Busola Dakolo: How I was forced by police to sign letter against rape case

Busola Dakolo: How I was forced by police to sign letter countering rape case

Busola Dakolo, celebrity photographer, says she was forced by police at gun-point to sign a document countering her rape allegations against Biodun Fatoyinbo, senior pastor of the Commonwealth of Zion Assembly (COZA) church.

Busola, wife of Timi Dakolo, Nigerian singer, had alleged that the pastor had sexual relations with her when she was 16 going on 17 in Ilorin.

In an interview with UK Guardian , she narrated how she was forced into a van by some armed men who mandated her to speak with their superior officer in Pidgin language.

She also recounted how she was handed a document containing allegations of “criminal conspiracy, falsehood, mischief and threat to life” to sign.

According to her, the contents of the letter were not levelled against Fatoyinbo but against she and her husband.

“One was holding a gun and the second, a letter. They told me they were from IG’s (inspector general of police) office in Abuja and that I needed to sign this letter and acknowledge it,” Dakolo said.

The incident, she said, occurred after a tinted mini bus followed her while she was driving into her home in Lagos.

On July 23, Dakolo and her husband were invited by the special tactical squad of the inspector general of police (IGP) for questioning over allegations of “falsehood and criminal conspiracy,” albeit, without extending the gesture to Fatoyinbo.

“Our culture doesn’t allow speaking of these sorts of things against anointed men of God. They’d rather hide it, and the party that is being victimized tends to live with that self-blame,” she said.

“The damage on the survivor is extremely terrible but the society, the church, keeps sweeping things under the carpet.”

Meanwhile, Fatoyinbo returned to the pulpit on August 4 — a month after stepping aside for the issue to be investigated.