and repatriation by government from Lagos. But immediately after paying the initial bribes, the prostitutes reported it to the police. The Lagos police then handed them marked notes, which represented the balance of the bribe money, on which was covertly inscribed, Wayo. The police also planted an undercover Sheriff to witness the bribery. When Toviho, Potts-Johnson’s middleman, came to collect the bribe money, he and the welfare officer were arrested.

In my piece of 6 February, 2022 with the title, “Atiku Abubakar and the sexual history of the Nigerian presidency,” I had explored this theme. I submitted that sexual politics defines and is often behind most of the corruption issues in high and low places in the world. A musical track rendered by Lagos, Epe-born Apala music lord, Ligali Mukaiba in the 1970s illustrates this. The particular track by Mukaiba speaks about the pervasive influence of women in the lives of men, comparable only to drugs on addicts. He sang “Mi o wa ri’hun t’obinrin o le fi’ni se/ t’o ba nwu’ni/t’o ba nj’araba eni/t’o ba l’o ya ni Sokoto/kuru kere o/kere o/kuru kere o/a o tele l’eyin ni…”

Using the lurid story that instantly went viral in Zimbabwe that former Prime Minister, Morgan Tsvangirai, had suffered “a nasty blow from below” – an euphemism for impotency – I drilled into how central and virile political power is and how men of power, through their libido, use sex as a locus of power. Attached to that, I argued, is why, agreeing with Wale Adebanwi in his journal article he entitled “The Carnality of Power,” that all of us – scholars, lay scholars and society as a whole – “need to pay greater attention to the ways in which obscenity can help explain the nature of power.” From Abubakar to Olusegun Obasanjo and Ibrahim Babangida, I used these men of power as examples of exercises of virile members, to explain how libidinous politics and corruption cannot be divorced from Nigeria’s socio-politics.

Sorry, I digressed. A major obscene scandal broke out last week. It will seem to illustrate the above theme on the need for us to pay more regards to obscenities in our analysis of society. It is a narrative which tangentially bears the colour of sex, though it smells more of corruption. With it, we can measure the barometer of how low our society has sunk and how political and social powers are implicated in the rot of society. The story starred controversial crossdresser and ‘jailbird,’ Idris Olanrewaju Okuneye, whose allegedly leaked audio conversation has created a national mess. If the authenticity of the video is confirmed, Bobrisky’s travails will bring back to memory an ancient Yoruba folklore of a man called Alade. He was a gentleman whose mutual friend had asked why he always wore his cap all the time. After much pressure, Alade decided to share the secret, but on one condition – it must be kept undisclosed to humanity. Alade then removed his cap, revealing a short stumpy horn around the frontal part of his head. His friend was shocked but promised to keep the secret. However, he could not stomach the secret for long. Keeping to the terms of not telling any human being, one day the friend dug a hole in the ground into which he screamed, “Alade grew a horn (on the head)!” – Àlàdé hù’wo! Mysteriously, a tree sprang up from the hole and soon after, whenever boys blew a flute near it, the tree echoed, “Àlàdé hù’wo!” With this, the entire village got to know about Alade’s best kept secret. 

A social media influencer, Martins Otse, also known as VeryDarkMan, circulated an audio conversation Bobrisky allegedly had with an unnamed ‘Alade.’ It instantly went viral. In it, someone said to be Bobrisky, alleges that he paid the sum of N15 million to unnamed officers of EFCC to have a charge of money laundering spiked off the criminal charges preferred by the state against him. The crossdresser had been jailed for six months after admitting guilt for dealing unkindly with the Nigerian naira. However, in the same audio, the Bobrisky claims that he spent his term of imprisonment in an apartment, not within the Nigerian correctional centre, as imposed by the court. Shortly after the allegation, the crossdresser refuted the accusations on his Instagram page. He claimed he was the victim of a setup. Both the EFCC and Minister of the Interior have ordered full-scale investigations into the scandal, with the Ministry of Interior taking a bolder step in suspending all the prisons officers in charge of Bobrisky’s term in the Lagos Kirikiri prison.

Beyond the theme of crime and corruption in the Bobrisky case is the Nigerian society’s disdain for considered unusual sexuality and, in particular, Okuneye’s audacity in flaunting it. As a measure of its conservatism, the Yoruba frown at counting the fingers of a nine-fingered person in their presence (a kii t’oju oni’ka mesan kaa.) In my 7 April piece with the title, “Bobrisky and Jesus, the tax collector,” written immediately the crossdresser was sentenced, I said this much. If you flip through the pages of history, you will discover, as I said in the piece, that from ancient times, the world has never hidden its hostility towards people who profess sexual orientation different from the conservative heterosexual status. This is also responsible for why a large chunk of the black world vents its anger on the Western world’s validation of homosexuality. In the 19th century and even before, the Bobriskys were lynched like common criminals for their unusual sexuality. Until then, homosexual activities were classified as “unnatural crime(s) against nature,” while sodomy got punished with, sometimes, the death penalty.

In comparison with his precursors with an unusual sexuality, Bobrisky has suffered one of the mildest fates. Between 1877 and 1950, over 4,000 of them were lynched. It subsisted till a few years ago in America. As such, when you appraise the collage of apparent gang-ups – of VeryDarkMan and others – against Bobrisky, you will get an affirmation of the Yoruba saying that he who does the unusual should be ready for infliction of an unusual reprisal (eni ba se’un t’enikan o se ri, aa ri’un t’enikan o ri ri). Bobrisky’s travails seem to be society’s attempt to deconstruct and destroy this unusual impresario of sexuality. When you examine this thesis against the backcloth of Bobrisky’s recent innuendo that he could commit suicide, you will agree with me that the self-touted Mommy of Lagos is in the gulag of a conservative society and may never get out of it alive. If you ask me, I think Bobrisky commodifies her crossdressing, using it as a façade for God-knows-what unpleasant money-making ventures.

The allegation that Bobrisky paid a bribe to the EFCC for a money laundering charge to be removed then crept in. The viral audio, amplified by VeryDarkMan, also alleged that he paid bribe to prison top officials to enable him serve his term outside the hostile walls of the Kirikiri prison. On this, all we have been entertained with since last week when the obscene scandal broke is a national breakfast of hypocrisy. Why are Nigerians feigning prudery at these scandalous revelations? Are we hearing about a story of this stench for the first time? Let us hop down from our high horses. If truth be told, the only way to reform this country is for both the leaders and the led to come clean with themselves. Nigeria is a thoroughly worsted place and all the bounds and parameters of societal civility, decency and global norms of civilized people have broken down irretrievably. I personally overheard an Edo-born prison warder detailed to a politically exposed person arraigned before the Lagos Federal High Court some years ago, saying, “Mek dem post me to (I am hiding the politician’s identity) mek I no buy car? He no go happen!” Last year, we witnessed an obscene altercation between DSS operatives and prison officials, right in the premises of the court. Their beef was on who owned custodial power over embattled Godwin Emefiele. And apparently, his loot. It was later that Nigerians found out that the scuffle was not strictly a turf battle; it was a graft fight, something in the mould of a robber robs the till and a thief robs the robber (ole gbe, ole gbaa.)

Like Nigeria, the prison is brimming with rotund-bellied maggots which reflect the collapse of virtually all the values that cobbled Nigeria together. Apart from decayed infrastructure, overcrowding and allied issues, Nigerian prisons are home to officers who, in saner societies, should themselves be in prison. In 2019, investigative journalist, Fisayo Soyombo, adopting the pseudonym, Ojo Olajumoke, spent five days in a police cell and eight days as an inmate in Ikoyi Prison. It was in the bid to track corruption in Nigeria’s criminal justice system. There was no single whimper from the Nigerian establishment. After Soyombo’s arrest and detention in police custody, he was arraigned in court and ultimately got a remand in prison. He emerged with very distressing stories of illegitimate arrests, extrajudicial killings, bribery and corruption and a criminal justice system that is in a sorry case. He even claimed that a prison official asked him for money to remove his name from jailbirds’ roster.

If Minister Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo is merely interested in the optics of being perceived as proactive, in order to save his job from the Sword of Damocles said to be hanging on ministers, he should let us know. But if he is genuinely interested in reforming Nigerian prisons, he surely has a humongous job on his hands. It is more demanding than the “I swear-to-Almighty-God” raising-of-a-finger he was embroiled in last week. Yoruba talk about how widespread a covertly released fart could go in its “B’a se nyo’so, l’a se nyo’gbo” aphorism. The Bobrisky allegation of Very Important Prisoners being ferried out of jail while serving their terms is almost as old as corruption in Nigeria. We have heard of a VIP who impregnated his wife while serving his term and who was present at the child’s christening. We have also heard a story, which occurred some twenty-something years ago, of a man who later rose to become a senator and a political party bigwig. While in detention for alleged murder, exhibiting his libidinous prowess, the girl procured for this Very Important Detainee in an apartment outside of prison had fainted under him. If indeed, as it is said, that a people is assessed by the way it treats its most vulnerable, prisoners are vulnerable lots and we should be interested in what goes on inside that nocturne called prison. Until Nigerian prisons become reformatory, as opposed to the place of torment it is today, it will continue to be a microcosm of our macroscopic Nigerian tragedy.

It will be gratifying if Olanipekun Olukoyede, the EFCC chair, on hearing the messy news that his operatives were sunk in the Bobrisky N15m scandal, is silently preparing earthly purgatory for them. He must do as the colonial police did in 1947 to Ayodele Potts-Johnson. This is time for Olukoyede to peel himself of his church mien and wear the garb of a Dracula. Otherwise, he will be dragging in the mud his pastoral calling claim, perceived to be atypical with the task of a crime fighter. If news circulating in Nigeria from those who experience Olukoyede’s men in all parts of the country is anything to go by, he is sitting atop a maggots’ empire where operatives are nothing more than armed gunmen who terrorize and extort criminals of their loots. These Wayo theatrics, in the name of crime fighting and law enforcement, has to stop.

 Kabiyesi Ladoja at 80

A blight that critics hold against newspaper column writers is that sometimes, our shots go off tangent, disenabling us from achieving precision. In the process, they claim, we mis-profile our subjects, literally calling the King’s Mother (Iya Oba) the Monkey Mother (Iya Obo). My reply to them is that, column writers are not infallible because they are columnists… Full stop! My reply is a timid parodying of Justice Chukwudifu Oputa’s locus classicus statement about the Supreme Court. I can’t go the whole hog and delve into its second stanza due to its potential for immodesty. Only Oputa, the great jurist, could so conclude about the Almightiness of the final appellate court.

The extreme ones among the critics compare column-writing’s sometimes imprecision to the proverbial Saare whose demonstration of knowledge resulted in unknowledge. One day, Saare went to the farm but rushed back home, panting. To his parents who were troubled on what went amiss, the young hunter told them they should show gratitude to their Maker because he was almost devoured by a leopard which strayed from the forest. And then, Saare began a description of the strange animal. “It had big, dilating eyes! It had arresting colour!” features his parents affirmed were a leopard’s (Ekun). Immediately, Saare’s father, an Ifa priest, ordered objects of sacrifice to appreciate and propitiate Saare’s “head.” When all the propitiation materials arrived – a big ram, red oil and others – in readiness for the sacrifice, unprompted, Saare then lullabied, in his flippant best: “The leopard was tall, had two huge horns! It was even eating okra!” Saare’s parents immediately apologized to the sacrificial crew: “Our son didn’t see a leopard. He saw a deer.” So, Yoruba say, amonju l’o b’ekun Saare je.

In my 26 years of column writing, (including the years of exits) I have had several bull’s-eye hits and some imprecisions. Two personalities stand out on the list of subjects who, in reviews of their personalities, I sometimes shot off tangent. They were, Late Adebayo Alao-Akala and Rashidi Adewolu Ladoja, ex-governors of Oyo State. When they were both in government, my pen tormented them severally. On meeting Alao-Akala years after he left government, I encountered a man whose heart was as pure as spring water and whose humanity was one every mortal should seek after. When he asked me to write the Foreword to his memoir, Amazing Grace, like a witch’s confession, as the Yoruba will say, I was contrite, “mo tuuba.” While I am incapable of excusing their politics and governance, I can say both are/were great personalities.

In my writings and media strategies while I was myself in office, I wasn’t kind to Ladoja at all. Yet, we never met. However, in October, 2020, we met for the first and last time at the University of Ibadan. I was privileged to be on the high table with him, during a symposium organized by Hon Babs Oduyoye to mark his birthday. I don’t know where I got the audacity, but I walked up to him and introduced myself. He was literally overjoyed to meet me, thrust his hand forward excitedly and we shook hands like they did while signing the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT). What he said about his estimation of me, rather than excite me, saddened me. How could I spend a large chunk of my writings demonizing a man who thought so highly of me? A couple of years later when talks centered on his biography, one of his ‘sons’ told me he was excited at the prospect of my writing it. I was saddened the more. This was the same thing Alao-Akala did to me: he handed me a raw manuscript and said, “except the title, you are at liberty to do anything with it!”

Since then, I have drilled into Ladoja’s persona. Brilliant strategist and engineer, his strongest point is that his political adversaries underrate him. As wealthy as he is, Ladoja is known for his deconstruction of wealth, both in sartorial outlook and materialism. He could be stubborn too, sticking to what he believes in, at the risk of ostracism.

Born on 25 September, 1944 in Gambari village, near Ibadan and becoming a director of the defunct Standard Trust Bank in the year 2000, last Tuesday was Ladoja’s 80^th birthday. Here is wishing Oba Ladoja many more years of good health on earth.