Nigerian women are not strangers to Gender-Based Violence (GBV), especially at the hands of intimate partners. About 35% of married women in Nigeria have been hit at least once by their husbands. Like a double-edged sword, the abuse not only harms them, but it also affects their children.
In this story, Imaobong (24) shares how she developed a fear of phone calls from her family members after she received a devastating call informing her that her father had almost killed her ageing mother.
This is Imaobong’s story, as told to Margaret
Growing up, I was a daddy’s girl. My dad was the first person who made me feel like a princess. We were so close, we had our own traditions. We loved the same kind of music, read the same newspapers and ate the same akara every morning. He loved carrying me, even though everybody else said I was too old and fat to be held.
My dad and I were a team. He never said no to me, never yelled at me, or even hit me. But he wasn’t like that with my siblings. They never understood our bond because their relationship with him was different. It was more distant and strict. They never looked him in the eye, and they never had good things to say about him, but in my eyes, he was perfect. Well, until he wasn’t anymore.
I started suspecting that something was wrong with my father the day he almost killed my sister. He asked her to sweep the floor, and when he found that she didn’t do it, he asked her to flatten herself on the floor, then stamped his feet hard on her head.. I couldn’t move. She didn’t move either. She didn’t even make a sound. My mother rushed out of her room to see her child unconscious on the floor, and my father just walked out. He went to work like it was just another Monday morning. We rushed my sister’s unconscious body to the hospital, and thankfully, she lived to tell the story. We never spoke about it again.
I started to fear him after that incident. We still ate our akara and read our newspapers, but I didn’t want him to hold me anymore. One day, he yelled at me and hit me on the back of my neck; he apologised to me, but my fear of him intensified.
Though my fear lingered, our closeness didn’t go away. At university, we’ll call and talk for hours about music, politics, what he was eating, and everything else. I didn’t care that my mom sent me more money in one year than he did during my five years in university. I didn’t care that my mom was the one who took loans to pay my school fees till I graduated. It felt like my father had personality, while my mom didn’t have any. It felt like all she knew how to do was be a mother and wife, two things I couldn’t relate to. She never read newspapers, barely ate akara and only listened to ancient gospel songs. We just didn’t have much in common.
Her love for God, prayer mountains and prophecies was the reason why I found out that my dad used to hit her. A prophet walked up to us, asking her if her husband had apologised for hitting her when she was pregnant. I waited for her to debunk it, but she didn’t. Instead, she shared more details about how and when it happened— she was pregnant with my older brother; she couldn’t remember what led to the brutality, but remembered being hit with a 25 KG keg filled with water. I knew my father was many things, but a wife-beater wasn’t one of them.
COVID came, and he became a raging man easily irritated by everybody, paranoid for no reason and ironically prideful. My mother was suddenly buying turkey every day, replacing my siblings’ phones and enjoying life as it came. She has always been blessed with people who liked her enough to gift her money, but he had his, so it never mattered that much to him. All of that changed during COVID because he was no longer earning money— my mother’s ability to buy whatever she wanted crushed his ego, so he took it out on everyone. First, it started with yelling until it became more violent. My father and I stopped talking completely. Home no longer felt safe, so I ran to school after lockdown.
After I graduated from university, I had no choice but to return to my family. It was then that I saw how much worse his anger and resentment towards my mother had become. He found fault in everything she did, even imposing a curfew on her like a child. One night, she missed her curfew, and he locked her outside, threatening to throw her down the stairs if she tried to knock on the door. It was raining and she was cold. My siblings had gotten tired of the same old rubbish. My brother wanted to punch him, my sister said she chose to stay, and she should face the consequences. I didn’t know what to feel, but I knew I’d rather die than allow my mother to die in that cold. I took a blanket, packed some food and snuck out of the back door to give to her. Then I spoke freely. She looked small, almost pathetic. I asked her why she was staying. She said it was because of us. I asked her if she knew how traumatised we’ve all become because of this thing, their marriage. I asked her if she knew that my sister and I might never see men as anything other than abusers if she continues to stay with him. She asked me what people would say if she leaves him at her old age. I told her they will say worse if he eventually kills her and forces his children to drag their father to prison.
One day, not long after that incident, he came into the room I shared with my sister and started hitting me. I fell to the floor, and instead of stopping, he started kicking my ribs. I left after that and never looked back. My mother continued to stay, but I left that house to save myself.
Two years after I left, my siblings called to tell me that he had beaten her terribly, to the point where she was bleeding. One minute, I was watching football and yelling at players. The next minute, I was on the phone with the only friend who didn’t judge me for my family’s dysfunction. I cried helplessly, wondering if I would finally need to arrest my father. I didn’t do it because it would have traumatised me even more; I just couldn’t deal with that.
My friend stayed on the call with me, comforted me and told me that he’d be with me every step of the way if I chose to have him arrested. In that moment, I hated my siblings for telling me what he had done — I liked living in the world I had created. I had my person, I was happy, and I was thriving. I didn’t need to be reminded that my father was an abuser and my mother was a victim who refused to leave.
Every call after that event terrified me. I would allow it to ring for a few minutes before picking up. The same thought used to fill my head, “What if he has killed her?” How will I ever recover from knowing that my father had killed my mother?
It’s been almost a year, and I’m still scared of picking up calls from home. My mother has left him, and so has everybody else. I don’t know if it’s because I’m an empath or because a little part of me still loves the dad I grew up with, but I feel bad for him. The last time I saw him, he was skinny and frail. It broke me to see him that way. I can’t see him that way anymore.
My mother, on the other hand, is happy. She has her own house and has filled it with pictures of me and my siblings. I still can’t stay in her place, either, because it reminds me of everything that has been broken. But I am happy that he’s no longer hurting her. Now, she can truly live.
If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, please reach out for support. You can find some helplines here.
