All around Abule Egba area of Lagos, they call him Okuta (Stone). But his real names are Oluwasegun Kokumo Raji. The fear of Okuta in that area and in the Lagos underworld of the 80s and 90s was the beginning of wisdom. He was feared and practically revered. But today he is an evangelist. Okuta, in this interview, took KAYODE FALADE through his past of ignominy, the brutal and ruthless world of the underworld and his final battle. Excerpts:
I had been sentenced to 10 years imprisonment and I found myself in the Jos prison. There I began my sentence. But after a while, I thought about it: would I spend the next 10 years of my life in this hole? There and then the seed of escape started germinating in my mind. There were about eight gangs in the Jos Prisons then. They were the firewood gang, lavatory gang, the grass cutting gang, the kitchen gang – which I belonged to and others.
You would notice that wells are usually sunk very near the fence. This was also the case in the Jos prison then too. After sometime that I had been contemplating escape, I decided to share my thoughts with a slightly elderly inmate. He was serving life for illegal mining.
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The man was alarmed. He warned me not to try it because if caught, the consequences would be too much. But one evening, I took the spoon we used for making eba: it was a very long and strong spoon and I hid it inside my tunic.
When it was dark enough, I made for the well and hid inside it. It was a very deep well and it was lined with stones. Immediately I entered the well, I shut the lid on myself. As I was doing this the guard dogs were barking furiously but I kept the lid on myself. As soon as I noticed some stillness in the air and that the dogs were silent, I felt for one of the stones that was a bit loose, removed it and started digging towards the direction of the fence.
As I was doing this, one of the big stones used to line the wall of the well gave way and I lost balance. But I struggled to hold on and still clung tightly to the others. After securing a better foothold I continued with the digging.
This went on for some time until I felt I had dug the tunnel more than six feet. This would have made me pass the foundation of the prison wall. When my mind told me I had done this, I started digging upwards. After some time, I felt some spongy-like things. These were the roots of the grasses that surrounded the well. I dug further and removed some of these thereby creating a hole which I peeped through. I was praying that this would still not be within the enclosure of the prison.
But then I noticed that it was outside. Quickly, I made the hole bigger, got out and ran as far as my legs would carry me. I then hid behind some rocks. Not very long after this, a man was riding pass on a bicycle. Swiftly I pounced on him, dealt him some hard punches and ordered him to strip.
Once he noticed that I was in prison garb, he quickly complied. I asked him to wear mine, he put on the tunic. But when I asked him to put on the pair of trousers he begged me with God saying none of his family had ever been to jail. Anyway, I also collected his bicycle and rode like hell out of the place towards Akwanga. By then, my escape had been broadcast.
From Akwanga, I boarded a train for Minna. In Minna, the first thing I did was to go to a hemp smoking joint. As I was smoking, I noticed some people starring at me suspiciously. I left the place and found a way of boarding a vehicle to Ilorin. When I got to Ilorin I felt save. From Ilorin I found my way to Ogbomoso.
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