The sickening spectacle involving the family of the 2023 Big Brother Naija winner, Ilebaye Odiniya, must bother all lovers of family values. The otherwise pretty 27-year-old star looked more like an apparition, a scarecrow, in her seriously swollen, battered face in a video that trended throughout last week. Too unsightly and gawky!
In another troubling incident the following day, some gangland lords invaded the Ugbowo campus main gate in a commando manner. The masked gunmen, riding in another vehicle, nimbly blocked the Mercedes-Benz GLK of a part-time Political Science student of the institution, identified as Akexander Omogiate, in broad daylight just outside the main gate.
He attempted to reverse but hit another car, which trapped his vehicle. The gunmen opened fire at close range, raining a volley of bullets on the car. The brutal shots shattered Alexander’s SUV’s windshield and the driver’s side. He died on the spot.
Two other passengers in his vehicle and a female passerby were hit by stray bullets and sustained injuries. The attack occurred shortly after he finished his semester examinations. News making the rounds suggests that the attack might have been propelled by a cult-related dispute or a N90million ‘Aza’ deal.
A day preceding the main gate shooting, Some students, in a show of absurdity, were reportedly pursuing themselves openly with machetes inside the UNIBEN campus, bloodying one another’s noses, as if they were in the jungle.
In a federal university? It is hideous that some supposed undergraduates whose home training is questionable are so given to incivility that they have begun to turn an exotic citadel like UNIBEN into a hubbub typical of a motor garage!
Back to the BBNaija star saga, that the entire household, including Ilebaye, her father and two siblings, had to be hospitalized after some kind of ‘roforofo’ fight is a sad reminder of the inglorious level family values have sunk in many homes. It is too indecorous to be imagined.
And to think that a ‘pugilist’-father could visit that kind of savagery on his daughter on her birthday!
The former BBNaija winner had cried out for help penultimate weekend over an alleged domestic abuse in a disturbing video shared during an Instagram livestream.
“Nigerians, help me, I need to go. I need to leave this house; I’m being locked up. I’m tired of the assault; please come and help me,” she had yelped, cutting the pathetic picture of someone in deep trouble.
The livestream momentarily triggered near-hysteria online. Her friends, colleagues, fans and followers were troubled over her safety and demanded urgent intervention.
The Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Police Command immediately swung into action, rescued severely battered Ilebaye as well as her injured siblings and rushed them to the hospital for medical attention. Her father, Emmanuel Odiniya, who also reportedly sustained injuries, was hospitalized too and later arrested over the alleged assault.
They were all said to have been wounded at a confrontation between Ilebaye and her father at their Royal Anchor Estate, Wuye, Abuja family house.
However, Ilebaye’s father, an Abuja-based politician and a former local government chairman in Kogi State, narrating his own side of the saga, claimed he brutalized his daughter because of the frustrations he had been going through owing to his daughter’s attitude to him.
He said he played a significant role in her victory at the BBNaija All-Stars TV reality show, claiming that he leveraged his political connections and mobilized supporters both in Nigeria and abroad. He estimated that over 75% of the backing for her campaign came through his efforts.
In subsequent audio statements, Hon. Odiniya argued that the incident was a family dispute not driven by hatred but his daughter’s misconduct, claiming that she cut off communication with him after winning the show. He also accused her of being a drug user and allegedly introducing harmful substances to her younger brothers.
He rued his daughter’s alleged refusal to assist him financially to take care of his health, saying: “I am very sick and needed to go for medical treatment in Dubai. I called Ilebaye to help me with some money and promised to refund her. She said she didn’t have money. But I saw her video spraying bundles of naira at a colleague’s wedding.”
Odiniya, who said the police had settled the rift, attributed the latest dispute to disagreements over Ilebaye’s lifestyle, including her choices regarding cosmetic procedures (BBL) and her choice of friends, which he believes were influenced by her fame. Emmanuel also alleged that his daughter started to disrespect him and had physically attacked him on previous occasions.
And on the latest confrontation, he alleged that the reality TV star assaulted him first before the situation escalated.
“In this recent incident, she insulted me, hit me first with a sea hanger, causing bleeding, pushed me and then broke an electric lantern on my head,” he alleged.
However, to Ilebaye’s mother, Lami, Hon. Odiniya’s allegations against his daughter are no more than an utter baloney. She told a blog that her ex-husband fabricated the drug allegations to play the victim and divert public attention from videos showing Ilebaye with a battered face following the confrontation at his residence.
Lami alleged that her ex-husband has a pattern of domestic abuse, which was why she abandoned the marriage, saying: “My not being in that house is because of the emotional abuse from the father, always. We have been abused constantly in that house. Ilebaye is going through a lot of emotional abuse from the father.”
Ilebaye’s mother said she was highly traumatized by what she called her ex-husband’s false allegations against his daughter. She further alleged that Odiniya also forced their daughter out of the family home and demanded ₦30 million before allowing her to return.
“The father drove her out of the house, too, saying since I left, she should leave the house too. The father told her that before he could accept her back into the house, she had to give him N30 million. I came and I begged him to allow her in, so that later she would give him the money,” she alleged.
She appealed to Nigerians not to judge her daughter, saying Ilebaye had been facing serious family challenges.
“I beg you people Nigerians; you people should not judge her. That girl has been through a lot. I am not coming out here to receive a pity vote from you people. I am here to tell the truth.
“If you were in her shoes, I don’t think you could take what she is taking. If you see, she is not on social media; it is because she is battling with family issues at home.
If not that she called for help, she would not have survived it that night.”
This is a big puzzler. It is the sort of ineluctable fissure that results from a family set up where parental bonding and responsibility are absent. Lack of parental care and tutelage is so glaring in this case. Hon. Odiniya and his wife have been separated since 2024, while their daughter, Ilebaye, has also been staying away from the family house.
The BBNaija star only came around on the day she was brutalized to see her younger brothers. According to her mother, Lami, theirs is a family riven by domestic abuse and violence. The father had allegedly been abusing her and the children for a long time. When she decided to quit the abusive marriage, the father allegedly sent Ilebaye out too.
Hon. Odiniya claimed he brutalized his daughter because he was provoked. What sort of provocation would ordinarily make a man who supposedly loves his daughter to unleash such a beastly assault on her?
The man’s challenge could be short temper. A man driven by short temper is often irascible in his actions. He will often have problem managing provocations because he becomes tetchy at every slightest pejorative comment and can destroy things within a spasm of anger. That may have explained why the father ended up battering his daughter, probably with furious punches thrown in a fit of uncontrollable fury!
Hon. Odiniya claimed that his daughter had physically attacked him, hitting him with objects, in the past. It is unthinkable for a child to ever talk back to his or her father not to talk of hitting him. It is highly condemnable. In some places, it is regarded as a taboo capable of attracting irreversible imprecations.
However, while we are not justifying any aberration, if Ilebaye had become so feisty to have begun to stand up to her father, it might be because of his alleged spasmodic domestic abuses. It is a well known dictum that when a goat is pursued to a blind alley, it will turn around to attack its pursuer.
There is a level that it becomes a misnomer to continue to apply corporal punishment on children. At 27, Ilebaye has passed the stage of being spanked. We expect Hon. Odiniya to know better, being a secondary school teacher of Physical and Health Education (PHE) before he ventured into politics. Spanking Ilebaye at 27 is grossly infantile on his part.
The man ought to know better, as a former teacher, that a child at that stage has literally become a ‘dry fish’ too late to bend. It is ostensibly too late to correct that child at that age through corporal application. The only reasonable weapon of correction at that stage is moral suasion or wise counsel, coupled with prayer for those who are so religiously inclined.
Hon. Odiniya is admonished to do something about his short temper, which appears to have largely contributed to shredding his family. Ilebaye too should expiate her own faults. It is obvious that she has allowed the hubris of stardom to blind her to some verities of life. What level of stardom would propel her to stand up to her father, even if he spanks her? It is a highly ignoble act.
Her mother, Lami, has also fallen short in her role as a mother. It is obvious that she had failed to play the proper role of a mother in her blind defence of her daughter. She was quick to counter her former husband’s allegation that Ilebaye was a drug user but cleverly avoided other allegations, including her indulging in cosmetic surgery (BBL).
This is a highly noxious and reprehensible inanity that has become a craze among the Gen Z generation of ladies. It is so risky that many have died and continued to die in the process, yet they are not deterred. Again, Ilebaye refused her father’s request for money to take care of his health. Yet, she was seen in a video spraying bundles of cash at a colleague’s wedding!
Her mother probably does not see any need as a mother to dissuade her daughter against some of these baleful eccentricities such as cosmetic surgery and haughty carriage that are destroying some of our celebrities these days.
These are part of the dereliction of parental obligations that are today upending family values and spiraling into larger societal consequences. Security is sliding in UNIBEN, like in many other institutions of higher learning today, because of the activities of egregious characters who now populate the campus.
Most of the vile characters who are now turning the campuses into citadels of chaos are products of broken homes, many of which have become epicenters of domestic violence and abuse. They are victims of parental failure and neglect.
Many parents have long abandoned their children to the deleterious care of nannies for the lure of lucre. Hence, children growing up under these conditions lack the essential parental care, love and tutelage that could mould them into responsible adults. So, they grow into deviants and villains, unleashing terror on the society.
It is high time parents woke up to their huge responsibilities as the proper and first change agents for their children. They should realize that their role is more important than those of other change agents such as schools and religious institutions because theirs is the foundation.
