The deoxyribonucleic acid test that rape victims lived in morbid fear of for many years is no longer just a far off threat as was the case in the past.
“My father was a driver for one of the [late] vice presidents, so after I finished my Advanced Levels, my father jokingly mentioned to him in passing that he was afraid of going home because I was pestering him about going to college, something that he could not afford,” Shingai said. Her father didn’t appreciate the value of educating a girl and preferred for her to be married to someone who had already been introduced to the family.
When she went to see him, he raped her and ordered her to come to see him more frequently so as to speed up the process of getting a college admission and a government scholarship. She never did. Fortunately for Shingai, it was easy for the husband to believe her rape story because over the years he had silently observed the strange way she reacted when the name of the former vice president was mentioned anywhere, worse still when she saw his picture on the country’s only television channel, or in newspapers. It had baffled him why the man celebrated as a national hero put her off so much, despite her father having worked for him for many years.