I suffered sexual abuse in high school & physical abuse in university – Lola Omotayo

While addressing a group of young women at Kinabuti's Dare2Dream Master Class event which happened in Lagos recently, Peter Okoye's wife and mother of 2, Lola Omotayo revealed that she suffered sexual abuse by a priest when she was in secondary school and beaten black and blue by a boyfriend in the university. She said she never told anyone about the molestation because she didn't believe anyone would believe her

"I couldn’t tell anyone because everyone would blame me, so I carried on the guilt and bitterness with me for years. I was filled with hate and I became an angry person, I was rebellious, I didn’t want to listen to anybody…and because I wanted to be expelled from school to avoid seeing this person, I would do so many terrible things, everything around me was just so negative, I felt I wasn’t good enough."

‘I moved on to the university, met the love of my life and I’m like, okay this guy is cool, he loves me but he started to abuse me. I was beaten black and blue all the time, in front of friends, in public and at a point, I felt, you know what, I am not worthy enough, there is nothing about me that is nice, nobody loves me but I hid this from my family. I felt like a loser, so it was hard for me to focus. But one day, I woke up and said I am going to change my story and I dumped that person, focused on my education and decided to be serious and be something. I decided to get a job and go to school full time in America.’

She said she worked hard to make her own money so she could be independent and not have to rely on any man. She said being independent and making her own money helped her build her confidence and pushed to achieve more in life. She then talked about her husband, Peter Okoye

"Look at my husband, when I met him, peeps were like what are you doing with him, he has nothing but I stood my ground and chose to stick with him because he had a dream. He and his twin brother did not let their dream die, they worked hard, look at them today! I stuck by him because he had focus and drive and today I am happy, I have a good life, we are happy and we have got a beautiful family. No one can make you a loser.’.