Crossdresser Idris Okuneye, better known by his stage name Bobrisky, was taken into custody by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) for altering and misusing naira notes.
The transvestite was taken into custody in Lagos on Wednesday night, according to EFCC spokesperson Dele Oyewale, who spoke with Channels Television over the phone on Thursday.
“He (Bobrisky) was arrested Wednesday night in Lagos,” the anti-graft agency official told our correspondent.
“He has been detained at our Lagos Office and will be charged to court.”
Bobrisky has gained attention for a number of contentious reasons, one of which being that on March 25, 2024, she won the “Best Dressed Female” Award at a movie premiere, which infuriated other celebrities.
In response to the outcry on social media, Force spokesman Muyiwa Adejobi stated that there is no legal provision advocating the arrest of transvestites in Nigeria.
“I have not read anywhere that cross-dressing is an offence in Nigeria,” he said on Channels Television’s Politics Today programme on 2 April 2024. “Let us be reasonable, you cannot arrest somebody you want to prosecute without having credible evidence and as such, crossdressing is not yet a crime in Nigeria.
“Some of them that are into cross-dressing, the allegation is that they are into something else, that’s where the problem lies. We need enough proof that they are actually into ‘that’. All those offences are natural in Nigeria and punishable under our laws,” Adejobi stressed.”