Funke Akindele: Between Social Distancing and Double Standard
Nollywood actress Funke Akindele-Bello aka Jenifa and her husband Abdulrasheed Bello aka JJC Skillz have been in the eye of the storm since Sunday. Their sin? They threw a party to celebrate JJC’s 43rd birthday in their home at Amen estate along the Eleko Beach Road, in Ibeju-Lekki area of Lagos State.
Hosting a party in Lagos is not a crime but the timing of the party is the crime. The world is battling to combat the deadly COVID-19, there is an order in Lagos banning gatherings of more than 20 people, the aim of the law is to enforce social distancing which is expected to flatten the rising COVID-19 curve. So, the couple erred by hosting a party in their home with the large number of people seen in the video shared by JJC Skillz on his Instagram story. The video which went viral on social media became their greatest albatross. They shouldn’t have shared it, the couple must be reeling in regrets already.
Funke apologised, she said she was broken and regretted her action, but it fell on deaf ears.
Mobbed by an army of angry social media users, like those who gathered before the Biblical Pontius Pilate on this week hundreds of centuries ago to demand that Jesus and not Barabbas the thief should be sentenced to death, the preying government found in the Bellos a worthy scapegoat. An influential one that would send a strong signal to others that no one is untouchable. Under 24 hours, they were arrested, arraigned and sentenced to 14 days of community service and N100,000 fine each. Commendable, the government has done well. It’s also a victory for the social media mob, nobody is above the law.
Now that Funke and JJC have been ‘taught a lesson’, with the hysteria gradually subsiding, we may need to ask some questions that could be best answered by the Lagos State Government who is the Chief Prosecutor.
At this point, it is necessary to add that this writer is no intimate fan of Funke Akindele nor her Jenifa character, and everything written here is based entirely on public evidence as a close observer who has been reporting events in the state in the past few weeks.
Back to the crux, “he who comes into equity must come with clean hands,” says a popular maxim. The Bellos are guilty as charged, despite her apologies which fell on deaf ears, did the Lagos state government approach the Bellos’ case with clean hands? No! Their guilt cannot and should not invalidate government’s recklessness in handling their trial and past incidents.
We cannot afford to look away from the crowd at the Samuel Ilori Courthouse of the Magistrate Court in Ogba, where the couple was arraigned on Monday. The crowd made a mockery of the Regulation 8(1a &b) and S 17(1) of the State’s Infectious Disease Regulation 2020, which the government prosecuted Funke and JJC for flouting.
I doubt if such gathering which poses greater threat to the lives of hundreds of people is big enough to worth swift action like we witnessed in the case of Funke and JJC.
While Funke and JJC were being prosecuted in Ogba and being mobbed on the internet, a large crowd of fitness enthusiasts were having a field day on the Gbagada section of the Oshodi-Gbagada highway. They were keeping fit in the full glare of police officers, and none of them has been arrested yet, as at the time of writing this piece. Does that mean the gathering does not endanger lives and was not in defiance to the order on large gatherings?
We may also need to ask how the government has handled the case of a mob of worshippers at the Moshalashi Alhaja Mosque in Agege, who did not only flout the law on large gatherings, but also attacked officials of the Lagos Task Force enforcing the order. The mosque was locked, and what next? What happens to the lawbreakers who gathered in their hundreds to pray as seen in photos shared by the Lagos State Government? What action has the state taken since the incident happened seven days ago, it took them just 24 hours to arrest, arraign and prosecute Funke and JJC.
If Funke and JJC could be subjected to public humiliation for defying the state’s law, there should be no sacred cows in the application of the law, anyone who errs should also face the full wrath of the law.
Aunty Funke put herself in mess, it is not everything you put on social media as celebrity. Secondly, if Funke is Buharis’s daughter or relative, nothing would have happened. The masses will just rant and let go after sometime.
For the worshippers at Agege, let us wait and see the outcome. Maybe the issue will see the light. Government deal with who they want to treat their fuck up not the offenders in most cases. Just as the case of Funke and Babatunde Gbadamosi, we don’t know what will end his story.