Actor Etim Effiong Shares What Happened To His Parents And How He Was Falsely Accused..

Actor Etim Effiong shared his painful experiences, revealing a tragic pattern of unjust accusations in his family. Just like his father, who was falsely implicated in a coup and sentenced to life imprisonment, he said he was wrongly expelled from University after being accused of cultism without any evidence. 

His father's wrongful imprisonment led to years of suffering, and his mother lost her life in an accident while traveling to visit him in prison, leaving him to be raised by relatives.



He told Chude Jideownwo

"At the time in school, I was a goody two shoes, a church boy and bookworm. That was all I did. When I heard about the renunciation ceremony for cultists in my university, I was like wow it doesn’t concern me. 

After the renunciation ceremony, the time of grace the school brought out a list of 150 names saying these are the names of cultists and my name was on that list. I don’t know how it happened from nowhere. Everything we tried didn’t work, it was a miscarriage of justice because there was absolutely nothing that proved I was a cultist. I was first sent on indefinite suspension and after the disciplinary hearing I was expelled. It was a very dark period in my life.

 Then FUTMinna called me back after two years saying that I have been forgiven so I should come back and finish my course. My set had graduated already. I went back and finished my engineering course.

To be honest Nigeria isn’t one of my favorite places in the world, but I am proud of where we are as a nation. 

My dad was in the military and he was going to be killed along with general mamman Vatsa. His story is not my story but I like to tell it because he wrote a book about it. His story was that he had this close friend, they were neighbors, they used to eat in each other’s houses, kids used to play in each other’s houses in NDA Kaduna. 

This close friend of his was one of the key coup plotters in the vatsa coup. He was a top officer, great at his job and was really intelligent. When they got arrested, the question he was asked was ‘who did you tell’ and he claimed he told my father. My father was like you didn’t tell me anything. You told me something totally different. My father got arrested and roped in with the rest of the coup plotters and he was going to be killed.

By the hand of God, the moment they were taken outside to be shot, an officer came with a note and called out three officers and said these three officers including my father were staying here. The remaining officers were going on transfer. These three officers including my father were like ''aaaaah we want to go on transfer too, why are you keeping us here'' they were in Kirikiri at the time. They took the remaining officers including general Mamman Vatsa, my father’s close friend and the next thing my father heard was gunshots. They were executed behind in the yard.

My father’s death sentence was commuted to life just before the IBB government left, IBB released him from prison in 1993. He was released from prison but he wasn’t pardoned and it was Buhari’s government who in 2020 now granted him officially a presidential pardon and his rank and entitlements were restored to him.

The friend that set him up before he was shot as they were dragging them, tying them to the stakes he was like ‘where is colonel Effiong?’ I don’t see Colonel Effiong, why isn’t he here? Before he was shot that was what he was shouting. I was one at the time when all these were happening. I didn’t grow up with a father figure. I grew up with my mom.

Fun fact is 4 years later, my mom was going to visit my dad in prison because at that time they had transferred my dad to Kano central prison. They took the southerners to the north and the northerners to the south people who they incarcerated for life. My mom was travelling to go and see my father. She had an accident and died. 

I was 4 when my mom died and 1 when my dad was incarcerated. that broke him and totally shattered him, he had to deal with all of that in prison. He couldn’t even attend his own wife's funeral. We had to be taken to live with our grandparents. I was raised by my grandparents and the later by my uncle and auntie''