By Chris Ihidero

Tina Okpara has a beautiful smile.
Her beautiful smile lights up her face and gives off a sense of teenage innocence. When she smiles, which is often, you see none of the scars within; none of the pain that has marked the past 12 years of her life, none of the tears she has cried. All you see is a beautiful young woman with a beautiful smile. What lies beneath that smile, as I found out over the course of two days last week, is a cringe-worthy horror story that will leave you shocked to the core.
Last weekend I was invited by Ayo Arigbabu, the coordinator of the Committee for Relevant Art (CORA) organised Lagos Book and Art Festival, to moderate a session on Tina Okpara’s book, My Life Has a Price. Perhaps because I had recently made a short film on rape, Big Daddy, Ayo thought I would be well equipped to handle a young woman’s account of her rape ordeal. I read the book knowing that I would be familiar with many parts of her account, since I had done a lot of research during the making of Big Daddy. What I didn’t realise was how different it would be to hear her speak to me directly of the horrors.
Tina Okpara was adopted by ex-Golden Eaglets and Super Eagles defender, Godwin Okpara and his wife Linda in February 2001. She was thirteen years old and an SSS 1 student. Tina and her family were poor neighbours to the Okparas, and she and the Okpara’s first daughter, Sophie, were friends. Godwin and Linda had tried to adopt Tina a year before but she refused, insisting that she’d rather stay and survive with her family. But her mother’s subsequent demise forced her hand, as her father’s new wife made life unbearable, coupled with the family’s inability to cater for all the children. The Okparas promised to give Tina a better life, so she boarded the plane and went to a new life in Paris.
As a fresh secondary school student in the late 80s, I met Godwin Okpara when he captained my school’s football team. He wasn’t a student in my school but had been co-opted into the school team, along with a few other professional footballers, by our coach, who believed that the end justified the means. That year, we beat every school that was unfortunate enough to come across us in Ogun State. It was so bad that some schools, like Ijebu-Ode Grammar School, would refuse to come out for the second half after we’d scored like four goals in the first half. He was the hero of my school’s astounding victory, the cynosure of all eyes. A year later, I would see him on television representing Nigeria at the U-17 World Cup in Scotland. After that tournament, the great Pele asked the world to watch out for Godwin Okpara; he was destined for greatness.
Twelve years later, as she boarded that plane to Paris, someone should have warned Tina that she was being lured into a life of servitude, rape and dehumanization.
A few months after arriving in France, it became clear to Tina that the Okparas had no plans of sending her to school. She cooked, she cleaned, she washed and got regular verbal and physical assaults from Linda Okpara, always being reminded that she, unlike her siblings, was being saved from a life of wretchedness in Nigeria. All the while she lived in the basement without heating, with only a thin mattress on the floor.
The first rape occurred about two years after Tina’s arrival in France. She was 14 years old. After a heavy fight with his wife and her consequent storming out of the house, Godwin Okpara took Tina from the couch upstairs to the basement, put his hands in his pants and told Tina he wanted to sleep with her. Her resistance could not match him physically. He suffocated her and crushed her with his weight and had his way. When it was done, he gave the classic and familiar statement: ‘If you talk, I’ll kill you’. It was the first time, but many more would follow. At a point, for over a year, while clubless and searching for a new club, Godwin Okpara raped his adopted daughter consistently. I leave you to imagine a frustrated man left alone in a house with a defenseless young girl. When she talked to me about this period, tears falling from her eyes in torrents, she said at a point she stopped fighting altogether; she just lay there like dead wood and took her mind elsewhere while he ravaged her body.
One fateful day in February 2005, four years after Tina was brought to France form Nigeria, Godwin Okpara raped her again. This time his wife walked in on them and however hard she tries, Tina says she will never forget that day. ‘Each time you want to sleep with a man, you will remember me! I am going to mark you till the end of your days!’ Linda Okpara thundered. Blows, slaps and curses rained on her. Her hair was chopped off in handfuls, with the blade connecting often with her skull. A mouthful of vodka was spat in her face. A syringe full of hot pepper sauce was pumped into her vagina. A vodka bottle was inserted in her vagina. And the coup de grace? Linda Okpara took a razor blade to her adopted daughter’s vagina twice and drew a deep line. Twice. ‘I cup my hands over my vagina, as if to stop the red flow with my fingers…The wounds take a long time to heal and the healing is painful. It burns when I walk, it burns when I sit down…it is worse when I go to the toilet. The pain is so intense I almost faint every time I have to urinate.’ Linda was right; Tina can never forget.
Six months later, Godwin Okpara was ready to rape his daughter again, but this time Tina found the courage to flee and not return to the house.
Tina is 25 years old now. She’s a caregiver and nursing student in France. She wants to be a nurse so she can help others as she has been helped. She has been through counseling with psychologists; she has lived in shelters but has a place she can call her own now. She struggles to speak English now, as French as become her first language…she feels more French than Nigerian. Bit by bit, through the amazing support that the French authorities have provided for her, she’s finding her feet again, charting a new path for her life. Writing her book and letting it all out was part of her therapy. The need to share and let others learn, she told me, outweighed any other consideration.
Godwin and Linda Okpara are currently serving 10 and 15 year jail terms in French prisons. I believe they got off lightly.
During my discussion session with Tina at the book festival, a young girl asked why Tina didn’t poison Godwin all through her ordeal, since she made his food. ‘I didn’t think of poisoning him because killing someone is not a good thing. God does not like something like that. Rather, I thought about killing myself a lot.’ That’s the kind of innocence Tina still displays.
When the discussion session was over and all the tears have dried up, I hugged Tina tightly and whispered in tattered French ‘C’est bien mainetenent; tu va bien. (It is well now; you’ll be fine). She smiled beautifully and nodded in the affirmative.
There’s hope yet.

OH MY GOD!!! People are terrible!

I closed my thighs very tight when I was reading the blade cutting and syringe parts.

Tina,may God continue to make you stronger.

God please don't let this happen to my daughter(s) and my sister, my nieces including those innocent
children who are orphans and and the helpless ones. Amen

people are wicked - i don't wish to curse people but God please punish these people

Jesus!!! The heart of man is indeed desperately wicked. Wat was tinas crime? God pls don't let this happen to any of my sisters or my daughters.