Employee unlawfully jailed for 10months over resigning via text

Unlawful detention in Nigeria has once again come to light, this time involving Nicholas, a 26-year-old graduate, photographer, and keyboardist.

Human rights activist and founder of HopeBehindBar, Funke Adeoye, recently exposed the shocking story of how Nicholas was jailed for 10 months after resigning from his job via text message.

It happened that Nicholas was employed by Oluwole Mike, owner of Pesther Photostudio in Abuja and publisher of One Nigeria Television.

In October 2023, Nicholas sent a text message to his boss, notifying him of his resignation from his role as a photographer.

Mike, enraged by the tone of the message, had Nicholas arrested on charges of “intentional insult.” Nicholas was detained for two days by the police before being charged and locked up in Keffi Prison.

Unable to afford the initial bail sum of N100,000, later reduced to N50,000, Nicholas remained in prison, sharing a cell with 189 other inmates.

Adeoye revealed that even after Mike, who is also a politician in the current administration, withdrew the charges and wrote a letter to the court, Nicholas remained in custody due to his inability to pay the bail.

Nicholas’s plight might have gone unnoticed if not for a tip-off to HopeBehindBar, a human rights organisation dedicated to advocating for those unjustly imprisoned.

Adeoye and her team intervened, and with the help of a friend who anonymously donated the N50,000, Nicholas was finally released after 10 harrowing months.

Photos shared by Adeoye depict the stark difference in Nicholas’s appearance before and after his imprisonment.

HopeBehindBar is an organisation, which boasts of closing the justice and re-offending gap using early intervention legal and reformatory support, advocacy & technology.

Rtn. Victor Ojelabi

Ojelabi, the publisher of Freelanews, is an award winning and professionally trained mass communicator, who writes ruthlessly about pop culture, religion, politics and entertainment.