Simon Adebisi
Simon Adebisi was a character played by male actor (and model) Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje on the HBO dramatic series Oz, which took place in an experimental prison unit. The leader of the black gang in Oz, Adebisi was considered one of the prison's most dangerous inmates, and became one of the most recognizable characters on the show. Adebisi is a native of Nigeria. Some of his visual characteristics were his muscle shirts, stereo headphones, and the knit hats he wore far back up on his shaved head. On the show, he portrayed one of the fiercest, most powerful, and most violent inmates inside of Oz, feared by virtually everyone in the prison.
Season 1
Adebisi began as a minor character, a lieutenant of Jefferson Keane (Leon Robinson). When Keane died in Episode 4, Adebisi became the leader of the Homeboys gang, taking the drug trade away from the Italians with the help of Ryan O'Reilly (Dean Winters). The Italian leader Nino Schibetta saw him as the best drug player amongst the Black inmates and respected his leadership skills. In the Season 1 finale, Adebisi, along with O'Reilly, Kareem Said, Miguel Alvarez and Scott Ross, was a leader of the riot in "Emerald City". He was himself taken prisoner by the other inmates, however, when he was incapacitated due to lack of heroin. In that episode it was revealed that Adebisi was serving a sentence of life imprisonment without parole for beheading an undercover cop in 1993.
Season 2
Adebisi, who was suffering from withdrawal from heroin, slowly began to lose his mind. Adebisi however began to reuse and sell heroin regularly and maintained control of the Homeboys. When a new inmate, Italian Peter Schibetta, found out that Adebisi was responsible for the death of his father Nino, Schibetta swore revenge. Schibetta and inmate Chucky Pancamo attacked Adebisi in an attempted murder that got turned around. Adebisi threw Pancamo around like a rag doll, and brutally sodomized Schibetta. As a result, Schibetta, traumatized by the rape, began losing his mind and was transferred to the psych ward. Adebisi freely used the epithet "guinea" towards the Italian inmates to show that he was unstoppable. However, two distractions held Adebisi's attention: first, his crush on Death Row inmate Shirley Bellinger, who flirted with him through notes before rejecting him upon discovering that he was black.
Secondly, his heroin addiction was out of control. The Italians, seeking revenge for Schibetta's rape, took advantage of this when new inmate Antonio Nappa got Adebisi put into drug rehab through his staff connections. Adebisi was deposed as the head of the Homeboys and cut out of the drug trade through the help of Nappa's former friends. Another black prisoner, an elderly man named Jara, came to Oz, and began to rehabilitate Adebisi, but at the same time the stress of the change brought on schizophrenic visions and severe psychosis. The Italians and the Blacks considered his friend a threat, so they murdered him. The shock and trauma of the event triggered a nervous breakdown and he was again moved to the Psych Ward.
Season 3
Adebisi came out of the psych ward pretending to still be crazy. To prove he was insane, he defended Peter Schibetta, the man he raped. This move convinced Italian leader Antonio Nappa that a potential change in heart from Adebisi could prove useful for the Italian inmates. This was all a ploy however as he took a job in the AIDS ward as a means of obtaining blood to prick Nappa undetected with an HIV-infected needle. When Dr. Nathan confirms that Nappa is HIV positive, he is sent to the AIDS ward and Chucky Pancamo assumes leadership among the Italians. From here Adebisi gets back into full swing ready to take control of the Homeboys once again.
Meanwhile, Kenny Wangler, whom Adebisi views as nothing more than a potential sex slave, is leading the Homeboys—who do not trust Adebisi. Adebisi approaches Italian leader Chucky Pancamo about becoming partners in the drug trade. Pancamo initially refuses because he is still angered about the beating Adebisi gave him and Schibetta. However, when Adebisi points out that he could be "a strong ally," Pancamo realized that Adebisi is the best Black inmate to work with in the drug trade and was willing to work with him as long as he took Wangler down. Adebisi then showed his sincerity with a plot to depose current Homeboy Wangler by burning the skin of Wangler's bodyguards Poet and Junior Pierce while Wangler is away at a funeral. When Wangler arrives back in Oz he is locked in as Adebisi's podmate. Sharing a cell with Wangler, Adebisi practices various African "warrior training" activities such as hog tying Wangler naked, exposing his anus. Whether or not Wangler was raped is unclear but several of their fellow inmates did not doubt it. Adebisi went one further with Wangler forcing him to accuse Unit Manager Tim McManus of sexual harassment. As described in the journal of Augustus Hill, Wangler was far more likely to be a victim of sexual assault from Adebisi than McManus, but the claim hurt McManus as he was already facing a sexual harassment suit. As a result, McManus' credibility is put at further risk.
He begins to formulate a plan to take over Emerald City and make it "all black." The first step is to convince the impressionable Correctional Officer Clayton Hughes to help to his African American counterparts behind bars as opposed to keeping them locked in. Adebisi told him that his father had also died in Oz (Jara) and then convinced Hughes that a white inmate murdered his father in a racially motivated fashion. Hughes after seeing a few white officers state racist statements starts accusing other black staff members, including Warden Leo Glynn, of betraying their own people and working for an oppressive white-run system. Adebisi's second step involved rallying the Black inmates as a means of taking over the prison. He engineers a plan which results in the hacks throwing handicapped black inmate Augustus Hill in the hole. He exploits the perceived racism of the white officers in order to incense the black inmates to riot. Despite opposition from Muslim inmate Kareem Said, the Black inmates led by Adebisi begin shouting "Set Hill Free" and start physically confronting both the White inmates and correctional officers. Glynn fearing for a riot locks Oz down into the new millennium and then fires Hughes for being sympathetic to Adebisi's cause. Hughes however leaves Adebisi with a gun on his last day of work as New Year's Eve approaches.
Season 4
Upon the end of the lockdown Adebisi created a tense situation by holding the smuggled gun in his pod claiming that it will help get a Black man to run Emerald City. He then manipulates Warden Glynn to let Poet, Pierce, and Wangler back into Em City claiming that the racial situation will rest easier getting them back around him. Adebisi then notices that the three of them led by Wangler harass and bully a new white inmate, a Frenchman named Guilliame Tarrant, who is a solitary loner unfit to handle the stress of prison life. Seeking revenge for the death of Jara, Adebisi then leaves the gun under Tarrant's mattress. The next time Wangler tries to bully Tarrant, Tarrant pulls the gun and shoots him, Pierce, Lou Rath, and officer Joseph Howard before turning the weapon on himself. With four blacks dead at the hands of a white inmate, Adebisi's plan is set in motion as Glynn fires Tim McManus for not preventing one of the inmates from acquiring a gun. Raoul "El Cid" Hernandez informs on him, convinced that the Latinos will move to aid the Whites. Hernandez tells Glynn that Adebisi used the gun to stir up racial tension and that it was given to him by former CO Clayton Hughes. Adebisi and Pancamo agree that it is time for El Cid to die, and use new inmate Enrique Morales to kill and take Hernandez's position as "El Norte"'s drug leader. Meanwhile, a new inmate named Desmond Mobay, who is supposedly Jamaican wants in with the gangsters. Mobay is actually a narcotics detective named Johnny Basil who wishes to bust the drug trade in Emerald City. Adebisi suspects this and opposes having Mobay join as a member their crew. But Mobay comes though and passes every initiation test successfully, eventually gaining their confidence, especially that of Pancamo.
Over the course of the season Adebisi, with the help of Zahir Arif, is able to persuade outside community leaders to pressure Glynn into hiring a black man to replace McManus. Glynn is running for Lieutenant Governor with the Republican party, and sees that hiring a black man to run Em City is likely to gain him more support from the regisitered African American voters. Eventually, Glynn does indeed hire a black man for the job named Martin Querns. Querns, himself an ex-drug dealer, was told to rid Emerald City of violence and racial tension. Querns told Adebisi that he and his followers could do whatever they wished as long as they prevented any violence. Head CO Sean Murphy, an ardent supporter of McManus, was appalled by Querns' system, especially because it made Adebisi, Pancamo, and Morales the trustees. Murphy questions Querns' motive in transferring all of the Aryan and Biker inmates out of Em City. Querns fires Murphy and instates a black officer Travis Smith as the head CO of Emerald City. Querns later recommends that Glynn transfer all of the guards loyal to Sean Murphy out of Em City. Glynn allows Querns to transfer all of the white guards with the exception of Claire Howell, who hated McManus. All of the new guards transferred into Em City are black, as are all of the new inmates. However, none of these inmates are Muslim and this angers Zahir Arif, who had helped Adebisi get a black man to run Emerald City in the first place. The new inmates are also all loyal to Adebisi who now becomes the most powerful and influential inmate in the prison, and is given free reign by Querns as long he suppressed violent incidents. Adebisi now has the freedom to satisfy all his vices, installing a curtain in his cell and creating his own version of "paradise", although he could not escape the fact that he was still in prison. In time, the Christian and gay gangs, both predominantly white, are replaced by black inmates, and soon the Italian and Latino inmates are deprived of the drug trade. When these two groups are sent to Unit B, two of Adebisi's most loyal lieutenants, Poet and Supreme Allah, are named trustees to replace Pancamo and Morales.
Said, the re-instated leader of the Muslims, and Vernon Schillinger, leader of the Aryan Brotherhood, are greatly concerned about the effects of Adebisi's leadership in Em City under Querns. Said believes that Emerald City is rapidly becoming an inferno in which Black inmates are being mentally poisoned, while Schillinger fears that the black "ghetto" that Querns and Adebisi have created in Em City will eventually spread into every other unit in Oz. Said pretends to join forces with Adebisi with the covert intention of bringing him down. Said learns of Adebisi's video recordings of drug parties held in his cell, and resolves to find a way to supply Glynn with this damning evidence of Querns's misconduct, the warden will fire Querns and have Adebisi transferred into general population.
Adebisi accepts Said's request to move into his cell and voluntarily gives him a video tape to "test his loyalty." However, Said's loyalty is call into question after fellow Homeboy Leroy Tidd learns of the minister's plan to destroy Adebisi. Eventually the tape finds its way to the warden and Querns is immediately dismissed. When the reinstated prison governor Tim McManus announces Adebisi's transfer from Emerald City, Adebisi is enraged and storms into his cell to kill Said with a knife. The two of them struggle and the altercation ends when a pool of blood is seen staining the surrounding white curtain. Adebisi emerges from his cell, apparently victorious, before revealing his fatal injuries by spitting up blood and falling to the floor. Said comes out behind him with the bloody knife in hand, having killed Adebisi in self-defense.