Tiktok and the talking inmate — by Folorunso Adisa

Impossibility is a word that seems to have no permanent place in the Nigerian dictionary. We have a peculiar talent for defeating the impossible, sometimes by stretching the meaning of things we thought we understood. This time, we have taken that national ingenuity into the prison yard and, in the process, stretched our understanding of what it means to be a prisoner.

A prison is built on a simple proposition that the state takes away a person’s liberty and, in return, assumes responsibility for controlling his movement, access and contact with the outside world. The walls are physical because, for generations, physical separation was the most reliable way of achieving that control. But what happens when the body remains behind the walls while the person can still speak to thousands of people outside them?

That is the troubling question raised by the case of Elijah Oyebode, a death-row inmate at the Ibara Custodial Centre in Ogun State, who was reportedly able to host TikTok Live sessions from inside custody. Oyebode was sentenced to death in 2020 for the murder of Rofiat Damilola Adebisi, a 400-level student of Osun State University. From behind the walls meant to confine him, he reportedly found a way to enter the phones and living rooms of thousands of Nigerians, interact with an online audience and receive monetary gifts from people who did not know they were watching a convicted murderer.

The investigative report that exposed the matter revealed that Oyebode had allegedly operated at least two TikTok accounts from inside the correctional centre. During a monitored TikTok Live session on April 16, 2026, he reportedly spoke about the extent of digital access available to inmates, claiming that some prisoners possessed two or three phones and that Facebook and TikTok were populated by inmates who concealed their locations from unsuspecting audiences. A second account allegedly linked to him was reportedly used to impersonate TikTok host Omolola Awoyele, including the use of her name and photograph. If established, these allegations take the matter well beyond a prisoner possessing a prohibited device. They raise questions about contraband, identity theft, digital fraud, institutional security and the possibility that criminal activity can continue beyond physical confinement.

The most revealing part of the story, therefore, may not be that a prisoner had a phone. It is that the phone apparently became a bridge between the prison and the outside world. Through that bridge, an inmate could communicate with strangers, cultivate an audience, potentially receive money and allegedly assume another person’s identity. The prison wall remained standing, but the boundary it was supposed to enforce had become digital, and digital boundaries are much harder to see.

This should worry Nigeria because custody is fundamentally about controlled access. The state takes away a person’s liberty through lawful authority and assumes responsibility for keeping that person within a controlled environment. The restriction is for a security reason. It exists because society has determined that certain individuals must, for a period prescribed by law, be separated from the general public. When an inmate can apparently establish an unrestricted digital presence beyond those walls, the question is no longer simply whether the prison is physically secure. The question is whether the state still possesses meaningful control over the person it has confined.

The Nigerian Correctional Service itself knows the problem is not imaginary. In May 2026, the Service announced the destruction of 1,167 confiscated mobile phones, SIM cards, chargers, earpieces and other prohibited items recovered from custodial centres across the country over an eight-month period. It also disclosed that 147 personnel had been sanctioned for misconduct relating to contraband trafficking. The Controller-General of Corrections, Sylvester Ndidi Nwakuche, acknowledged that contraband trafficking could not occur without internal compromise and warned officers against aiding or facilitating the smuggling of prohibited items.

That admission should force another harder question. If more than a thousand unauthorised phones could be recovered from correctional facilities within eight months, how many entered the system undetected? How many might still be circulating? And what happens when one of those devices is not simply used to make a call, but becomes a broadcasting station, a fundraising tool, a means of impersonation or a channel through which criminal networks can operate?

The destruction of confiscated phones is necessary, but destruction is not prevention. It deals with the contraband discovered yesterday; it does not dismantle the pipeline that brings tomorrow’s contraband through the gates. That is where the TikTok episode becomes a test of institutional integrity. Who brought the phone into the facility? Who supplied the SIM card? How did the device obtain power and data? How long was it in the inmate’s possession? How was the activity missed? Were officers aware? Was anyone compromised? And, perhaps most importantly, how many other inmates have similar access?

These questions should not be answered by speculation, and Oyebode’s allegations about other inmates should not be treated as established fact without independent verification. But they should be investigated. A correctional system cannot afford to treat credible evidence of systematic digital access as an amusing social-media curiosity.

The smartphone has changed the meaning of confinement. A person no longer needs to leave a physical location to influence people beyond it. A device small enough to conceal in a pocket can turn a confined individual into a broadcaster, marketer, fundraiser, impersonator or propagandist. The walls can restrict his movement while leaving his reach almost untouched. That is the new security problem.

The smartphone is therefore not simply another piece of contraband inside a correctional centre. In the hands of the wrong person, it can become an instrument of influence. It can facilitate communication with accomplices, enable fraud, expose institutional routines, compromise security and allow criminal networks to continue operating through intermediaries outside the facility. The digital age has changed the security equation for prisons, and Nigeria cannot afford to pretend otherwise.

There is, however, a necessary distinction. The Nigerian Correctional Service has publicly committed itself to transforming custody from a place of mere confinement into an environment for rehabilitation and productive reintegration. In April, the Service described inmates as people “awaiting opportunities to become productive assets to society” while highlighting agriculture, vocational training and rehabilitation as part of its reform agenda. That is the right direction.

Correction should not mean abandoning human dignity. But rehabilitation should not mean surrendering institutional control. A humane correctional system can educate without providing unrestricted access to criminal networks. It can rehabilitate without becoming permissive. It can respect the dignity of inmates without forgetting the rights of victims or the security of the wider society. Compassion and control are not opposites; in a functioning correctional system, they are supposed to reinforce each other.

There is another uncomfortable lesson here, and it concerns us outside the prison walls. Thousands of people reportedly watched and financially supported the TikTok account without knowing the identity of the person behind it. That is a reminder of how easily social media can turn personality into currency before identity is established, and sympathy into financial support before facts are known. But the larger responsibility remains with the institution.

The discourse is no longer simply whether an inmate possesses a phone. It  is what that phone can now do. A correctional facility in the twenty-first century must therefore be secure in both physical and digital terms. Surveillance cannot stop at the gate. Searches cannot be the only strategy. There must be credible systems for detecting unauthorised devices, identifying how they enter facilities, investigating staff complicity and, within the law, tracing digital or financial activity that may indicate continued criminal conduct.

And accountability cannot stop with the inmate. If an inmate breaches custodial regulations, the law should take its course. If an official facilitates the breach, that official should face appropriate consequences. Otherwise, the state creates a perverse system in which the person behind bars becomes the visible offender while the people who opened the gate disappear into institutional silence.

The deletion of the TikTok account after the investigative report may have closed one digital window, but it does not answer the larger questions. The report could not establish whether TikTok removed the account, whether correctional authorities intervened or whether Oyebode himself deleted it. That uncertainty should not become the end of the story. The important question is how the account existed in the first place.

Nigeria has spent years debating prison congestion, awaiting-trial inmates, rehabilitation and custodial reform. Those debates remain important. But the Oyebode case introduces another frontier: digital custody. What does it mean to confine someone physically when technology allows that person to remain socially, commercially and potentially criminally active beyond the walls?

That is a question Nigeria’s correctional system can no longer postpone. The prison of the twenty-first century cannot be secured by just making its walls higher, its gates heavier or its searches more frequent. It must also reckon with the invisible networks that can pass through walls without ever opening a door.

A prison is supposed to restrict liberty for a lawful purpose. A correctional centre is supposed to combine that restriction with the possibility of reform. Neither purpose is served when a convicted murderer can apparently sit behind bars and go live to the world. The prison wall should separate custody from society, and the smartphone should not become the hole through which that wall disappears.

When the bars can hold the body but cannot restrain the reach, the problem is no longer simply that an inmate has escaped the logic of the prison. The prison itself has gone online.

The conversation does not end here. You can continue it with me on X via @folorunso_adisa, LinkedIn: Folorunso Fatai Adisa, or on Facebook at Folorunso Fatai Adisa.