Idris Okuneye, the indolent male loafer who by some magical contraptions turned himself into a woman, is finally getting the attention he has craved for years, but certainly not in the manner he desired. Youths numbering more than 500 marched through the streets of Abuja on Wednesday, protesting the antics of the 27-year-old and describing his actions as ungodly.
Until he plotted his way into national consciousness a couple of years ago, the Ebute-Meta, Lagos born dude was a haggard-looking, dark complexioned man with a face that would scare a child and cheeks only half as attractive as those of a horse. Today, he has transformed his near charcoal dark skin into a complexion that is almost snow white, thanks to a combination of bleaching creams. He walks about in feminine clothes and jerry-curled hair all in a bid to cut the image of a beautiful woman!
In May this year, she adopted ‘she’ as his pronoun and claimed to have a male lover in clear contravention of the Nigerian law that prohibits same sex relationships; an offence punishable with 14 years in a penitentiary. At the slightest opportunity, he invades the social media, the market place of the youth, to flaunt the millions of naira he claims to have grabbed from wasteful politicians and other disoriented opportunists who think nothing of throwing our common patrimony around like rain water. Then in a plain admission of the clear and present danger he constitutes not just to the youth but the entire society, he felicitously adopted Bobrisky as his new name.
In a society where inanities are easily elevated into virtues, Bobrisky is already building a huge fan base on the social media and is even being invited by certain event planners to deliver speeches at social gatherings. For years, the government ignored his antics, watching with insouciant mien as the iconoclast flaunted the millions he claimed were flowing in from deeds that add nothing to the national purse.
Encouraged by government’s aloofness, he took his escapades a notch higher recently with a gay party he reportedly organised at a venue on Lagos Island to mark his birthday. But that turned out his albatross as security agents reportedly stormed the venue before the party could begin and arrested some gay youths who were already there in solidarity with their mentor. It turned out, however, that the birthday ‘girl’ herself had to go underground to avoid arrest. Since then, he has lamented to whoever cares to listen that a whopping sum of N12 million was invested in the aborted jump.
The Director-General of the National Council for Arts and Culture, Otunba Olusegun Runsewe, also appeared to have drawn the battle line with his declaration of Bobrisky as a national disgrace. In a recent media interview with a national newspaper, Runsewe said: “Bobrisky is a national disgrace. He started by selling and using bleaching creams. Now he has grown boobs, bums and hips. If a Bobrisky is doing well with his immoral lifestyle, how do you convince Nigerian youths to do the right thing?
“Bobrisky has the right, but not within the Nigerian environment. There are others like him, but they live outside the country. If we don’t address Bobrisky as early as possible, he will form a team that will spread like wildfire. This will result in a lot of suicide cases, because the typical Nigerian parent would not want to see their child become a Bobrisky.”
Happily, the youth appear to have bought into the campaign to rein in the cross-dresser if the protests carried out by some youths in Abuja during the week are anything to go by. Numbering more than 500, the youths on Wednesday took to the streets of the nation’s capital city to protest what they called Bobrisky’s “moral decadence”. The protesters, under the aegis of National Youths Council of Nigeria (NYCN), did not only disown him, they also declared their support for the National Centre for Arts and Culture, the National Council of Women Society, the Christian Association of Nigeria and other bodies that have taken a stand against him and his activities.
Describing the activities of Bobrisky as “ungodly, unhealthy and disgusting,” the Vice President of NYCN (North Central Zone), Mukhtar Jebba, said that what Bobrisky and his cronies were promoting was completely against the moral, cultural and spiritual values of Nigeria.
He said: “Consequently, the NYCN today, September 18, 2019 declares Bobrisky as a persona non grata, as he is a man and not a woman. For national interest, we call on the ever-conscious, ever-ready, combatant Nigerian youths and comrades of like minds to, without fear or favour, kick out Bobrisky and his likes wherever they come across them. Nigeria is not a place for LGBT and we shall fight this to the end.”
Bob Marley, the Jamaican reggae music sensation who died in 1981, is till this day perceived globally as one of the best things to have happened to the world. It is therefore one of the ironies of life that a Bob who died more than 38 years ago is still celebrated as a hero while another Bob who is very much with us is perceived as a gangrene that must be checked before it destroys the entire fabric of the Nigerian and African societies. I am not a medical doctor and would not pretend to be capable of identifying a syringe without being guided. Yet I know for a fact that the processes by which Idris Okunneye transmuted from a man into a woman are all at a great disservice to his own health. The ear2lier he is made to retrace his steps, the better for him and the society. His right to a lewd and licentious lifestyle must now necessarily end where our right to a decent society begins.