The first time I met Mr Lanre Nzeribe, Monalisa introduced him thus: “Egor, meet my best friend”. It didn’t take me long to realise what she meant. From the bottom of my heart, Lanre is one of the most responsible men I have ever met, the gentleman kind who’d open the door for his lady or hold her hand up the stairs to prevent her from tripping. He treats Lisa with so much love and respect and those that are close to them can testify to this. I’ve been so happy for Lisa, because being a witness to what she had suffered in the hands of her former marriage, this relationship was just a blessing from God.
This is the second time in my life I am going behind Monalisa’s back to do something like this, but I like to follow my instincts and hope she’d understand later. When Lisa was suffering Domestic Abuse, I was so mad and said to her, this must stop,
I am going to tell everyone what this man has been doing to you, she begged and begged me not to and I can still hear her exact words ringing in my head, “Egor, you know your mentality is too British, over here it’s a shameful thing to leave my marital home whether he beats me or not, so please hide me oh and don’t let anyone hear this kind of thing”. Wow! Is this what our country has degenerated to? To make people believe that running away from a violent husband is ‘a shameful thing’? To make rape victims feel ashamed like it is their fault?
We lost one of our best news anchors because our society had taught her to be ‘ashamed’ of being raped. Go and read about Gabrielle Union, Teri Hatcher and many other Hollywood stars that suffered horrible abuse and how talking about their experiences helped a lot of people that were suffering silently. Naturally, the reality that beautiful celebrities like these can suffer the same abuse as themselves, was strong enough to heal many victims.
These celebrities have remained heroes to date in Hollywood for using their bad experiences to heal others. Nigeria, when will we progress? “Wetin 9ja dey do sef”? (RIP bro)
When Monalisa left her marriage, as if the abuse she suffered there wasn’t enough, the public started their own. She was receiving abusive emails daily from the judgemental public for leaving her marriage and was so stressed, I don’t know how she survived it.
While all this was going on, her evil ex was texting her daily. If I reveal the contents of those text messages, you’d think I’m making them up.
There are so many things Monalisa suffered that I’d take with me to my grave. Those that were close to her were so mad and in anger, her uncle, Mr Kool, damned the ‘shameful’ consequences and spoke out.
When Titi (RIP angel) was hacked to death by her husband and the shocked public cried out in anger, it didn’t occur to them that they had contributed to her death by making her continue to stay in an abusive relationship. Monalisa was beaten up so many times by her ex, even when she was pregnant, but she stayed for as long as she could out of ‘shame’ for leaving her marital home.
The day she ran, she was using Tamar to shield herself hoping that he’d see his daughter and stop beating her, but the mad man beat both his daughter and herself and continued beating them like a crazed demon, that she didn’t realise when she grabbed her daughter and turned Carl Lewis.
As the public outcry about Titi intensified, I felt so hurt that many of our women will continue to die like this if we don’t change our mentality, and it was that hurt that propelled me to go behind Monalisa’s back and write this post (link below).
