He Was Here The Whole Time.

This publication has spent fourteen days reporting a disappearance. We were wrong about what we were reporting.

Baba Segi did not go missing. He has been exactly where he chose to be, doing exactly what he chose to do, watching from a carefully chosen distance as the household he built revealed itself without him in it. He was not lost. He was watching. And now he has asked this publication to close this investigation the way it should be closed, not with a statement, not with a press conference, not with the kind of words that can be argued with and pulled apart and reconstructed to mean something more convenient. He asked us to show you his face.

What you are looking at is not a photograph.

It is a painting, a digital painting, created by the artist behind this publication, who has been documenting this story not only in words but in images from the very beginning. The portrait of Baba Segi that you see here was the first work completed in a series of five. The wives came after. Their portraits were released as the story unfolded, each one a chapter, each one a truth.

This was always a story about more than a missing man. It was a story about what happens to people when the thing they took for granted is taken away. About power and who really holds it. About silence as a weapon and absence as a language. About four women and what they revealed about themselves when they thought nobody important was watching.

Baba Segi was watching. So were we. So were you.

This is the final dispatch from The CEN Report. The investigation is closed. The subject has been found. The lesson, we leave for you to determine.

The five portraits in this series are available to view in full here. They are the work of a digital artist who believes that painting, like storytelling, makes the invisible visible.

If this story moved you, if you found yourself choosing sides, losing sleep over Iya Tope, wanting to shake Iya Femi, unable to stop thinking about Bolanle standing in that doorway, then the paintings are for you. They were always for you.

— The CEN Report
Investigation closed: Day 14