LAST week, authorities of the Kirikiri Correctional Centre reportedly held a rare event, a beauty pageant, for inmates of the centre ostensibly to commemorate the International Women’s Day. Apart from the event being somewhat unusual and awkward in such a community, something else stood out from the show which has continued to draw flak to the organisers. The queer occurrence was that Chidinma Ojukwu, who was remanded at the centre on the orders of a Lagos High Court and who is standing trial for culpable homicide, participated in and won the beauty contest. The suspect was accused of the gruesome killing of Utaga Osifo, the Chief Executive Officer of Super TV, Lagos, who was said to be her lover. Not a few saw the liberty granted the accused to participate in the beauty contest as an act of gross insensitivity to the feelings of the alleged victim’s family and friends who are still smarting from the irreplaceable loss of their loved one.
It is even worse that the outcome of the contest was announced publicly. It was a grave error of judgment on the part of the authorities, and it exemplifies sheer thoughtlessness. And as would be expected, the officials have been thoroughly censored by many of their compatriots who could not fathom the wisdom in, or justification for, allowing someone under custody for allegedly murdering her lover in a most chilling manner to partake in a beauty contest. Where is the sobriety that her incarceration and the temporary restraint of her freedom is supposed to engender? And to imagine that her beauty might even have been what lured the alleged victim into a relationship that claimed his life made the show and the announcement of the winner really repugnant and abhorrent.
Yes, Section 36(5) of the 1999 Constitution (as amended) is to the effect that an accused is presumed innocent untill (s)he is proved guilty, but presumption of innocence is not the same thing as innocence. Indeed, the presumption of innocence is, in a sense, a recognition of the probability of guilt. In plain language, presumption of innocence does not equate certitude of guiltlessness. And it is most unconscionable of the authorities to have treated a murder accused in a manner that suggests that the probability of her guilt is zero. It is unclear what the officials of the Correctional Centre sought to achieve by the show of shame but it is evident that they did not construe justice, especially in a murder case, as a three-way traffic: that is, justice for the deceased, the accused and the society. By harping on the principle of presumption of innocence as the rationale for allowing Chidinma to literally do whatever she liked until her case is determined, the authorities were focusing on justice from the viewpoint of the accused only, and that is unacceptable.
The family of the deceased who lost their loved one allegedly at the instant of the accused deserve justice, and so is the society whose values and ethos are being recklessly profaned by misguided and unscrupulous young people. The position of the Supreme Court on what constitutes the full ramification justice is quite apt. In Josiah v. State [1985]1 NWLR (Pt. 1) 125, Chukwudifu Oputa JSC held that justice is not a one-way traffic in a murder case. According to his Lordship: “Justice is not a one-way traffic. It is not justice for the appellant only. Justice is not even only a two-way traffic. It is really a three-way traffic – justice for the appellant accused of a heinous crime of murder; justice for the victim, the murdered man, the deceased, ‘whose blood is crying to heaven for vengeance’ and finally justice for the society at large – the society whose social norms and values had been desecrated and broken by the criminal act complained of.”
And now that the suspect in this case has won the beauty contest, will she be released from custody? Or what is her prize for winning the beauty crown? A car? Monetary reward? Whatever the intention of the organisers was, the beauty show was in poor taste in view of the sensitivity around the case involving the winner of the pageant. The ceremony was irritating, and represents an affront on the memory of the murdered even as it ridicules the judiciary and assails the sensibility of every decent citizen.
There is no doubt that inmates may be depressed and need programmes to lift up their spirits. We also know that prison need not be the end of the world, but pageantry is definitely not the most appropriate scheme for such people, especially when publicised in cases like this. The kind of violence/criminality being perpetrated by young people these days is staggering, so the correctional service authorities do not need to send wrong signals from prison that young people committing crime will have a swell time behind bars. To be sure, there is nothing inappropriate in treating inmates in a correctional centre as humans, but pampering them as if they are privileged citizens is way out of the question.
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