Yes.
I am not joking.
This is the truth.
If it is not true make Ogun Aládé strike me.
If what I say is false make Osun, Òrè Yèyé o, whose sacred source flows from Igede-Ekiti, come for me.
And if it is fabricated — make Sàngó Olúkòso descend on me.
I was aghast , just like you.
Surprised.
Flabbergasted.
Confounded.
Bewildered.
I am serious.
I had thought his days of agitation against bad governance and tribulation were long over. After all, the man has paid his dues — a fearless journalist, a democratic combatant, a voice that refused to whisper when tyranny roared. He was punished for speaking truth to power. He was imprisoned. He suffered.
Yet, like many patriots in this part of the world, he was never fully decorated for his scars. No national parade.
No institutional canonization. Just history — quietly breathing.
He went on to serve as Senator of the Federal Republic and served well. Today, he has gracefully retired into the cultural hills of Ado-Ekiti curating talents, nurturing arts, promoting tourism, mentoring creatives. He has even transformed his residence into a cultural sanctuary ,arguably the only functional private museum space in Ekiti.
So imagine my embarrassment when I saw with my own eyes in New York City, United States of America , that a part of Senator Babafemi Ojudu is detained.
Yes. Detained.
Not in Nigeria o.
In America , that same country where the most proactive President, Mr. Donald Trump, rules under the national creed, “In God We Trust.”
You see , if an outfit a man wore for almost two years…
The very cloth that absorbed his prison sweat…
Is now curated, hanged, preserved inside a sacred institutional house where you cannot touch it — and you must even pay to see it.
Is that not detention?
Does it not symbolically suggest that the man himself is detained?
Sorry o ,that is my Usi Ekiti village logic tells me
While he walks freely in Nigeria, his items are in protective custody abroad.
Oga Gani.
Our own Ekiti son.
The husband of Tola.
His prison wear ,the uniform of his democratic suffering ,is held not as an exhibit of shame, but as an artifact of honour.
Not detention of disgrace
But detention of honour.
Detention of recognition.
Detention of democratic memory.
That is what has happened to Senator Babafemi Ojudu.
The man himself is in Nigeria , walking free.
Eating pounded yam with okuru in Ado-Ekiti.
Laughing.
Mentoring.
Curating culture.
Yet his prison clothes , the singular outfit of his incarceration tenure , remains detained in New York, serving institutional sentence behind glass and history.
When I, Wale Ojo-Lanre, visited the famed Newseum in Washington, D.C., I saw it. There it was , displayed, contextualized, celebrated as a symbol of press courage.
Have you heard about the Newseum?
A cathedral of journalism.
A sanctuary of press freedom.
A monument to democratic memory.
The Americans revere press freedom with near-religious intensity. One of their former Presidents once declared he would prefer a society with press freedom without government than government without press freedom.
Serious words institutionally backed.
Thus they built a seven-level museum preserving the struggles and sacrifices of journalism — galleries of world press freedom, historic front pages, Berlin Wall fragments, 9/11 reporting archives, broadcast history, constitutional rights.
Inside that ideological vault sits the prison memory of an Ekiti son.
Think about it.
While we moved on… they archived.
While we forgot… they curated.
While we normalized his suffering… they museumized it.
And there I stood… staring at that prison wear.
And I said to myself:
“So this man’s effort is appreciated here …and in Nigeria . …
The same struggle some mocked…
The same detention some trivialized…
The same prison some dismissed as stunt…
Is now curated in the global museum of press heroism.
Detained — not by chains, but by honour.
Protected not by warders, but by historians.
Displayed ,not as criminal relic, but as democratic armour.
Newseum.
Nigeria needs one.
Because until a nation preserves the scars of its truth-tellers, it will continue to decorate the architects of its silence.
And yes
Breaking News remains:
Babafemi Ojudu is free in Nigeria…
But his prison wear is serving life sentence in New York — for the crime of courage.
God bless Babafemi Ojudu.
God bless Nigeria.
God bless the United States for deeming it fit to immortalize the courage of a Nigerian democrat.
