Governor Frees Man He Never Actually Detained, Cites Deep Personal Commitment To Free Speech

Governor Bassey Otu has ordered the release of businessman Denis Odama, detained for a week over a Facebook comment, and in the same breath, delivered a moving tribute to Section 39 of the Constitution and Nigerians' sacred right to free expression, a speech that would carry considerably more weight had it arrived before, rather than immediately after, a citizen spent seven nights at Afokang Correctional Centre for the crime of having opinions.

The timeline deserves its own documentary. Odama allegedly said something "derogatory" about the governor on Facebook. The governor's own aides, apparently guarding his honour more zealously than the governor guards it himself, filed a police complaint. Odama was arrested in Lagos, flown to Calabar, remanded for a week, and only released once the public outcry grew loud enough to become, politically speaking, more derogatory than the original comment. At which point the governor discovered, quite suddenly, a firm and lifelong belief in constitutional free speech, the way a man discovers he was always a vegetarian the moment the meat runs out.

Otu described his decision as that of "a father and leader," a framing that raises its own question: what kind of father locks the child up for a week before remembering he loves them unconditionally? The aides, for their part, have been instructed to simply "withdraw" the complaint, a resolution that treats a week of another man's liberty as a form filed in error, correctable with a signature, no further consequences necessary for anyone involved in filing it.

Nigerian governance has perfected this specific genre: the retroactive free-speech champion, a leader who discovers his commitment to the Constitution exactly one news cycle after violating its spirit, usually right around the moment international attention starts asking uncomfortable questions.

Odama, for his part, is home, forgiven a crime constitutional scholars would argue was never one to begin with, free to return to Facebook, presumably with slightly more caution, and considerably more legal knowledge, than he had the week before.