Mustapha Audu is calling on Dr. Oby Ezekwesili and other civil leaders and social media influencers to think before they act. In his first interview with a media organization, The Signal, since the story broke, Mustapha denied the allegations vehemently.
He told the publication, “Our relationship lasted like a month and a half. Not even up to two months. I found out she was sleeping with my friends. She slept with a couple of my friends. I discovered and told her about it. She told me she loved me, she wanted to marry me and was madly and deeply in love with me. And I told her it’s not possible, we can’t get married because I am not at the stage where I wanted to be married. And you’ve had something to do with my friends, so the relationship ended. While we were in the relationship, she had told me things about her mum, that she hated her mum, her mum wasn’t there for her and stuff like that. She sent me an email once making reference to her having visions of violent rape the first time that we had something physically. She said she had visions of violent rape from a past memory and that we weren’t close enough for her to tell me the details. On one occasion then when we spoke on the phone, she said I shouldn’t abandon her, and then she told me that her mum’s boyfriend raped her. She said a lot of negative things about her mum. This was part of the reason I didn’t want to release these emails to protect her.
Audu said he was only induced to speak out due to Lotanna Igwe-Odunze’s intentions to slander his good name in order to get rich and famous quick.
His words: But the main reason I am doing this is because I got a call today, someone told me that her friends disclosed that she’s being planning this for while, she is actually writing a book and planning to finish a book, she wants to start an NGO, she wants to appeal to the US government about surviving rape in Africa and she wants to use my family, because of my family’s political name to get traction. I heard she is getting influential people involved, I hear she has involved the lady behind the Bring Back Our Girls campaign, Dr. Oby Ezekwesili. Dr. Ezekwesili reminds me of my mum. She reminds me of someone who should have been my mum and if someone said something about your son, you shouldn’t immediately go to the world and say “Oh, you are this or that.” At least call your son, hear him out. And this is not even about me wanting to say anything to defend myself.
Mustapha expressed his disappointment in Dr. Ezekwesili’s role in fanning the allegations of the accuser, Sugabelly without calling him to hear his side of the story.
And going forward, I want people like Dr. Ezekwesili to think before they act. People called me to draw my attention to her tweets. I thought she was fighting for a cause. I thought she was a mother. I know her sons and they know me. Chine and Chuba used to play football together with me every weekend. They know me. I am not a rapist. I had a mother and my mother would not be proud of Dr. Ezekwesili. What would have been her first reaction if this same girl accused her sons of rape? Would she have gone first to Twitter to condemn them? Would she have gone first to Afe Babalola SAN? If that would be her first reaction, then I must confess, she must be a really terrible mother. Is her cause real? What cause is she on? Is it because Bring Back Our Girls is no longer working? Dr. Ezekwesili, please read the emails. Your sons will tell you the same. They are my friends. They know I’m not a rapist. Have you approached me? Have you said who is the person? Let me approach him? Let me reach out? Please someone give me his number. She didn’t do this, instead she went to Afe Babalola. Chuba is my good friend. If they said this about Chuba, would she go to Afe Babalola? Please answer me?
I never did anything to Lotanna, read the emails. Don’t even listen to me, please read the emails. Since she’s made claims, read our mail conversations after the events she alleged occurred had happened. Read her timelines. Some of these terrible events were occurring and she wasn’t talking about it? She’s emailing me and I’m emailing her and not for once was it mentioned? Common! No, that just means nothing was actually going on except our normal conversation. I had other people in the office that left, some for the UK that I still chat with. We were colleagues!