Busola Dakolo has claimed that she signed the invitation letter from the police to appear in Abuja over alleged threat to life at gunpoint.
Dakolo had alleged that the Senior Pastor of the Commonwealth of Zion Assembly (COZA), Biodun Fatoyinbo raped her 20 years ago in Ilorin when she was 16 years old.
Fatoyinbo denied the allegation and when pressure mounted, he stepped aside from the pulpit. But a month later, he is back preaching again.
Dakolo had filed a case against Fatoyinbo at the police station, but she became a prey as the police brought allegations of threat to life and blackmail against her.
However, she recalled that the silver Toyota that tailed her as she was driving into her Lagos housing estate, and the white minibus with tinted windows already parked outside her house, had no police markings. By the time she got to her gate, the minibus had blocked her path. According to Dakolo, a man appeared and told her to get out of the car, get into the bus and speak to his oga – Nigerian pidgin English for boss.
Dakolo said when she refused, three men got out of the minibus and walked towards her.
“One was holding a gun, and I noticed a second one holding a letter. They told me they were from IG’s [the inspector general of police] office in Abuja and that I needed to sign this letter and acknowledge it,” Dakolo said in an interview with the UK Guardian.
Dakolo said it was “extremely intimidating” to have a gunman emerge from a darkened minibus, and that while she had eventually acquiesced, she had been in shock.
“Is this what everybody goes through, everyone that comes out to say their truth, everybody that says something about someone that is influential?” she asked. “I felt: who’s going to be there for the common man? Who is going to be there for someone who nobody knows?”
The letter contained allegations of criminal conspiracy, falsehood, mischief and threat to life. These were not levelled against Fatoyinbo, however, but against Dakolo and her husband, a well-known musician.
According to Dakolo, “Our culture doesn’t allow speaking of these sorts of things against anointed men of God. They’d rather hide it, and the party that is being victimised tends to live with that self-blame. The damage on the survivor is extremely terrible. The society, the church, keeps sweeping things under the carpet.
“This issue is beyond me. This is what’s happening, and the church is a place where they don’t talk about this. I decided to come out for me. It’s for me and others, so they can begin their process of healing, so they can begin to live freely.”
PM NEWS
