For Dami* (22), what started as a holiday with her estranged father turned into seven years of living under his roof. She thought she had no choice but to endure his behaviour until years of abuse pushed her to plan her escape. That journey almost cost her her life
My father has always been abusive. Growing up with him meant never knowing what could set him off. A small mistake could earn me a beating, and an hour later, he’d expect everyone to act as though nothing had happened. He never apologised or admitted when he was wrong.
My grandmother once told me that when I was two, he beat me so badly that she thought I was dead. She said he broke down when he realised what he’d done, insisting he hadn’t meant to hurt me. I don’t remember that incident, but I remember what happened when I was nine.
He got angry with me and chased me around the house, throwing things at me. I hid behind a door, but he kept slamming it against my head until my forehead was badly swollen.
I only began to understand that his behaviour was abnormal when I was 11. That was also when my parents’ marriage fell apart. In 2015, my dad suddenly asked my mum for a divorce. She refused, so he took her to court. The court eventually granted the divorce, but they still had to settle what would happen to the house they’d built together. My mum had invested heavily in it and had nowhere else to go, so she begged him to let us stay.
He refused. I’ll never forget the day he sent his brother to throw us out while it rained. My mum held my siblings and me close, looking so helpless that the whole thing felt like a scene from a Nollywood film. I watched her, and for the first time, realised that I hated my father.
Not long after, we found out on Facebook that another woman had had a son with him. Even after the divorce, my mum still tried to involve my father in our lives. When I got my first acting audition in 2017, she asked him to drive me there. But we never made it to the audition. Instead, we spent that time at his new wife’s naming ceremony. Afterwards, he drove me home without further explanation.
I cried when I got home. I’d been so excited about that audition, and it hurt to realise he didn’t acknowledge my dream. I became scared to try again and never did. Eventually, my father and his new family moved to another state in 2018.
My sisters and I stayed with our mum, as the court had decided. But my father kept pressuring her to let us stay with him. In 2020, she eventually agreed to let us spend one holiday with him.
I expected us to return home when the holiday ended. Instead, the days kept passing. Then the COVID lockdown started, and my father seized our phones, so we couldn’t reach our mum. I knew she was fighting to get us back, but when he enrolled us in new schools, it became clear that we weren’t leaving anytime soon.
What should have been one holiday stretched into seven torturous years.
I went through all sorts of verbal abuse. He’d flare up over minor incidents and even suggest I was a bastard child. His wife didn’t make my life easier; she equally played her own part. Through it all, my grades suffered, and I became a shadow of myself.
In 2024, my mum finally enforced the court order and got my sisters back. But my father insisted that I stay because of my schooling. With my sisters gone, I was left alone with him and things got worse. My mental health deteriorated.
Then, last year, my father’s relationship with his second wife became rocky. Whenever they fought, he took his anger out on me. He blamed me for their problems and said she only behaved that way because I was rude to her.
When she eventually left him last month, I heard that he was planning to take a third wife. I was already struggling with my mental health and that news pushed me further. One evening, I realised I couldn’t spend another day living with the fear of what might happen next. So I ran away.
I left the house that day with nothing but my charger. I told my dad I was going to buy something at the junction, but instead, I went straight to the park. By 7 p.m., I was on a bus heading to the state where my mum and sisters lived. I switched off my phone so my dad couldn’t reach me.
About two hours into the journey, I dozed off. I woke to people shouting and the bus spinning. For a moment, I thought it was karma for running away, and that I was going to die. The back tyre burst after we hit a pothole, and the bus ended up in a ditch, but some trees stopped it from overturning.
We were stranded for hours before a convoy of buses stopped to help pull us out. It was terrifying, especially because nobody knew where I was. Still, I refused to turn back.
By the time I arrived at my mum’s house, it was past 1 a.m. She was angry that I’d risked travelling alone at night, especially in an unsafe environment, but I could tell she was mostly relieved that I was alive. She gave me food, and I went to bed for the first time in years without a worry in the world.
It’s been less than two weeks since I left. I’ve blocked my dad, but he’s figured out where I am and keeps trying to reach me through my mum. He blames her for turning me against him, but this was entirely my decision. Maybe when I’ve had time to heal, I’ll be willing to hear him out, but I don’t want a relationship with him.
Since leaving, I’ve realised how much damage that environment did to me. Living in a loving and caring space has shown me that I didn’t have to tolerate him just because he was my father.
With him, I lost the will to live. Getting away became a choice between protecting his feelings and protecting myself. If I had to make the same choice again, I’d risk my life all over again.
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