Okuneye Idris, better known as Bobrisky, spent only three weeks in the Kirikiri correctional facility after receiving a six-month sentencing for naira abuse in April, FIJ reported.
Martins Otse, a social media user better known as VeryDarkMan, released a phone conversation during which Bobrisky confessed to serving her term outside the prison and paying N15 million to have the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) expunge ‘money laundering’ from the charges against her.
The controversy has since attracted attention to corruption in the Nigerian Correctional Service, with Interior Minister Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo already ordering “an unconditional and comprehensive investigation into the allegations of bribery and corruption within the Nigerian Correctional Service (NCos).”
Sources familiar with the matter on Thursday said that while Bobrisky was indeed taken to Kirikiri in April after her sentencing, she left after just three weeks then was only officially released from correctional facility in August.
“Bob spent only three weeks here with us in Kirikiri before she was taken out to another place we don’t know,” a NCos official revealed. “That was where she spent her time; it was an ‘arrangee thing’. And money was involved.”
The source also disclosed how Bobrisky was “guarded like a president” until she was “secretly taken away after three weeks.”
“She received VIP treatment all through,” said the source. “She lived in a special cell. The money she said she paid is actually true; no lies. Yes, she paid the money.”
The revelations by the source proved it was possible to pay money to live in well-furnished apartments inside a correctional facility, pay to bring in phones, drugs, and other outlawed items, strike one’s name off the correctional centre records, and even live outside the correctional facility while supposedly serving out a jail term.
Although the correctional facility authorities did not allow Bobrisky to mingle freely with other inmates, consequently reducing the chances of her eventual disappearance being spotted, the NCos official also disclosed one noteworthy incident.
“This day one guy was on a video call with his girlfriend, and he suddenly turned the camera on Bobrisky,” the official said. “It was deemed an invasion of Bobrisky’s privacy, so, as punishment, he was locked up in his cell for nearly two months.”
The source added: “As I said, she was heavily guarded, so there weren’t many of such incidents to point at. And she was quietly taken away after three weeks.”
