Few days after the wife of singer Timi Dakolo, Busola, granted a tell-all interview in which she revealed how she was allegedly raped by the senior pastor of the Commonwealth of Zion Assembly, COZA, Biodun Fatoyinbo when she was 17, a former staff of the church has granted an interview to YNaija where she relieved her alleged rape experience with Fatoyinbo in 2017.
The lady who preferred to be
identified as X, recounted how she began attending the church in 2009 in
another city, not the Federal capital territory where the chuch headquarters is
located. According to X, in the last quarter of 2017, Fatoyinbo came into her city and as a church
worker, she needed to run errands for him and his family, both official and
personal. She went to his house and he allegedly raped her in his living room.
She said she was shocked that a man who she regarded as a father could do such
a thing to her. She however continued working for the church until July 2018.
She added that shortly after
Busola Dakolo's interview, Pastor Biodun allegedly reached out to her with the
intent of giving her money so she can remain quiet. She also claimed that
Biodun Fatoyinbo told her that Busola had seduced him before he had sex with
her and that he never knew she was a teenager.
Read the interview as reported
by YNaija below and watch the full interview below
THE FIRST SIGN
The first time X was given a
glimpse into the reality of the Fatoyinbo’s was in 2013. She was just a fringe
member and church worker at the Commonwealth of Zion Assembly (COZA) Abuja,
when the Ese Walter story broke, first on her blog, then on spreading like
wildfire on the internet. X hadn’t started working closely with the pastor and
his wife at that time and she remembers clearly waking up early to prepare for
her day job. She picked up her phone to check the morning news and saw the
story about Ese Walter and immediately felt the weight of its implications. Her
infallible pastor had abused his authority, had an affair with a church worker
and defiled his matrimonial bed. She was
shocked and struggled to make sense of the story because it didn’t mark any of
the boxes about she believed constituted rape or coercion. Ese didn’t consider
herself a victim in the traditional sense, her narrative suggested a tinge of
self congratulation, she didn’t seem sorry about her part in the affair. X
eventually dismissed Walter’s story, filing it away as some kind of bizarre
smear campaign. And it was easy for her because she was the ‘average’ COZA
member.
After 4 years of serving within
the church, she’d come to share the near rabid adoration COZA members have for
Fatoyinbo. They were bombarded with the message that their proximity to the
pastor made them special and being chosen in this way made people who weren’t
chosen jealous and vindictive. X felt encouraged to only follow other COZA
members on social media and prioritize business and personal relationships with
them. She felt encouraged to shun all outsiders, to see them as interlopers who
didn’t understand the message and were looking only to sabotage Fatoyinbo and
the church. Ese Walter was even worse, she was a member who had defected and
wanted to tarnish the image of the church. It was easy to dismiss Ese Walter,
especially as the church framed her testimony as an attempt to discredit the
church, which was moving to a larger, permanent venue at the time. The Devil
was trying to sabotage Pastor Biodun Fatoyinbo’s ministry and Jesus would
triumph. She pushed away the incident and allowed herself be consumed with
immersing herself in COZA.
At this point X had spent 4 years
in the church. She joined in 2009, this was in Abuja and the church’s only
music team Avalanche offered her sanctuary. She had no relationship with the
Fatoyinbo’s at that time but she was already in their orbit, as most of the
church members who serve in public positions like the choir are. She had grown
up in a conventional christian family but had never experienced the fervor and
devotion to Christian doctrine that defined fundamentalist christians.
Pentecostal Christianity was an answer to her questions she had and COZA met
her desire for validation and awareness. There was a deliberateness in COZA,
and attention to detail that was striking to X, and it was fascinating enough
that she joined and stayed from 2009 to 2015, serving in the music group. She
was comfortable but wanted more.
But in 2015, things would become
more intense. Fatoyinbo’s wife Modele took an interest in her. She began to
extend opportunities for X to work intimately with her, handing her small
responsibilities in the church’s administration and graduating into the
opportunity to care for the Fatoyinbo’s youngest son Ephraim. X and Ephraim
developed a special bond; they would spend time together on Sundays ambling
around Abuja, visiting child friendly parks and sharing all the experiences the
city could offer to children. Sundays were especially hectic for the family and
having Ephraim cared for in this way, was presented as a relief to Modele. X
felt special, because it was common knowledge that the Fatoyinbo’s children
were sequestered from the rest of the congregation and rarely interacted with
them on a personal level. For Modele to grant X access in this way, first with
Ephraim and then to the rest of their children was an impressive move to disarm
her. She began to tutor them in their academics, growing closer with the
children to the point where Modele broached the subject of if X would relocate
outside the country and become a legal guardian for the children as the
Fatoyinbo’s toyed with the idea of sending their children abroad for their
education.
NOTHING SAYS I TRUST YOU MORE THAN ‘YOU CAN WATCH MY
KIDS’
It was known across the church branches that the Fatoyinbos carefully guarded access to their children, so anyone who was granted access in this way was exalted. Women and girls chosen in this way were referred to as ‘choice daughters’. It was a term reserved for teenage girls X believes are being groomed but were also extended to young women. Being granted this access also implied that whoever was chosen needed to reciprocate with an increased level of loyalty. When Modele Fatoyinbo suggested X move across continents to become an au pair for her children, she didn’t hesitate. At this point, she had been caring for the Fatoyinbo children for a year (2015 – 2016) and had grown incredibly close to them. X believes had Modele had given her this access to groom her on Biodun’s behalf.
X didn’t see the red flags
because the opportunity was in line with her desire to do more within the
church and kept the bond she had made with Fatoyinbo’s children. Traveling
abroad was an extra perk. X didn’t really consider the fact that relocating to
another country with the Fatoyinbo’s and working for their organization put her
entirely under their mercy. That gave them a significant amount of power over
her, power that would eventually lead to her exploitation and alleged rape.
A SPIRITUAL FATHER’S BETRAYAL
Before long, she was living
abroad, in one of the cities where the Commonwealth of Zion Assembly (COZA) has
branches across the world. Modele had done the job of hiring her but X’s
position also required her to work closely with Pastor Biodun, who visited her
city regularly to minister to his congregation there and spend time with his
children who were schooling in the city. The day the incident happened, she had
found out that Pastor Biodun Fatoyinbo had come into the country where she
lived, working for the COZA branch and serving as an au pair for the
Fatoyinbos. The pastor traveled the world as part of his duties as head pastor
and she had spent many hours in close proximity to the pastor in the past,
sometimes in her capacity as an au pair.
At this time she considered him a
mentor and a father figure. So it didn’t seem weird to her to go see the pastor
at home. She had come to the house many times, she was familiar with the
terrain and had made many deeply cherished memories there bonding with
Fatoyinbo’s wife Modele and their children, especially the oldest, Shindara.
Pastor Biodun had started their meeting innocently enough, he talked about
something to do with church. Things moved pretty swiftly from there. She was
seated on a long couch, and he left his seat and came to sit on her couch. He
moved swiftly, trying to pull her into a hug and kiss her.
She remembers thinking to
herself, “I had known him, not only as a mentor but as a spiritual leader. I’ve
heard him preach, I’ve heard him talk about God; and there I was, about to
witness him do the complete opposite of what he stood for.”
She also remembers what she was
wearing that day, a pair of navy blue jeans, and remembers him trying to peel
them off her legs. She kept asking him to stop, appealing to his conscience as her
spiritual father but he didn’t listen. He undid the buttons of her jeans and
took off her trousers. It was a couch and there was space to wiggle, but she
didn’t even think to grab anything she could use as a weapon. She was just too
shocked to react, he had just put his hands into her underwear.
X was someone who has had to
fight a lot of unwanted sexual advances her entire life and up to that point
she believed she had gained enough experience at spotting worrying behaviour.
She felt guilt for ignoring her own instincts and felt like a failure for
finding herself in the very position she’d fought so hard to avoid.
“Just relax.” He said, as he took
off his trousers and forced her legs apart, convinced he had her subdued.
All through the period where he
allegedly raped her, she tried to reconcile the person she called her spiritual
father with the man on top of her. He was nothing like the charismatic,
thoughtful and empathetic leader, who took his time to ensure she felt
comfortable around him. This person was feral, focused in his attempt to subdue
her. After, he switched seamlessly back into the pastor she knew, apologizing
as though he wasn’t the one who had inflicted pain on her. He was so
impassioned, so emphatic about not wanting to hurt her that she immediately
began to minimize his actions, like she had done something to trigger this kind
of behaviour, to inspire this kind of violence. He walked her to the door and
sent her on her way, convinced she would not talk. And she didn’t, she stayed silent
and he returned to Nigeria and his Abuja congregation.
After her alleged rape, it became
starkly clear how much power over her life she had relinquished to the
Fatoyinbos. There she was, at the mercy of the church, dependent on them
financially for her sustenance, shelter and community.
The alleged rape happened in the
last quarter of 2017, but she stayed on working within the church till July of
the following year. It helped that Fatoyinbo had to shepherd his Nigerian
congregation and could only spend limited amounts of time in the city in which
she lived at the time. The distance gave her enough detachment to wean herself
off survival mode. Her life revolved around the church, so there was nowhere to
return but there. So she did, performed her duties, interacted with other team
workers and volunteers, unable to admit to anyone the violent alleged rape she
had just experienced.
Jolted into consciousness, the
fervor of the congregation and other church members disillusioned her. She’d
been one of them in 2013 and she knew how they would react to any kind of
accusation against the pastor. The alleged rape had shaken her faith and forced
her to reevaluate everything she knew about God and Pentecostal Christianity.
The distance gave her time to process her circumstance and plan her exist
strategy.
TYING UP LOOSE ENDS
In 2018, when she was still
abroad, one of her friends from Nigeria called her out of the blue. They hadn’t
spoken in a while and her friend seemed concerned. She told her Pastor Biodun
Fatoyinbo had called her to ask for X’s number, that he didn’t have it anymore
and he had been trying to reach her. At this point, X hadn’t told no one about
what had happened to her, and couldn’t explain that she hadn’t wanted her to
give the pastor her number. 10 minutes later, Pastor Fatoyinbo would call her,
conciliatory. He was somewhere in America, she didn’t have his number but
caller ID put his location at Colorado.
‘I know you are angry with me,’
He didn't bother to clarify,
because they both knew what he was talking about. They had spent months without
communication and his surprise call and the apology that would follow rang of
dishonesty. He refused to address the alleged rape directly, instead vaguely
referencing the act and repeating that X ‘knew his heart’. As soon as the call
was over, she realised a couple of her other friends from Nigeria were calling
her to tell her about a public post singer, Timi Dakolo had made in Nigeria,
accusing an Abuja pastor of sexual misconduct. It didn't take much to connect
Fatoyinbo’s call to his Instagram call out, and recognize it for the attempt at
damage control that it was. If she had any doubts about Fatoyinbo’s nature,
those events completely eliminated them.
It took her a couple of months
but she raised her money for her flight back to Nigeria and funds to
reintegrate and then sent Fatoyinbo a DM on Instagram about needing to have a
work related meeting with him. He called her later, insisting that she find a place
where she was alone before they spoke. She informed him that she was ready to
move on, She was still a staff of the church, and wanted to leave on good
terms. Fatoyinbo conceded but asked that she meet with him when she came back
to Nigeria before she made her exit official.
By the time X returned to
Nigeria, Timi Dakolo had made his second Instagram post accusing Fatoyinbo of
sexual misconduct. She heard about the post but didn't know the details.
Fatoyinbo insisted on the meeting, and ensured she put her phone away before he
offered a third vague apology for raping her and mentioned unsolicited, Timi
Dakolo’s post, suggesting that Busola had seduced him and ‘something had
happened’ but he hadn’t known she was a teenager and he had no idea why she was
trying to sabotage his ministry. It made sense to her, her entire life for 8
years until that point had revolved around the church and many of the important
people in her life she had met through the church.
‘Is there anything you want me to
do for you?’ He asked.
From his tone, she could tell he
was suggesting financial compensation as a way to ensure her silence. X had no
plans to speak up in that moment, but she also had no interest in taking
anything else from him. He insisted that if she changed her mind, she should
reach out. She reassured him she wouldn’t and left. Now that she had left the
church on good terms, she felt she could finally tell her closest friends about
the alleged rape.
She couldn't bear to have the
conversation over and over, so she made a conference call and told her friends
in tandem what had happened to her. She needed them to be there for her in the
days she could not have been there for herself. She wanted to be the girl who
was bold, who took down the bad guy, but there were so many other people in the
story, people who would question the validity of her story because of her
proximity to the Fatoyinbo family, people on the internet who would reduce her
pain to funny gifs. She was convinced that if her friends knew, that would be
enough for her.
But Busola Dakolo coming forward
to talk about her experience with Pastors Biodun and Modele Fatoyinbo brought a
number of things into stark focus for her. First, that there was a pattern
where Modele either deliberately or inadvertently drew young women into her
orbit and groomed them into a complacency that Biodun Fatoyinbo allegedly
exploited to allegedly rape and sexually assault them. Second, there were
pastors who were aware of the violence and exploitation that Fatoyinbo was accused
of wreaking and either kept quiet about it or enabled it. He called them ‘The
COZA 12’, pastors and religious leaders within and outside the church to which
Fatoyinbo publicly defers to. Third, she had to tell her story and free herself
of the burden of shame.
X had devoted her life to COZA
from 2009 to 2018, and suffered for it. To truly free herself of its hold, she
had to speak her truth.
According to her, the Pastor told
her to feel at home and should not be "shy".
She alleged that he told her to
order for "alcohol, feel free and order what you want."
Ese Walters said she felt guilty
at first that she and the pastor were getting involved however, Mr. Fatoyinbo
told her that he will “ teach you a
level of grace that you don’t understand."
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