Ekiti State First Lady, Bisi Adeleye-Fayemi
Ekiti State First Lady, Bisi Adeleye-Fayemi has told her own story of the sexual assault experience she had when she was a young girl.
Bisi Fayemi, the wife of Governor Kayode Fayemi revealed the story during an Instagram live session on Sunday with Badmus Opeyemi Dolapo who is a chief superintendent officer (CSP) of the Nigerian police and the zonal police public relations officer (PPRO).
She talked about her story which occurred with a family relative in her house when she was about ten years old where they had been sleeping in the same room.
“I was about 10 at the time, my mother brought one of her relatives to help out around the house, and because kids we were all in the same room.
I was on the bed with one of my aunties, my brother was on another bed and this young man was sleeping on the floor somewhere near our bed.
In the middle of the night, he started pulling at my bedsheets. Initially, I thought it was a mistake so he would pull at the bedsheet and I will pull them back, he did it again and I pull them back.
So, the third time I decided to wait and see if he was doing it on purpose, and lo and behold he pulled the sheet totally off me and that was the point at which I asked him, what are you doing? And he said, “kosi” (which translates to “nothing” in Yoruba).”
She also pointed out that she was greatly helped by the fact that her mother listened to her, calling for other women to take the same path and always listen to their kids.
“The following morning as early as we used to wake up 6 am to get ready for school, I went up to my mom and I said mom this and this is what happened to me last night. When I came back from school that afternoon, he was gone. And this is my mom’s relative, now what if I had told my mom and she would have said shut up, how dare you?… what could have happened to me?… it meant that he would have proceeded from this to something else.”
The Ekiti State First Lady, Bisi Adeyemi-Fayemi is a British-Nigerian feminist activist writer and policy advocate. She also serves as a UN women Nigeria senior advisor.
The Ekiti State First Lady’s story comes when the nation is experiencing an outcry from various groups for stiffer penalties to rape and all forms of sexual assault after the rape and murder of Uwaila Omozuwa in Benin.