When Bishop Kayode Williams found himself in the wrong crowd, he was just a youngster attending secondary school. Men whose actions rocked the country in the 1970s trained him. the likes of Babatunde Folorunso, Ishola Oyenusi, and a few others. He is one of the recognized bright spots from Oyenusi’s gloomy past, trained in the 1970s after straying into Oyenusi’s group as a teenager, along with other infamous criminals. ten years in prison for armed robbery. Bishop Kayode Williams Williams was born in 1954, and his road into crime is a singular tale. Williams, the lone kid of his mother’s two children, didn’t turn to thievery due to hardship, in contrast to many bandits who sought to escape poverty by whatever means.
In the 1960s, his mother, a well-known fabric merchant in Ibadan’s well-known Gbagi market, was a devoted Christian. At the time, Gbagi was one of Nigeria’s largest and most well-known fabric marketplaces. The only people who could afford to own a business at Gbagi were wealthy individuals and the spouses of politicians. Williams informed our source that H.I.D. Awolowo, the late Premier of the Western Region’s wife, operated a fabric store adjacent to his mother’s Gbagi store. “My mother had that type of elitist combination of life,” he said. She owned a sizable store in Gbagi at the time and wasn’t just a small-time fabric merchant. And his mom made sure he received a top-notch education.
“My mother is a mother at heart and had a significant role in my upbringing. In an interview, he informed our source, “She did all in her power to make sure I lived a decent life and was a Christian. Williams had a sports interest as well. He disclosed to our source that he was the goalie for the football squad of Hope Grammar School, Ibadan, which is currently known as Adelagun Memorial Grammar School. “I had a great reputation as a superb goalie. I kept goals for WNBC and IICC in my youth. When Williams wandered into a group of wealthy young guys in his neighborhood, things took a bad turn. They were in their 20s, and he was an adolescent. He found them interesting, respected their methods, and aspired to emulate them. Despite claiming not to enjoy discussing his unpleasant history, Williams previously described how, from the 1960s to the early 1970s, he was among the most feared armed robbers in Western Nigeria. The men in the group were neighborhood guys he looked up to.
When I encountered them in secondary school, they urged me to assist them in purchasing a pack of smokes, which I did. I paid two shillings and six pence for the cigarette, and I gave them the remaining seventeen and six pence after using the one pound note that I had been given. However, they advised me to follow the balance. That exceeded my teacher’s pay at the time, which was 17 shillings,” he remarked. The decision to contact the gang the next day to express gratitude for the present marked the beginning of his criminal career. In 2006, he admitted to the BBC that he was socializing with the wrong crowd. “They were distinct from the other teenagers in the vicinity – they dressed well, looked smart, they smoked marijuana.”
He did errands for the group and got paid well for it. The group offered him £15,000 (the official currency of Nigeria in the 1970s) during a subsequent visit. The donation came from an operation’s revenues. He told the story: They asked me to change the money because, in my opinion, they tried to break into the safe with gunshots during their operation, which may have damaged some of the notes. I met a banker who lived with us at the time, and he changed the money, claiming that if his superiors would let him change it for me at the bank after first he would have to give up part of the money. I believe he went and came back with 10,000.
“But the gang told me to go with it, saying they only used it to test me,” after I gave the money back to them. For a teenager, that was a lot of money, but Williams, who now knew how they made their living, was hungry for more. He desired to be a member of the group. They attempted to stop him, nevertheless. Despite not allowing him to join them, the gang gave him the tools he needed to take on criminal activity. Williams, then a teenager, received training on how to handle a gun, intimidate others, and apprehend bank cashiers. Equipped with such abilities, Williams teamed up with another gang of robbers that Oyenusi’s crew had trained and guided.
Prior to Oyenusi and his gang’s September 1971 execution at Lagos Bar Beach, Williams claimed the syndicate had established a presence throughout the former Western Region (Southwest) and produced a number of followers who continued Oyenusi’s legacy of banditry. Williams rose to prominence inside one of the organizations. Williams asserted that Oyenusi’s gang was better organized and frequently employed a banker as an informant, despite the fact that Oyenusi was infamous for terrorizing his victims and murdering them after taking their possessions. “He (the banker) was giving us information on businesses that would be coming in to take out loans for the salary of their employees and how we would handle the operations.” However, he fled as the bubble burst, Williams added, despite his name being mentioned. Williams’s responsible upbringing led the police to him when his mother began to notice odd behaviors in the company of her adolescent son. “My mother saw the shift right away and knew something wasn’t right. We had a close relationship, me being her only son, he remarked.
He was followed by his mother, who did not waste any time in reporting the police “in the hope that they would rescue me from that life” after learning the truth about her son. Despite being saved, he had to pay a price and serve ten years in prison. Because of his age and his mother’s efforts, the judge spared him the death penalty and instead sentenced him to 10 years in prison, while his colleagues who were arrested for armed robbery in Nigeria during the 1970s and 1980s were given the death penalty at the Lagos Bar Beach. Williams was able to lead a more luxurious life in prison than many other prisoners thanks to the influence of his parents. He claimed to have his own room and to be free to study and pass days in the library rather than working hard labor. He turned to evangelism while he was incarcerated. Since he was teaching other prisoners how to become more infamous, the first few years of his incarceration were just like the rest of his life. However, he quickly discovered comfort in spirituality, and on June 4, 1976, he claimed to have given his life to Christ while incarcerated.
“By the time I was inside, I had developed into one of the leaders who wanted to harden other criminals, and I made a vow to God that I would be a change agent for others.” Following his atonement, he set out to transform as many people as he could. He has been preaching and spearheading a movement for prisoners’ reformation and rehabilitation in prison since he was released from prison in 1980. After spending ten years in Nigerian prisons, he became aware of the system’s corruption and made it his life’s work to spearhead a movement for prisoner reform and rehabilitation.
Olusegun Obasanjo, the former president, granted him a presidential pardon on June 1, 2001. In addition, he was designated to serve on the Presidential Committee on Rehabilitation and Prison Reforms. Williams is currently the Director General of the Prison Rehabilitation Mission International as well as the Presiding Bishop of Christ Vessels of Grace Church Inc. International. The 72-year-old preacher has been married for 43 years, yet he avoids discussing his family in interviews with the media.
