On February 18, 1947, the Daily Service newspaper published a story whose theme, like the ancient Secretarybird, has remained with Nigeria ever since. It is a story of the affinity between sex and corruption. 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 wotowoto of the prosecution and defence, Ademola sentenced a female welfare officer, Ayodele Potts-Johnson, to six months imprisonment, without an option of fine.
Potts-Johnson’s crime was demanding and collecting bribes of 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 a “sensational celebrated official corruption,” the scandal had famous African and British lawyers, led by FRA Williams, and which included E. A. Akerele, J.A. Kester, N.O.A Morgan and V.O 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 a-historical.
Immediately the prostitutes were apprehended, rather than 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. from 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 February 6, 2022 with the title, Atiku Abubakar and the sexual history of the Nigerian presidency, I 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 Mukaiba track 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” – 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 Prof 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 in Nigeria’s socio-politics.
Sorry, I digressed. A major obscene scandal broke out last week. It will seem to annotate the above theme of 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 our society.
The story starred controversial cross-dresser jailbird, Okuneye Idris Olanrewaju, 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. Alade 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 with this mutual friend, but on one condition – it must be kept secret from 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 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, had circulated an audio conversation Bobrisky allegedly had with an unnamed Alade. It instantly went viral. In it, someone, said to be Bobrisky, alleged that he paid the sum of N15 million to unnamed EFCC officers to have a charge of money laundering spiked off the criminal charges preferred by the state against him. The cross-dresser had been jailed six months after he admitted guilt for dealing unkindly with the Nigerian Naira. However, in the same audio, the Bobrisky claimed that he spent her term in an apartment, as against the Nigerian correctional centre imposed by the court. Shortly after the allegation, the cross-dresser refuted the accusations on his Instagram page. He claimed he was 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.