{"id":1995,"date":"2015-07-08T17:27:54","date_gmt":"2015-07-08T17:27:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nigeriastandardnewspaper.com\/ng\/?p=1995"},"modified":"2015-07-08T17:27:54","modified_gmt":"2015-07-08T17:27:54","slug":"inspirational-story-in-americanigerian-borntexas-prison-officer-lead-african-community-to-god-in-worship-narrates-ordeal-as-security-officer-at-staples-center-how-he-pastors-redeemed-christian-ch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nigeriastandardnewspaper.com\/a\/inspirational-story-in-americanigerian-borntexas-prison-officer-lead-african-community-to-god-in-worship-narrates-ordeal-as-security-officer-at-staples-center-how-he-pastors-redeemed-christian-ch\/","title":{"rendered":"INSPIRATIONAL STORY IN AMERICA:Nigerian born,Texas Food Service Manager lead African Community to God in Worship…Narrates ordeal as Security Officer at Staples Center* How he Pastors Redeemed Christian Church of God (Rhema Int’l Assembly Branch) Huntsville* Says: ‘God’s Plan for us is always the best’* PLUS: His wife working experience as Texas Correctional Officer"},"content":{"rendered":"

INSPIRATIONAL STORY IN AMERICA:<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Nigerian born, Texas\u00a0Food Service Manager\u00a0lead African Community to God in Worship…Narrates ordeal as Security Officer at Staples Center<\/span> <\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

* How he Pastors Redeemed Christian Church of God (Rhema Int’l Assembly Branch) Huntsville <\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

* Says: ‘God’s Plan for us is always the best’<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

* PLUS: His wife working experience as Texas Correctional Officer<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

BY GEORGE ELIJAH OTUMU\/CNN iReport, NORTH AMERICA & EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, NAIJA STANDARD<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Texas<\/a>HIS <\/b>story is that of determination to succeed against all odds. After John Okperuvwe won visa through lottery run by the United States Department for developing nations, he knew from the outset that God had designed him to relocate with members of his family to ‘Uncle Sam’s Country.’ As a man of prayers, who always put his daily activities in the safe hands of God, he was confident that ‘If God makes a way, He will divinely back it up with a provision.’ Thereafter, he flew from his former place of residence in Lagos, Nigeria to Boston in September 2008.<\/span><\/p>\n

As at today, Okperuvwe from Warri, Delta State, Nigeria who started his career as a ‘Correctional Officer’ has been promoted ‘Food Service Manager 11’ due to his hardwork, while his wife is also working as ‘Texas Correctional Officer’ in this government’s agency.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

His Story….<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Okperuvwe squatted with a friend in Boston where he spent three days, and then moved to Los Angeles, where he knew a pastor-friend from back home. He worked as a security guard at the Staples Center and the city\u2019s main train depot, and took a second job transporting blood between doctors and laboratories. Not long after then, his wife and children \u2014 they now have two boys and two girls \u2014 eventually joined him, and they squeezed into a single room in the pastor\u2019s house. For job opportunities in California, he says, \u201cCalifornia was as dry as Africa.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Divine Connection on Facebook<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Obviously in prayer mood, he had a huge feeling to toy briefly with social media, particularly ‘Facebook’. He did and in early 2010, Okperuvwe found a friend from his college days in Lagos on Facebook. He sent a message, and they started chatting. The friend was working in a Texas prison and making good money.<\/p>\n

His journey into Destiny Fulfillment<\/b><\/p>\n

According to Okperuvwe, he prayed. He felt he had little to lose, and that March, he found a cheap apartment in Houston and took the entrance exam for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (known locally as TDCJ). He passed easily. In September, iReport<\/b><\/i> gathered that TDCJ offered him a job in Huntsville, a town of 30,000, about an hour from Houston, which houses many of the state\u2019s prisons and the agency\u2019s headquarters.<\/p>\n

As soon as he arrived, Okperuvwe discovered that there were lots of Nigerians and other West Africans already living in Huntsville, all working for TDCJ. Some, like him, had brought their families and others were single men living in department dorms. Many, like him, already had college degrees from back home that wouldn\u2019t transfer so they were studying at Sam Houston State University, the local college, during the day and working at night.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Okperuvwe had discovered a phenomenon that had already become apparent to prisoners, their family members, and correctional officers: since around 2008, a wave of African immigrants have taken jobs as prison guards in Texas. The exact numbers are unknown \u2014 the Texas prison agency does not keep track of the birthplaces of its employees \u2014 but prisoners and correctional officers anecdotally ballpark it in the hundreds. Many come from Nigeria, but others hail from Cameroon, Liberia, Uganda, and Sierra Leone. In 2009, the newsletter Prison Legal News reported that at the Ramsey Unit, near Houston, entire shifts were \u201clargely composed of Nigerians.\u201d<\/p>\n

The rise of African correctional officers is a story of an immigrant community finding an economic niche, but it is also a story of how prisons have shifted from the kinds of places where one makes a career to transient way stations to the middle class. \u201cA lot of these [African] guys I see coming in are going to college and also working,\u201d says Lance Lowry, head of the Huntsville local of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which represents correctional staff. \u201cWe see a lot of them leave the agency to make more money elsewhere. There\u2019s a lot of turnover.\u201d<\/p>\n

Over the last decade, Texas prisons have struggled to find employees and keep them. As prisons expanded and incarceration numbers ballooned in the 1990s, many facilities were built in small towns with high unemployment, but then the rest of the economy improved and the state simply could not compete with private industry. A recent boom in natural gas drilling along the Eagle Ford Shale, which stretches across East and South Texas, has brought truck driving and rig jobs to the towns where most of the state\u2019s prisons are located.<\/p>\n

Harder to document but no less real is what National Public Radio recently termed a \u201ccultural stigma\u201d around guarding prisons. Correctional officers have always suffered from a lack of the esteem Americans bestow on soldiers, police officers, firefighters, and other public servants who risk violent injury and death in their work. The 2015 edition of the textbook American Corrections baldly refers to being a \u201ccustodial officer\u201d as a \u201cdead-end job.\u201d<\/p>\n

This perception has combined with low pay and poor conditions to produce staffing shortages. Over the last few years, under-staffing has been reported in numerous state prison systems,<\/p>\n

Other states with large prison systems and immigrant populations, including California, Florida, and New Mexico, require employees to have citizenship or be in the process of applying. In Texas, job applicants to the prison system only need to be authorized to work in the U.S. This policy, along with a major metropolitan center of immigration (Houston), a related entry-level industry (security), and a climate not so different from West Africa, have all contributed to the rise of African workers at Texas prisons.<\/p>\n

African immigrants working in Texas prisons have a reputation of being strict and serious. Steven Epperson, who served several years at the Darrington Unit, near Houston, describes the African officers he encountered to be \u201cshort-tempered and irritated by stupidity and ignorance.\u201d Okperuvwe shows flashes of this stereotype \u2014 he chuckles while recalling how one prisoner complained to him, \u201cMan, they brought you here to oppress us!\u201d<\/p>\n

But as their numbers have grown, cultural tensions have become more noticeable. Some of the Nigerian men initially have trouble taking orders from female superiors. Veronica Williams, an African-American TDCJ employee who attends Okperuvwe\u2019s church, says she has seen these immigrants face discrimination and accusations that they\u2019re stealing jobs that should go to Americans \u2014 particularly in response to a program in which TDCJ hires immigrants on work visas (as opposed to ones who are already in the U.S.). There are less than 50 Africans1<\/span><\/sup> in this category. In 2009, a Nigerian officer in Huntsville named Marshall Akpanokop was accused of raping and impregnating a female prisoner. He was later proven innocent when a DNA test revealed that he was not the father, but Akpanokop sued the agency, arguing he had been \u201csingled out as the culprit\u201d because \u201che was a dark-skinned, Nigerian national with an accent.\u201d<\/p>\n

Such dramatic incidents are rare, but language problems have been a consistent cause for grumbling. Family members of prisoners tell anecdotes about brothers and sons who don\u2019t understand the orders given by an African officer, due to his or her accent, and find themselves written up for failing to follow those orders. \u201cThe inmates don\u2019t know how to comply,\u201d says Jennifer Erschabek, who directs the Texas Inmate Families Association and whose son is at the Luther Unit, northwest of Houston. \u201cThe Africans think they\u2019re resisting, and then they write them up a case….And then other guards have a security issue; when there\u2019s a problem, they can\u2019t rely on some of the African guards to communicate in a bad situation.\u201d Anonymous officers have expressed similar frustrations on an employee blog.<\/p>\n

Lance Lowry, the union head, brushes off these concerns. \u201cThere are immigrant COs who don\u2019t handle the population well, but I\u2019ve also seen guys from Texas that can\u2019t do it,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s all about the traits you come in with.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lowry mostly worries that these immigrant workers are particularly vulnerable to exploitation from the agency. Last year, as national anxiety about the spread of Ebola reached a peak, Glenn Beck started to wonder whether African prison guards in Texas might be bringing the disease over. TDCJ started requiring employees returning from a trip to West Africa to take off 21 days \u2014 the incubation period for Ebola \u2014 with their personal leave time or forgo pay.<\/p>\n

Building the Altar of God<\/b><\/p>\n

iReport<\/b><\/i> gathered that earlier Sunday morning this year, as a passionate lover of God, Okperuvwe stood in front of room of several dozen men and women, half in suits, dresses, and big hats, and half in bright African prints and head wraps. He had worked an overnight shift, supervising prisoners as they cooked an early breakfast, but he looked chipper in a black suit, shouting \u201cpraise the lord\u201d while his teenage son pounded a drum set and an older man played a snaky line on an electric keyboard. The crowd clapped and danced. Six singers clutched microphones and belted out American Christian rock songs, standing against flashing stage lights and a wall painted to portray an ocean scene.<\/p>\n

Okperuvwe became a pastor in Nigeria, and shortly after he arrived in Huntsville in 2010, he started this church, the Rhema International Assembly, out of his family\u2019s apartment. It is a branch of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, a revivalist movement founded in Nigeria in the early 1950s. Now housed in a small, undistinguished building within walking distance of the town square, the church has become the \u201cmeeting point for all the Africans\u201d who live in Huntsville, virtually all of whom work for the local prisons.<\/p>\n

Okperuvwe himself works at the Wynne Unit, a massive facility that houses up to 2,300 prisoners, where he supervises the kitchen and makes sure the inmates don\u2019t steal silverware to use as weapons. He does not love his job, but considers it far preferable to what he did before. Growing up in a small city called Warri, in the delta region of southern Nigeria, and then in Lagos, the country\u2019s biggest city, he farmed and collected money for microbus drivers. In his 20s, he tutored children in chemistry and managed a transport company.<\/p>\n

Compared to the alternatives, he says, guarding a prison is a \u201cblessing.\u201d Private security jobs like the ones he held before in Los Angeles and Houston start at under $18,000 a year. TDCJ jobs start around $29,000, and feature regular raises, health insurance, paid vacation, and sick days. He can also work night shifts, allowing him to take classes in public health at the local college (he has a microbiology degree from Nigeria, but it is not recognized here).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

After delivering his sermon, which was called \u201cThe Strategy of Crossing Your Jordan,\u201d Okperuvwe took a seat behind his desk in a tiny office in the back of the church. A line of people stood outside the door waiting to speak with him. He has become a kind of therapist, helping church members with the problems of cultural dislocation, including divorce and the lack of a safety net when they are sick or injured. The church owns a van, which Okperuvwe uses to pick up new immigrant families as they arrive in Huntsville to \u201chelp them settle down.\u201d He has seen them come from New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Michigan, and Minnesota.<\/p>\n

It is impossible to know whether Okperuvwe\u2019s efforts have caused the numbers of Nigerians and other Africans working in Huntsville to increase, but when old acquaintances reach out on Facebook or by phone, he talks up TDCJ jobs, just as his friend once did to get him here. His attitude toward the agency has an evangelical fervor; there is no trace of a \u201ccultural stigma.\u201d<\/p>\n

His words: \u201cGod is behind every of our activities because He is Lord over our lives. It was when we came to Texas that we started living a better life, courtesy of TDCJ. It might not be the ultimate, it might not be the best, but it\u2019s a good starting point.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

EDITOR’S NOTE: His true life story is a story of possibility, where God can do all things, when we are hardworking, patience, law-abiding and prayerful always.\u00a0 His hardwork now earned him position as ‘Food Service Manager’ in Texas Prison Agency<\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

INSPIRATIONAL STORY IN AMERICA: Nigerian born, Texas\u00a0Food Service Manager\u00a0lead African Community to God in Worship…Narrates ordeal as Security Officer at Staples Center * How he Pastors Redeemed Christian Church of God (Rhema Int’l Assembly Branch) Huntsville * Says: ‘God’s Plan for us is always the best’ * PLUS: His wife working experience as Texas Correctional […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1997,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[102],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nigeria"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nigeriastandardnewspaper.com\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1995","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nigeriastandardnewspaper.com\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nigeriastandardnewspaper.com\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nigeriastandardnewspaper.com\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nigeriastandardnewspaper.com\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1995"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nigeriastandardnewspaper.com\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1995\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nigeriastandardnewspaper.com\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1997"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nigeriastandardnewspaper.com\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nigeriastandardnewspaper.com\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nigeriastandardnewspaper.com\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}