Blogger Sugarbelly allegedly ‘raped’ by late Audu’s son, set to become APC’s Kogi’s Guber Candidate...
Every time I see a white Nissan Altima, my palms go sweaty, and my knees get weak. It’s an involuntary reaction born of so many nights being driven around Asokoro pinned to the floor of Tunji’s white Nissan Altima, barely able to breathe, the stench of weed stinging my eyes while I choked on the penis of whomever it pleased Mustapha to force me to pleasure that day.
I can’t have music playing while driving around in a car either. Or just sitting around at home. I can’t have music playing period. Especially not Maroon5. If I get into your car, please drive in fucking silence or you will make it hard for me to breathe.
Right now there are thousands of people running wild with their “opinions”, talking authoritatively about what Mustapha, Abdul, Tunji, and their band of friends and brothers did to me, as if they were there. As if they hovered around us unseen like evil spirits, listening to everything that was said, seeing everything that happened, as if they know.
In the beginning, Mustapha and I would go out for lunch, and I’d put gas in his car, and we’d buy our own shawarmas, and eat out of each others. I had a massive crush on him, and he told me he loved me, and called me “his woman” which made me feel special. I was getting paid 20K a month, which is nothing now, but it was my first real salary back then, and it was nice to have more money of my own to spend, and spend on him I did.
I’m no stranger to money. I’ve had a lot of it, and I’ve had very little, and I’ve never been the type of person to be impressed by anyone’s wealth, so it wasn’t cars, hotels, or fancy shit I cared about, I was cool. I attended the best boarding school in the country, and Mustapha didn’t impress me, and I never asked him for anything or took anything from him besides the comic books and novels we traded with each other.
What I needed was a friend, and when I plunked down at my desk that first day of work at Alteq, and bonded immediately over a shared love of books and superhero comics, I thought I’d made one in the guy sitting next to me.
Every day, I came to work, and he was right there. And at the end of each work day, it had become normal to everyone for him to drop me off at home, so when 6pm came, and he grabbed hold of my arm and said “Let’s go.” I had no idea how to justify refusing and making a scene. Even after he was fired in April of 2007, at the end of each work day, he would show up outside our office on Amazon street to whisk me away. I would step outside the gate, and he would be there in his red Mercedes, waiting, demanding I get in.
I was terrified that my refusal would mean the exposure of the pictures he had taken of me early in our relationship, photos I told him not to take, but he did anyway, photos in which I was naked and vulnerable.
I wanted to quit my job, but what reason could I possibly give my family for quitting a job I obviously loved, especially when I needed the internship to get into the honours program at the university I was to attend that year?
I had so much to be fearful of. The thought of the videos Abdul recorded of Mustapha and Tunji raping me seeing the light of day filled me with sheer terror. The alternative was keeping it all secret, and so I did.
Masking your emotions is not hard to do, just exhausting, and so for eleven hours a day, from 7am to 6pm, putting on my clothes, going to work, and sitting at my desk next to Mustapha every day was easier than you think.
You’d have to be stupid not to notice what kind of country Nigeria is, and I have never been stupid.
At 17, I knew already that the Nigerian police is most definitely NOT your friend, and that people who have police and army escorts in their homes are generally the sort that can make you disappear (in many little pieces preferably), and pay off the police to look the other way, or failing all else, buy judges to make sure any court cases brought against them never see the light of day.
I had disclosed already to my priest at confession, and to a doctor in Maitama General Hospitalwhere I got tested for HIV and other STDS, the horrific things that were happening to me, and nothing had come of it. At the time, I didn’t know whether a rape crisis centre like the Mirabel Rape Centre even existed in Nigeria, or that there were any resources to help someone in my situation, or even what to do after I had been raped to help me get justice.
I was scared, and I felt very alone. Their parents were very powerful people, and I didn’t have any faith in the police, especially faced with attackers that seemed to have both the police and the army in their pockets.
It was even more difficult to come to terms with the enormous betrayal of the man who told me he loved me, whom I loved as well, doing unspeakable things to me, and forcing me to do them with others. Even after I escaped from him by moving to the United States for college, I remained torn, and the part of me that loved him could not reconcile with the horror that he had put me through, and we stayed in contact because the mental hold he had over me was still so strong. It took me an additional three years to fully break free of him, and though I don’t live in daily terror of Mustapha Audu as I once did, anything that bears even so much as the memory of him is enough to break me down.
In December of 2008, I ran into Bashir in a mall in Maryland, and suffered a complete panic attack. I broke away from the people I had come shopping with, and ran and ran to the other end of the mall.
In 2012 and 2013, while out with Nyimbi, I ran into Ema and Tunji at Vanilla in Maitama. Tunji was sitting in low seats opposite the bar in the company of my classmate, Kachi whom I’d attended Loyola with.
They didn’t recognize me, but it was all I could do not to break a bottle of whiskey on Ema’s revoltingly globular head, and the night ended with Nyimbi dragging me out of Vanilla in tears of anger and frustration at my lost opportunity to kill them both.
Looking back, I can see how so much fear and shame prevented me from exposing what these animals were doing to me, and I question why I let them rob me of so many years of my life.
Still, the child I was at 17 was very different from the adult I am today at 26, and my 26 year old self would have damned the consequences, told, and raised hell.
As terrifying as it was to come to work every day and have to sit next to Mustapha, I’m saddened by the realisation that in the same place that held such terror and anxiety for me, I had people who loved me, cared about me, and would have done their best to protect me if I could have overcome my fear and shame and cried out for help.
Courtesy of Sugarbelly.
CLICK SugarbellyRocks to read on…
Right now there are thousands of people running wild with their “opinions”, talking authoritatively about what Mustapha, Abdul, Tunji, and their band of friends and brothers did to me, as if they were there. As if they hovered around us unseen like evil spirits, listening to everything that was said, seeing everything that happened, as if they know.
LMAO @ gold digger and prostitute. I never asked Mustapha for anything, and I’ve always done honest work for my own money, which is very telling, since I met Mustapha at WORK.
I actually wish this was true. At least it would be compensation for all the money I’ve had to spend on psychotherapy over the last few years.
Sugarbelly
Every day, I came to work, and he was right there. And at the end of each work day, it had become normal to everyone for him to drop me off at home, so when 6pm came, and he grabbed hold of my arm and said “Let’s go.” I had no idea how to justify refusing and making a scene. Even after he was fired in April of 2007, at the end of each work day, he would show up outside our office on Amazon street to whisk me away. I would step outside the gate, and he would be there in his red Mercedes, waiting, demanding I get in.
I was terrified that my refusal would mean the exposure of the pictures he had taken of me early in our relationship, photos I told him not to take, but he did anyway, photos in which I was naked and vulnerable.
I wanted to quit my job, but what reason could I possibly give my family for quitting a job I obviously loved, especially when I needed the internship to get into the honours program at the university I was to attend that year?
I had so much to be fearful of. The thought of the videos Abdul recorded of Mustapha and Tunji raping me seeing the light of day filled me with sheer terror. The alternative was keeping it all secret, and so I did.
Masking your emotions is not hard to do, just exhausting, and so for eleven hours a day, from 7am to 6pm, putting on my clothes, going to work, and sitting at my desk next to Mustapha every day was easier than you think.
Because the Nigerian Police is so trustworthy…
At 17, I knew already that the Nigerian police is most definitely NOT your friend, and that people who have police and army escorts in their homes are generally the sort that can make you disappear (in many little pieces preferably), and pay off the police to look the other way, or failing all else, buy judges to make sure any court cases brought against them never see the light of day.
I had disclosed already to my priest at confession, and to a doctor in Maitama General Hospitalwhere I got tested for HIV and other STDS, the horrific things that were happening to me, and nothing had come of it. At the time, I didn’t know whether a rape crisis centre like the Mirabel Rape Centre even existed in Nigeria, or that there were any resources to help someone in my situation, or even what to do after I had been raped to help me get justice.
I was scared, and I felt very alone. Their parents were very powerful people, and I didn’t have any faith in the police, especially faced with attackers that seemed to have both the police and the army in their pockets.
It was even more difficult to come to terms with the enormous betrayal of the man who told me he loved me, whom I loved as well, doing unspeakable things to me, and forcing me to do them with others. Even after I escaped from him by moving to the United States for college, I remained torn, and the part of me that loved him could not reconcile with the horror that he had put me through, and we stayed in contact because the mental hold he had over me was still so strong. It took me an additional three years to fully break free of him, and though I don’t live in daily terror of Mustapha Audu as I once did, anything that bears even so much as the memory of him is enough to break me down.
In December of 2008, I ran into Bashir in a mall in Maryland, and suffered a complete panic attack. I broke away from the people I had come shopping with, and ran and ran to the other end of the mall.
In 2012 and 2013, while out with Nyimbi, I ran into Ema and Tunji at Vanilla in Maitama. Tunji was sitting in low seats opposite the bar in the company of my classmate, Kachi whom I’d attended Loyola with.
They didn’t recognize me, but it was all I could do not to break a bottle of whiskey on Ema’s revoltingly globular head, and the night ended with Nyimbi dragging me out of Vanilla in tears of anger and frustration at my lost opportunity to kill them both.
Looking back, I can see how so much fear and shame prevented me from exposing what these animals were doing to me, and I question why I let them rob me of so many years of my life.
Still, the child I was at 17 was very different from the adult I am today at 26, and my 26 year old self would have damned the consequences, told, and raised hell.
As terrifying as it was to come to work every day and have to sit next to Mustapha, I’m saddened by the realisation that in the same place that held such terror and anxiety for me, I had people who loved me, cared about me, and would have done their best to protect me if I could have overcome my fear and shame and cried out for help.
Courtesy of Sugarbelly.
CLICK SugarbellyRocks to read on…
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