[OPINION] The Beautiful Ones Are In Prison

In those days, When civilization kicked us in the face. When holy water slapped our cringing brows…”

When David Diop joined his compatriot in the Negritude Movement, Leopold Sedar Senghor, to pen the above lines in his poem, “The Vultures”, he was expressing the frustration the African continent suffered when it came in contact with the Western ‘civilisation.’  Africa, according to historical facts, was forced to abandon its moral values, especially, the ethos of the African traditional setting, which places much premium on morality, penitence, sobriety and the sanctity of the human life. “The Vulture” was first published in 1971, some 51 years ago but the very loss of human identity, as encapsulated in a people’s religion, expressed by Diop, is much relevant today.

Just exactly a week ago, on this same page, while writing the title: “Nigeria: the story of a squatter who nurses a pet dog”, I expressed my own frustration at the way things are in the country at the moment thus: “We have run the full circle of all absurdities. We have entered the final stage of insanity”. I did the piece some 24 hours before it was published and little did I know that whatever absurdities I noticed in the Father Christmas gift of General Muhammadu Buhari’s one million US Dollars to the terrorist Taliban Government in far away Afghanistan, would pale into nothingness in the face of worse happenings.

There are four “boys” around me. I call them “Bhad Childrens” because of their propensity for raw mischief. They are fantastic guys, anyway; one writes for the Vanguard Newspapers, another one pens for the News Agency of Nigeria, NAN, the other scouts news for the Leadership Newspapers while the last of the quartet  is a blogger. Recently, one of them called: “Leader, come and see something”. I ignored him because I knew he was up to another mischief. “No leader, you need to see this; it is like someone will have to go to Kirikiri (prison) o”, he added.  Then I moved close to him and lo and behold what he showed me: the stunning photographs of Chidinma Ojukwu, the alleged murder suspect of Michael Usifo Ataga, Chief Executive Officer of Super TV, who was murdered on June 21, 2021, in a very vicious manner. Chidinma, the suspect, was shown in the photographs cat walking as the winner of the beauty pageant organised by the prison authorities, where she lives on the orders of the court handling her case.

The Prisoner Awaiting Trial, PAT, Chidinma, alongside her blood sister, Chioma Egbuchu, and another suspect, Adedapo Quadri, were all fingered in the June 2021 murder of Ataga and the withdrawal of huge sums of money from the victim’s bank accounts. With the trial of the 300-level, Mass Communication student of the University of Lagos ongoing, the Lagos High Court remanded her in Kirikiri Correctional Centre, Ikoyi, where she was crowned Miss Cell 2022”, by the prison authorities. I was shocked to my marrow for so many reasons.

I have been privileged to sit in auditions for beauty pageants. I can recall here all the efforts the likes of pageant experts such as Yomi Onanuga (now a member of House of Representatives, Ogun State), Yinka of Catwalk Studios, Lagos and  Brenda Nsikak of Brendance and Crusader, put into the auditions, the trainings, the choreography  and the proper pageant. Then I wondered if the organisers of the beauty pageant for the  Kirikiri Prisons female inmates also put in the same measure of effort. My mind raced back to how some of the contestants of those beauty contests made luscious overtures to members of staff of the company which organised the aforementioned pageants, thinking that the prizes could be swayed in their directions, and how one had to rely on the strongest of moral strictures not to “fall” into the diverse temptations and I asked if such happened at the Kirikiri Prisons pageant.

While agonising over the whole issue, the reality dawned on me that the Kirikiri Prisons beauty pageant was organised on the day the entire world was celebrating International Women’s Day 2022! What a time? What a day?  What a coincidence? How insensitive can some people be! How did the authorities of the Kirikiri Prisons decide to celebrate Chidinma on the global IWD, which is marked yearly, to celebrate “the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women”? Who approved the event; who signed off the pageant and who gave consent to such an absurdity?

On the panel of judges that selected Chidinma as “Miss Cell 2022”, were there women? If the answer is yes, what was going on in their minds when Chidinma was cat waking, showing off her curvy figure? Did they have any thought for Mrs. Ataga and her children, who possibly would have seen the photographs of the event? Could they not have  organised a different programme for the female inmates instead of the cavernous beauty pageant? If the IWD is meant to celebrate “the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women”, pray, what achievements was Chidinma and her fellow inmates celebrating to warrant the beauty pageant? Were those panelists happy that a budding young lady like Chidinma is in prison custody; no thought for her future and what will become of her should the court find her guilty?

What about the male prison officials, who probably clapped and cheered while Chidinma gyrated on the red carpet? Were they thinking that Ataga was just a mere unfortunate victim? Did it not occur to any of them that there are one thousand and one killer side chicks outside? Or do we take it that all of them are saints and that Ataga was the only unfortunate victim of “away matches”? Where is our morality as a people? What message was the Kirikiri Prisons sending to the young folks outside there? That life and fun is more abundant in prison custody?

I have read and listened to arguments about the innocence of Chidinma and her co-accused persons in the Ataga murder case, or any other PAT. I am by no means condemning her and others in the same circumstance. But I strongly believe that as much as we hold the laws of the land very inviolable, we must also not lose sight of our moral values and the essence of our beings as humans. That she is innocent until she is found guilty is not debatable. That she can also be found guilty at the end of the trial cannot also be wished away. What is constant here is the morality of the beauty pageant she won. What is absurd is the thought of even organising such an event in the first instance. This is the reason why Rotimi Oladokun, Kirikiri Prisons Public Relations Officer, could not find any justification for the show of shame other than the rambling: “…in line with International Women’s Day, the female custodial facilities commemorated International Women’s Day with inmates, various inmates without distinction or discrimination against anybody…. All the inmates in different cell blocks presented various programmes. Some did theatre presentations, others drama, some poetry, some beauty pageant, some drawings, paintings, comedy”. No rational mind will be able to explain the crass insensitivity the Chidinma’s beauty pageant is! One cannot but agree with the submission by the Nigerian Tribune in its Monday, March 14 editorial that the pageant “was a grave error of judgment on the part of the authorities, and it exemplifies sheer thoughtlessness”.

So, for those apostles of human rights, arguing that participating and winning a beauty pageant while in prison custody for culpable homicide is Chidinma’s right, can we ask them for other “rights” she and other PATs are entitled to? If for instance, Chidinma had planned her wedding before her arrest and arraignment, can she also go ahead and enjoy her conjugal bliss, with probably, the Comptroller General of Correctional Centre being the “Father of the Day ‘’? PATs can as well consummate their marriages while in custody because they are “presumed innocent”? This is the level the so called “civilisation” has pushed us to. The very values of hard work, honesty, decency, penitence, even respect for elders are fast disappearing all because we are in a “modern age” and nobody is paying any attention. If it were to be in those days when we were not “civilized”, until Chidinma is out of the murder case, nobody would have touched her with a 10-foot pole. Even after her exoneration, she would have to struggle to gain acceptability. But not nowadays. This degenerated epoch must give her a crown for her deviant manners. And she is not alone. A former governor turned senator, who was jailed for stealing our patrimony by a competent court, earned his salary as a senator for months while serving his term. While the outside sane world can smell the poignant odour of our festering moral sore, we eat buffet without paying attention to the nauseating maggots oozing out of the depravity that our new world has become.

My Yoruba background teaches me that “oju merin lo nbi omo sugbon igba oju lo nwoo dagba”- four eyes (two people) are involved in the making of a baby but two hundred eyes are responsible for his/her training to adulthood. The essence of this is that the entire society is responsible for the training of a child. That was then and no more now, in this “modern age”. Some weeks ago, I had an encounter with two women: a mother and a passerby. I was driving out of a private secondary school premises and I saw the woman and her child going back home. It was a few minutes to 9.00am. The school authority, as I suspected, refused to admit the child that day because he was too late for the resumption time, which was pegged at 7.45 am and is conspicuously displayed at the school gate. The passerby asked the woman why she was taking her child home and she responded: “no be dem useless teachers say him too late, say make I take am go back home”. The interlocutor chipped in: “Na so dem dey do for the useless school. Their own too much self, wetin? I could not take it. I applied the break and called her: “Madam, since the school and the teachers are useless, why don’t you take your child to another school. Look at the time you are bringing your child to school and you are calling the teachers useless”. Expectedly she issued the common curse around here; “Na ogun go kill you, aproko. Wetin concern you with my matter”. That is the new level of depravity in the society we are. A society where morality is a crime and where deviant behaviours are applauded. Incidentally, in the Kirikiri beauty pageant, held on the very day the virtues of women across the globe were being celebrated and a culpable murder accused was crowned as the Queen in prison custody, the feminists in our midst are understandably silent. Nobody wants to be labelled “uncivilized”! How right can Diop be; “civilization (has indeed) kicked us in the face”. And if you have ever wondered how we arrived at this stage of our degradation, think about Ataga in his grave, think about his wife, children and relations and then think about the top prison officials falling over one another to place the crown of beauty on Chidinma’s head!

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