Fighting Sexual Violence is Our Collective Responsibility

Before asking, he warned me by saying I have something to ask and I hope it won't offend you. I told him to go ahead. Then he asked me if he could take me in his arms (direct translation). I immediately said no and moved on to talking about something else. We were watching a programme on TV and the question came out of nowhere. This conversation all happened in French and French can seem unnecessarily intimate sometimes. We lived together, he was one of my flat mates. I reckoned he just wanted a hug but the way he asked, it came off as a bit creepy to me. Sometimes, you click with people and feel comfortable enough to hug each other, it never crossed my mind to hug this colleague.

One day, like every other time, I took a walk with another colleague, which was a normal thing. This one was my buddy, we got along very well. He was one of the ones I was comfortable with and would hug every now and then in greeting. He was quite excited on this day and was chatting away. When we got to the spot we wanted to reach, the view was beautiful. I stood admiring it then I felt someone hugging me from behind. It could only have been him as the other people around were not close enough. I was slightly confused as I stood there. Someone hugging me from behind suggests a few things to me. Unsure of what may have followed, I broke the contact by suggesting that we take a selfie. It worked. Afterwards, he posed for me to take photos of him, and in that moment, I said a silent prayer to God...'please let there be nothing more, let it be that his excitement got him carried away'. As we walked back, we talked as usual but before we could go far, he apologised. He said he was sorry if his action made me uncomfortable. I was relieved and said it was ok especially as I didn't want to walk back with in awkward silence. Then I chided myself for not saying 'if it happens again, that's when we would have a problem'. But I think he was smart enough to know that. 

Ill treatment by the Nigerian Police

So my sister, Odachi Abah was featured earlier this week on this post. But yesterday,  08.10.2014, she got asaulted by a Police woman in Lagos.

I was having lunch with a friend when a picture came into my phone. I screamed and my friend with whom I was having lunch kept asking what the matter was. I simply showed her the picture, she became so filled with rage. It was a picture from my sister with a caption: ‘ I was assaulted by a Police woman this afternoon’. It didn’t look good! I tried to speak to her but she could not talk, she was at the Police station, the unit where the woman in question works. She went to file a complaint.

Eventually Odachi wrote her account of the assault below:

"On the 8^th of October 2014 I got assaulted by a Police Woman. This is what happened. 

On my way home after my NYSC clearance from Oshodi-Isolo LGA, Lagos State, Nigeria, with a friend, Maduka Benson, our vehicle (Maduka was driving) entered a hole which pulled part of the car bumper out. The Police woman controlling traffic kept shouting at us so my friend driving was trying to tell her that our bumper had pulled out, but she insisted that he moves away from there. A gentle man asked my friend not to drive or the entire bumper would pull off the car. He crossed to the other side and helped us fix the bumper so we could move on.