THE Kiríkirì Correctional Centre was in the news recently for the unveiling of Chidinma Ojukwu as the winner of the beauty pageant organised by the Centre as part of the programmes commemorating the 2022 Women International Day. Chidinma Ojukwu is standing trial as  a principal suspect in the murder of the Super TV boss, Michael Ataga.

THE  authorities of the Correctional Centre, through its spokesperson, Francis Enobore, justified the event and other programmes like cooking competition, recreational activities, theatrical entertainment, tailoring, make-up, etc., as part of the mandates of the service to ensure that inmates are  “sound and in good spirit”, and in keeping faith with its larger reformation and rehabilitation purposes. The foregoing is more so given the not-distant change of name of the organisation.

AS commendable as the initiatives of better citizens aimed at by the Correctional Service, through the emplacement of veritable social platforms to help inmates preserve psycho-social sanctity, we are of the opinion that conferring Miss Correctional Service pageant winner on Chidinma  Ojukwu is an accreditation indicative of our down-play on human sanctity, and low value placed on life, notwithstanding the argument of some about her constitutional right of presumptuous innocence, until otherwise pronounced by a competent court of law.

THE Hope is unequivocal about the opinion that the celebration of a self-confessed murder suspect of a man is an encouragement of violence on the male folks, particularly when such an acknowledgment was done to mark International Women’s Day celebration. It is instructive that while advancing a better placement for women in the Nigerian social-cultural and politico-economic spaces, the table should not be turned against men as a form of reversal, but rather an elimination of all repressive orders and systems, in favour of the two recognisably  and  recognised sexes.

CONSIDERING the latent potential of Chidinma that constitutively earned  her Miss Correctional Service, we firmly hold the opinion that some other individuals might get attracted to the Correctional Service as a veritable space for recognition and actualisation, beyond the positive intentions of the Kiríkirì authorities in relation to rehabilitation.

WE  are similarly of the opinion that apart from the fact that the award of Miss Correctional Service to Chidinma negatively signposts our collective approach to human life, the celebration of the murder suspect also offends the psyche of the relations of the victim, and the memory of the dead.

IN  a way, the pageant ‘victory’ might end up as an encouragement to other would-be women agencies that might want to unleash violence on others, particularly men, even as they see the Kiríkirì as a luxurious and  an enabling place to attain stardom by default. This is more so as the recognition given to Chidinma is somewhat patently prejudicial, and it is capable of inappropriately skewing justice in her favour, as the Judge handling the case against her is also part of the sensational sensitisation of the Nigerian social space.

THE  Hope counsels the Correctional Centre, in the overall pursuit of its new ideals, to focus majorly on empowering programmes that add values to the inmates and society, through which, beyond their confinement, would make them better people, to themselves, families and nation. No doubt, it was needless for a government institution to get entangled in unnecessary controversy relating to the glorification of the alleged misdeed of somebody, particularly when another arm of government is prosecuting the same fellow.