Why This Palm Wine And 404 Shade Shouldn’t Be Called A Kitchen

Agba Jalingo August 8, 2023

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I lived in Afokang prison for months. It’s my alma mater. I am actually emotionally attached to the facility because I have friends and people I call brothers, languishing in there. Many of them are innocent. More than 70 percent are awaiting trial and remain innocent until proven guilty by the courts.

The first lady of Cross River State, Mrs. Eyoawan Bassey Otu, who is also a preacher, visited Afokang prison this year for a religious outreach, which is quite common in the yard. We saw that all the time from good spirited individuals and organizations.

While on her outreach, the Deputy Controller of Corrections, in Afokang prison complained about the exposure to rainfall suffered by the “shade” the prison facility has been using as a kitchen for years.

The first lady, after being conducted round the prison facility, graciously accepted to improve on the kitchen, to renovate the prison clinic and build toilets in the female inmates yard. She later visited again with her husband, the governor to see things for himself.

The female inmate’s yard has not had toilets inside the only two cells for long. They have their bath outside the cells in an improvised bathroom. Their yard is demarcated from the male yard by a very tall wall so they aren’t visible to the male inmates from their yard. Work is ongoing to fix two toilets inside the two female cells. The clinic has been painted. The roof of the clinic has also been changed and the main entrance door into the clinic has also been changed from a wooden door to a metal door. These are all commendable interventions.

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However, I maintain that this shade that looks like a palm wine and 404 retail store shouldn’t be called a kitchen or be associated with the office of the first lady of Cross River State. My reasons are:

There was a cooking shade in that same location before. It was roofed with pillars and that’s where cooking was done. The only thing that has been added is the three coaches of blocks built around the space and the old roof which has also been changed. When it rains, the space is still exposed in the same manner it was before her intervention. So the intention to stop the exposure to rain has not been met.
This shade will still use firewood to cook. While in Afokang, a minimum of 30 medium size logs of woods were brought into the yard at least every two days to fire the cooking. The primary source of this wood is our State’s green forest. The first lady’s husband, our governor, has set up an Anti-Deforestation Task Force, to stop illegal logging of our forests. How sustainable is this intervention of the first lady which will still rely on wood logged from our forests or is she encouraging the prison authorities to continue patronizing the illegal wood black market?
If you zoom and look at the picture closely, just next to this contentious shade, there is a massive building painted white and blue. It was an NDDC intervention project meant to be a kitchen and refectory for the inmates. The building was completed and it is still there but Nigeria happened to the equipment that was supposed to be inside. The money was embezzled. All that may have been required was to install cooking gas cylinders, utensils and furniture. That’s the standard for prison kitchens.
Before you ask where the gas will be sourced from, the prison authorities including Afokang, in their monthly financial retirement documents, retire “ration and gas” in their documentation. But someone in the office is stealing the money for the gas and cutting deals with wood sellers. Secondly, the Port Harcourt and Kirirkiri Prisons in Lagos have successfully used the cheap and simple bio-gas technology to convert their suck-away pits into energy sources that supply them power for cooking and powering some of their electricity needs. The technology is very affordable, sustainable because prisoners will ‘shit’ everyday and it is one off.