‘Nobody can become a better person without being a prisoner’

Experience is said to be the best teacher in life, and this is indeed true which’s why a Christian cleric made the weighty declaration recently that nobody can become a better person without having been a prisoner.

The cleric, whose name Oseyiza Oogbodo Blog will keep under wraps for now due to diplomatic reasons, made the disclosure during a charity cum evangelism trip to a prison in the southwest of Nigeria where he had cause to be incarcerated for a week before he could leave on bail.

During the return visit, his experience there first of all made him refer to himself as being stupid for having lived in the southwest town since the year 2000 without knowing the prison was located there.

And secondly, he said his one-week stay there made him finally realize that nobody can become a better person without being a prisoner.

While his statement sounds somehow flabbergasting, it also rings true as many great Nigerians and great people in other climes of the world have all been imprisoned at one time or the other.

Nigerian examples include the former President, Olusegun Obasanjo; Nigeria’s only Nobel Prize winner, Professor Wole Soyinka; the legendary human rights activist, the late Gani Fawehinmi; the legendary musician, the late Fela Anikulapo-Kuti; and many others.

And during his opening speech of the missionary cum excursion prison trip, the cleric made known both his foolishness at not knowing the prison was located there though he used to pass by it until he found himself there and people were coming to visit him and also that nobody can become a better person without being a prisoner.

Saying that he met lots of wonderful people who were inmates during his short stint there, he said he has since been sharing the story of the prison, how he had been touched by the stories of inmates who were there for buying secondhand phones they didn’t know were stolen and other such misdemeanors.

Stating that nobody can become a better person without being a prisoner, he buttressed his point with the stories of Apostle Paul who was imprisoned many times for being an evangelist and a former lawyer to President Richard Nixon of the United States of America who was imprisoned because of the Watergate scandal and on his release, touched many lives around the world.

He added that prison is to reform people and make them better and that his first two nights there were harrowing but then he relaxed and his fellow inmates took good care of him, and for this, he thanked them very much and urged them to keep doing good, that there was hope for them and they will soon be set free by the grace of God.