Why My Dad Was Sentenced To Life Imprisonment – Daniel Etim-Effiong Opens Up About The Real Life Story He Is Going To Be Making A Movie

Nollywood actor Daniel Etim-Effiong is opening up about the real life story he is going to be making a movie about, that is about how his father was sentenced to life imprisonment and how his mother died one day on a visit to see his father in prison. It is a very emotional story, with a somewhat happy ending. Here is what Daniel Etim-Effiong said about the whole ordeal.

Speaking about how his father was sentenced to life imprisonment, and how that affected his whole family, Daniel Etim-Effiong said:

DANIEL ETIM-EFFIONG: I was born into an army household, born into the barracks. And my mom was a teacher in Command secondary school, and my dad was an instructor in the Command and Staff College, Jaji. And it was in 1985, there was a coup in the country and the government moved to arrest all the coup plotters and one of the key coup plotters had mentioned my dad as one of the co-conspirators of the coup. So he was picked up with the rest of the coup plotters and that just broke my family.

My mom was kicked out of the barracks, and she had to go back to Benin to live with her parents. She took us, the kids, four of us, back to Benin to live with her while my dad was facing the music in kirikiri. He was not released, his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, so he was supposed to spend the rest of his life in prison while the rest of the other coup plotters were killed.

He was moved to Kano central prison where he was supposed to spend the rest of his life. Every month, my mom would travel to go visit him and then on one of those trips, a few years after, she was travelling to visit him and then she had an accident and she died. So my mom was taken away from us, and of course, my family just shattered again, and my dad was still in prison.

Eight years later, a politician was leaving government and he granted as a favor to my uncle who worked with him for a while the release of my dad, and then he was released, eight years later. So he came back and started to rebuild his family again from scratch. Right now, he is in Calabar.

Source: Jide Okonjo

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