Love him or hate, social media personality, Idris Okuneye, popularlyknown as Bobrisky has carved a niche for himself and is arguably one of the most talked about cross-dressers in the country, perhaps in the whole of Africa
From obscurity he emerged and has succeeded to make a name for himself, employing what some might call an unorthodox business model, but it seems to work. On Instagram for instance, despite the fact his account is set to private, he has over 395,ooo followers, which of course is no mean feat. He regularly uses the platform and Snapchat to engage positively with followers as well as to engage in pettiness with perceived enemies. And it is on these platforms that he makes his outrageous claims and boasts as well. Many of these claims are of course unverifiable but who has time to fact check except perhaps the tax man?
And he has other values as well especially in the Nigeria blogosphere, providing it with a rich source of content, which they in return feed to the ever hungry blog reading populace. But it’s a ‘commensalism’ type of relationship as Bobrisky gets the free publicity that he craves.
Just recently, the news broke of Bobrisky’s arrest. Many attributed the arrest to a ‘coming out of the closet’ confession that the bleaching expert made on Instagram (though it proved not to be much of a confession as he quickly deleted the said post). However, legal mind, Festus Keyamo has since noted that the confession, such as it was, was not enough to arrest Bobrisky. He further stated it will be necessary to link a gay act to Bobrisky before he could be arrested for being homosexual. Moreover, Bobrisky has also since clarified that his arrest was engineered by his erstwhile friend, Toyin Lawani, with whom he publicly fell out.
But Toyin Lawani wasn’t the only celebrity to have engaged in social media spat with Bobrisky, the list is much longer than that includes the likes of controversial radio personality Daddy Freeze, comedian Tunde Edunt, musician Idris Abdulkareem to mention just a few.
We’ll now take a look at those spats and the circumstances that surrounded them as first reported by Rotimi Agbana, Tolulope Abereoje and Adetutu Adesoji for the Vanguard newspaper
Bobrisky versus Toyin Lawani
Bobrisky was recently arrested in Lagos and has linked his arrest to fashion entrepreneur, Toyin Lawani. The duo used to be good friends until recently when they had a fallout. Toyin made a post on Instagram some time ago, and Bobrisky who is famous for not letting whoever speaks badly of him go easily, dragged the CEO of Tiannah Empire mercilessly all over Snapchat.
Speaking to LIB, Bobrisky said Toyin directed her lawyer to write a petition against him for refusing to apologize after he insulted her on social media and also accused him of selling creams to her customers.
“Toyin Lawani asked her lawyer to write petitions against me that I worked for her and I’m selling creams to all her customers, which is a fat lie. I never worked for Toyin, She was my friend. I can’t remember ever working for Toyin or learning how to make creams from her,” he said.
Bobrisky versus Denrele
Media personality, Denrele Edun, has always claimed to be the pioneer male cross-dresser but he has always been compared to Bobrisky since the latter surfaced on social media. Denrele has often kept mum regarding posts comparing him to Bobrisky until he replied a twitter user who said Bobrisky has kicked him out of stardom.
“Thanks for your analysis, but funny enough, can you define stardom? Because I’ve been gaming in the media industry since 1995! I’m not anybody’s mate!” the fashionista replied.
