Quadri Alabi, a 17-year-old Nigeria boy has recounted a worrying story of abuse at a notorious Lagos maximum Prison, Kirikiri, where he was detained with adults and forced to wash the toilet from morning till night because he didn’t have money to bribe the “prison marshall”.
Alabi became the poster-boy of the 2023 general election in the West African country after he materialised from nowhere and stood in front of the moving convoy of Labour Party presidential candidate, Peter Obi.
He narrated how he was tossed into the machinery of Nigerian opaque justice sytem for a crime he never committed and his harrowing experience while in detention for months on Monday while speaking on Channels Television’s morning programme, The Morning Brief.
“In Kirikiri, my daily task was to clean up faeces from morning until six in the evening because I couldn’t afford to pay the marshall, Alabi said.
The teenager noted that he paid the price for openly supporting Mr. Obi during that election, and also because he refused to share the money that was donated to him by people of goodwill after his video went viral.
He said, “Since the viral campaign picture surfaced, it seems like some people have been keeping a close watch on me.
“Someone even threatened my mum, saying that the money they have given me would be split in two, or else she wouldn’t see me again.
“They warned that they would kidnap me and take me somewhere.
“She couldn’t even use the money.
“On the day I returned from work as a motor boy, I had no idea that a fight had broken out in the area and that the police had already surrounded it.
“As I approached our house, some area boys grabbed me and handed me over to another, instructing them to take me to their station.
“I was just at the entrance of my house when the police came and arrested me.
“The area boys pointed me out.
“At the station, I was the youngest there.
“I was locked up with older men.
“They asked me what I did, and I said nothing.
“Before the arrest, the area boys had already taken my phone and the money in my pocket.
Alabi was discharged on Thursday by a Magistrate Court in Apapa, Lagos following legal advice from the Lagos State Director of Public Prosecutions, which found no evidence to support the armed robbery charge brought against him.
“We are excited to announce that Quadri Yusuf Alabi, the 17-year-old teenager who gained fame during the 2023 elections after he spontaneously jumped and stood in front of the convoy of the presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Mr Peter Obi, has been freed by the court today, 17th April, 2025,” his lawyer, Inibehe Effiong had announced in a post on X on Thursday.
According to Effiong, Alabi’s arrest and detention was a “diabolical frame-up” allegedly orchestrated by local thugs known in the Amukoko area as Lege and Baba Waris.
Obi had recruited Effiong to help defend the boy.
cpcnews.org 