Matilda Omonaiye/
Busola, the wife of Nigerian pop musician, Timi Dakolo, has opened up on how Pastor Biodun Fatoyinbo of the Commonwealth of Zion Assembly (COZA) ‘raped’ her twice while she was still under 18.
Busola bared it all in an interview with Chude Jideonwo of YNaija.
This marks the second time an alleged victim is speaking out publicly about Fatoyinbo’s sexual escapades.
First was media personality, Ese Walter, who, in 2013, spoke about being seduced by Fatoyinbo and eventually having an affair with him.
Timi Dakolo himself also recently criticised Fatoyinbo, accusing him of going about assaulting girls.
Busola, who is a photographer, said she decided to speak up because of a social media post in which she was accused of promiscuity when she was a teenager.
She said she was also accused of having sex with pastors while growing up in Ilorin, the Kwara State capital.
She said she was still in secondary school when she first met Fatoyinbo, who was heading a Divine Delight Club (a gospel club).
Fatoyinbo took an interest in her after she attended the club, which her sisters were a part of, for the first time.
He also encouraged her to do something in the club before she left back for school. She then decided to sing and they were having the rehearsals in his house. At the time Fatoyinbo was engaged to be married to his current wife.
She left for school and when she came back, the club had transitioned into COZA, and her sisters had convinced her family to start attending.
Busola said she joined the choir at COZA to integrate herself into the church. She said Fatoyinbo began inviting himself to her house under the guise of getting to know her better.
He kept visiting, and one Monday morning, when her mother and sisters had travelled and were absent from service the previous Sunday, Fatoyinbo arrived at her house, so early, Busola was still in her nightgown.
She said that only one elder sister was at home, upstairs in the duplex where she couldn’t have heard that something was going on.
She said that when the pastor got in, he didn’t say a word; that he forced her into a chair, removed her clothes, and raped her; then he went to his car and brought a bottle of Krest (a soft drink) and forced her to drink it.
“You should be happy that a man of God did this to you,” she quoted him as saying to her.
That was the first time.
This was around the time Fatoyinbo and his wife welcomed their first child together. Busola said she went with her sisters to church the following Sunday.
In the church, Fatoyinbo’s wife, Modele asked that Busola comes to the house to take care of their baby. She refused, but her sisters convinced her to, saying it was normal for members to do so.
Fatoyinbo tried to make her sleep in the guest room, but she refused, appealing to Modele to let her sleep in the master bedroom.
The next morning, Fatoyinbo, smacked her butt, and told her: “No one ignores me.”
He ensured he drove her home that day and instead of taking her home, detoured to a secluded spot and again, raped her on the car bonnet.
When she went home, she stayed in her room for three days, and her family was worried and knew something was wrong, but couldn’t make the connection.
Fatoyinbo showed up the next Sunday to ask why she wasn’t in church and to not draw attention to herself. She went the following Sunday and kept attending but left the choir shortly afterwards.
Busola spoke about the rape for the first time when she visited her elder sister who had relocated to Lagos. Her sister had had a dream where she (Busola) was seen crying, with blood on a chair and Fatoyinbo smiling. She asked her to open up if anything like that had happened, and Busola narrated the sad events.
Her sister told her brother and other sisters about the incident. Busola’s brother, a student of the University of Ilorin at the time, grabbed a pocket knife and took her to Fatoyinbo’s house.
One of the pastors, Wole Soetan was able to convince them to return home and that Fatoyinbo would come and join them.
Soetan and two members later came to their house and pleaded, blaming the devil for the incident.
Soetan, who she suggests now heads the church’s Port Harcourt branch, also told Busola that he’d leave the church to show that he had no tolerance for promiscuity.
She was convinced to pretend everything was normal and she kept attending the church again.
Soetan later said he couldn’t leave because Fatoyinbo was weak, and needed spiritual guidance.
In the following months, Fatoyinbo began organising deliverance sessions to ‘repair’ her (Busola’s) ‘bondage’, claiming that raping her was as a result of a problem they both had.
She said that she later got into a relationship with the pastor’s cousin, with whom she eventually left the church.
Fatoyinbo has, however, denied the allegations and he has threatened a lawsuit for defamation.
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