Despite considering murder, suicide …for Abiye, forgiveness wins

Abiye was young when she heard and witnessed stories of how her father, Liman (Not real name) unabashedly abused her brothers and mother (who’s now late) both verbally and physically. She recalls when her father made negative statements about her brother.  “When my eldest brother wanted to go and write his ICAN examinations, my father said that he shouldn’t bother because he will fail, and when he eventually passed, he was so upset and said he cheated.”

For someone who loves reading, Abiye may have found it rough performing well in her academics because the environment wasn’t influencing her positively. The negativity was much. “I really can’t explain my father’s behaviour towards his own children. Whenever any of us had exams to write, he would say ‘go and fail and come back to this house and meet me’ as opposed to my mum that would say a word of prayer and wish us good luck”.

Badmouthing her brothers and being pessimistic about their future wasn’t only Liman’s ‘forte’, he beat them too. “There is not one of us that he hasn’t beaten” she said, “even my mum, he was beating my mum up until I got to JSS3,” she adds and continues:

“And when I say beating, I don’t mean the normal flogging with cane. One incident, my brother didn’t open the gate properly so my dad scratched his car. He took off his shoes to beat my brother; as if that was not enough, he got a knife and threw it at him. My dad confused me at a point, when he is talking/ scolding you, you don’t talk.  If you do, he will say you are disrespecting him, and when you decide to stay quiet he will say you insulted him by being quiet.”

Abiye witnessed the brutality of a man she calls father at a much younger age. But the cruelty soon trickled down to her. She was five then, but ever since, she’s been going through bouts of verbal assault, and a stream of accusations. “I remember vividly. When I was 5, I missed a page in my note book and wrote on the next, when he saw it; he kicked me across the room. When my mum was sick, one afternoon, I was attending to her and I didn’t hear him knocking the gate, when I eventually opened it, he rushed at me with a punch. When I was trying to explain he threw the car keys at me, and he didn’t care when he saw he had torn my lips and I was also bleeding from my nose,” she narrated.

But it didn’t end there. “There was one evening he couldn’t find the house keys, then I found them in his trousers. He said I planted it there to make him look bad and I was trying to make him understand I wasn’t going to gain anything from doing that, the next thing I knew was he bashed my head against the wall,” Abiye further explained.

But intriguingly, for her, the beating wasn’t as demoralizing and denigrating as the words he said to her, “the worst are not the things he did but the things he said. I am not angry over the things he did, I’m angry over the things he said” Abiye told Women’s Hub.

Narrating the ordeal, Abiye told me that her father subtly accused her of prostitution many times while she was nursing her sick mother. Hear her: “During the period my mum was indisposed, I usually leave the house in the morning to stay with her at the hospital till it was evening, because I was the only one (child) at home that period.

“When I come back in the evening, rather than asking how his wife was doing he would stop me at the door and ask me why I was coming late, I would try to explain that it was traffic, then he would say God will expose me from all the waka waka I was doing. One day, I went to the market, on my way back, the bike I took passed a route and I saw quail egg poultry; I was so excited to get home and tell my mum because the doctors recommended it for her. When I got home, my dad insinuated I had something with the motorcyclist is the reason why I returned late. He accused me of prostitution; I was so upset because at that time, I had not as much as even kissed a guy. I almost cried my eyes out,” she adds.

When the pain and ill treatment deepened and became unbearable, Abiye thought of murder, suicide and prostitution so that she’d “be guilty of the accusations”.

“I was so angry that I went into the kitchen and carried a knife, I had the intention of killing him and then killing myself but on my way out I saw my mum and I immediately became weak.

“At some point, I made up my mind to sleep with every Tom, Dick and Harry that comes my way so I know I am guilty of his accusations, but then again, I decided to prove to him that I can be so much more than everything he has ever said about me. Of course with the help of my mother, I no longer feel worthless. The memory lingers but my heart is healing daily and I am learning through Gods help to forgive. “Said Abiye.

Desmond Okon