Award-winning Nigerian celebrity Openiyi Temilade, better known by her stage as Tems, has talked about her time spent in a Ugandan jail and how, upon receiving a uniform, she broke down in tears.
Tems was detained on December 12, 2020, along with Omah Lay, another Nigerian musician, for violating COVID-19 regulations by performing at an unapproved event. After being detained for two days, they were both released.
She described her ordeal in the cramped, dirty prison beginning with the time she was picked up from her hotel in an interview with Angie Martinez. The singer initially believed it to be a prank, but when she arrived to the prison and was given her uniform, everything became far too real, and she started crying.
According to the 28-year-old songwriter, she spent two days in the stinking prison, and did not even know when she was coming out.
Tems noted that the women she bonded with in the prisons were practically locked up for the most trivial things, and some were kept in by guards who were paid to do so. The prison structure was so that the inmates could not make phone calls unless they had money and she had no money.
In her words, “I thought I wasn’t gonna come out. I thought I was seeing it for a reason like maybe I was meant to help the people. I was settling in because I adapted real quick and as I was walking in I started to cry because they gave me my uniform and it stunk because they don’t wash it.”
“I thought I wasn’t gonna come out. I thought I was seeing it for a reason like maybe I was meant to help the people. I was settling in because I adapted real quick and as I was walking in I started to cry because they gave me my uniform and it stunk because they don’t wash it.”
She added, “Once I walked in everyone turned and looked at me and whispering and I was like ‘what have I done? I can’t cry’ and I just started winking, that was my way of adapting. I must show these people that I’m confident so I started being extra winking and saying hi and they were laughing”.
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Listen to the interview below: