I Was Never Meant To Survive The Abuse of A Former Transcorp Group Chairman, But I Did.

I Was Not Confused

I think I need to tell this story properly once.

Not politely.

Not in legal language.

Not in the language I have had to use in complaints, where every sentence has to be measured and every emotion reduced to a paragraph number.

I need to tell it as me.

Because when I look back at everything that happened with Austen and Ade, the thing that breaks my heart most is not even just what they did.

It is how close I was to getting out.

How close I was to choosing myself.

And how expensive it became when I didn't.

November 2023

On 6 November 2023, I went to see Austen Cosmos Nwaokorie.

Austen Cosmos Nwaokorie was someone I had known for years. Someone I had loved. Someone whose presence in my life had already caused enough confusion and pain.

I walked into his office trying to deal with something directly.

Instead, I ended up arrested.

My British passport and Nigerian passport were taken.

My phones were taken.

I found myself inside the Nigerian police Cybercrime system over allegations relating to emails, frightened, disorientated and without the kind of legal advice I desperately needed.

My passports would remain out of my possession for approximately six months.

Think about that.

Your passports are not just little booklets.

When you live between countries, they are movement.

They are safety.

They are the ability to say, "I have had enough. I am going home."

And suddenly I did not have that.

I was in Nigeria without the freedom I was accustomed to having, without proper access to my medication for part of that period, trying to understand police processes, lawyers, allegations, Austen, money, fear and what the hell had just happened to my life.

I was vulnerable.

Deeply vulnerable.

And this is where I now look back and think: Rachel, somebody should have helped you leave.

Not helped you "figure Nigeria out."

Not helped you settle.

Not told you to be patient.

Not told you about opportunities.

Leave.

That was the advice I needed.

Get the passports back.

Get your medication.

Get on a plane.

Go to London.

Start again.

A friend gave me money.

I had a route out.

If I had used that money to go home, I genuinely think my life would have been very different.

I don't mean perfect.

I mean mine.

I would have struggled in London. I would have had to rebuild. I would probably have been broke for a while.

But I would have been working.

I would have had access to my healthcare.

I would have been making my own decisions.

I would have been free.

Instead, I listened to Ade.

Ade

Olulade Afolarin Adeboyega was not somebody I looked at and thought, "This man is obviously going to destroy my life."

That is the point.

He was older.

He had a respectable professional history.

He had worked at Transcorp.

He presented as somebody experienced, connected and established.

So when Ade told me, essentially, Rachel, you are always jumping between London and Nigeria, why don't you just settle in Nigeria properly? There are opportunities here. Build something here.

I listened.

And because I respected him, I gave his view more weight than my own instincts.

That was the mistake.

Not loving him.

Not caring about him.

Not wanting things to work.

The mistake was deciding that because somebody sounded more certain than me, they must know my life better than I did.

I wasn't confused.

I know that now.

I was scared.

I was destabilised.

I was vulnerable.

But I was not confused.

Somewhere underneath everything, I knew I wanted independence.

I knew I needed stability.

I knew I needed my medication.

I knew I needed my own money.

I knew I needed to be able to leave when I wanted to leave.

What I didn't have was enough faith in my own voice.

And Ade stepped directly into that gap.

The promise

The promise became ₦100 million.

Business capital.

The thing that was supposedly going to allow me to build.

The thing that made staying make sense.

The thing that would apparently justify not going straight back into employment in the UK.

It was not mentioned once and forgotten.

It was renewed.

Again and again.

Wait.

Things will improve.

Money is coming.

Business will happen.

There is a plan.

Just wait.

My formal complaint records exactly that: I say I was encouraged to remain in Nigeria and defer my own plans on repeated representations that Ade would provide ₦100 million in capital for my business. It never materialised.

And while this giant promise existed somewhere in the future, my actual life in the present was getting smaller.

That contradiction is almost embarrassing to think about now.

I was supposedly waiting for ₦100 million.

Meanwhile, I did not have enough money.

That is how ridiculous the situation became.

₦100,000. ₦200,000. And somehow I was supposed to survive.

Ade would give me between ₦100,000 and ₦200,000 a week.

On paper, somebody might hear that and say, "Well, he was giving you money."

Yes.

And it wasn't enough.

That is the whole point.

My complaint records that the weekly money was insufficient for my living expenses and that I ended up using high-interest borrowing to survive.

That is not security.

That is dependency.

There is a particular humiliation in somebody promising you an enormous future while keeping you financially weak in the present.

I had gone from being someone who could work, earn money, travel, make decisions, buy a ticket, get on a plane and solve problems to someone calculating whether I had enough money for basic things.

Medication.

Groceries.

Transport.

A ticket home.

There were moments when I was reduced to taking buses and commercial transport to get to family.

Me.

Sitting there thinking, how the hell did my life become this?

And it was not the bus itself.

Millions of people take buses every day.

It was what the bus represented to me.

I knew the life I had had.

I knew what I had been capable of.

I knew I had earned money.

I knew I had moved internationally.

I knew I had built things.

And now I was in a relationship where the person constantly talking about what he was eventually going to do for me had somehow left me without enough financial independence to simply decide:

I'm done. I'm going home.

That is what hurt.

And then there were the mind games

Money was only part of it.

The psychological part was worse.

Because if somebody simply treats you badly every day, eventually you know exactly what you are dealing with.

What confused me was the movement.

Friendship.

Relationship.

Marriage.

Distance.

Closeness.

Promises.

Withdrawal.

Affection.

Accusations.

Future.

Rejection.

Come here.

Go away.

I love you.

I don't know what I want.

My complaint describes that instability, including what I experienced as hostility towards ordinary friendships, accusations around male friends and even his own employee, and the constant shifting between friendship, marriage and romantic commitment.

Try living inside that for long enough.

You stop knowing what emotional weather you are going to wake up to.

You become occupied with maintaining the relationship.

Explaining yourself.

Proving things.

Reassuring somebody.

Trying not to trigger another argument.

Trying to understand what changed since yesterday.

Trying to get back to the good version of the relationship.

And while you are doing all that, your own life is disappearing.

I wasn't building friendships properly.

I wasn't building my network.

I wasn't building independent financial stability.

I wasn't building the business I thought I was staying to build.

My world was becoming Ade.

His health.

His recovery.

His appointments.

His emotions.

His needs.

His house.

His plans.

His promises.

I accompanied him to medical appointments two or three times a week while he was recovering from a stroke. I lived substantially at his home in Guzape. I was there. I showed up. I cared.

And this is where I have to be humble.

Because nobody handcuffed me to the furniture.

I stayed.

I made choices too.

That is part of the pain.

I kept hoping.

I kept believing.

I kept telling myself there was something worth saving.

And I did not understand at the time that hope itself can become part of the trap.

My world became smaller

There were accusations of infidelity.

There were arguments about male friendships.

There was even the humiliation of being accused in relation to his driver.

Then transport was withdrawn.

For weeks I was travelling to and from the house using commercial motorcycles in circumstances I experienced as unsafe and degrading. That is recorded in the complaint I later made.

Again, somebody can look at each individual incident and minimise it.

"It's only transport."

"It's only an argument."

"He gave you some money."

"He said he would help you."

"You could have left."

That is why these situations are so difficult to explain.

It is the accumulation.

One thing.

Then another.

Then another.

Until a woman who once had options starts negotiating for basic things inside her own life.

And the entire time, the future is dangling in front of her.

Just wait.

Something is coming.

Things will improve.

I will help you.

Business.

Money.

Stability.

Tomorrow.

Next month.

Soon.

Soon is a very dangerous word when somebody else controls the timetable.

I started reaching for family because I knew something was wrong

Eventually I started trying to reconnect with family support.

My Uncle Clement.

My father's brother.

I needed medication.

I needed groceries.

I needed help getting back to London.

I knew I could not continue living with my entire survival dependent on whether Ade was pleased with me that week.

But even asking somebody else for help felt emotionally complicated because by then I had become so accustomed to the idea that difficult conversations with Ade might mean being cut off completely.

That is not how I want to live ever again.

I do not ever again want to be in a position where speaking honestly to somebody makes me afraid I may lose access to food, medication, transport, accommodation or the ability to get home.

Never.

That is not love to me anymore.

Whatever anybody else calls it.

June 2024

Then came the final breakdown.

Something as stupid as accidentally waking somebody at around four in the morning became another accusation of infidelity.

That was it.

After everything.

After the promises.

After the waiting.

After the financial dependence.

After supporting him through illness.

After living inside that emotional confusion.

Suddenly I could be discarded.

The complaint I later filed records that after the June 2024 breakdown, Ade sent me money that was not enough to cover my return to the UK and my outstanding obligations. It also records unpaid money connected to my housekeeper and that I was in obvious financial distress.

That period remains one of the most humiliating parts for me.

Because suddenly all the grand promises evaporated.

The future disappeared.

I was just a woman trying to figure out how to get home.

And this person who had spent so long encouraging me to stay in Nigeria could watch me struggle to leave it.

That is brutal to accept.

The moment somebody actually has the opportunity to demonstrate that all the things they said about caring about you meant something, and instead you discover exactly how alone you are.

I had to borrow money from my sister.

I finally left Nigeria on 17 July 2024.

That date means something to me.

Because I got out.

But I did not come home okay.

London

I think people imagine that once you leave a bad situation, the story ends.

It doesn't.

Sometimes that is when your body finally collapses.

For months I had been surviving.

Police.

Passports.

Lawyers.

Austen.

Ade.

Money.

Medication.

Fear.

Arguments.

Promises.

Dependency.

Trying to get home.

When I finally got back to London, I was not arriving as the woman who had originally gone to Nigeria.

I was exhausted.

I was financially damaged.

I was socially depleted.

I had lost confidence.

I had lost friendships.

I felt ashamed.

I felt stupid.

I felt furious.

And I felt like I had tried so incredibly hard just to stay alive and people had somehow managed to turn even that into something difficult.

Shortly after returning to the UK, I reached a mental-health crisis and attempted to harm myself. That period and the medical treatment afterwards are also part of the documentary record I later identified to the police.

I do not write that dramatically.

I write it because that is how far down I had gone.

Austen

And this is why I cannot separate Ade completely from what happened with Austen.

I was already injured when I walked into the relationship dynamic with Ade.

Austen's situation had ripped away my sense of safety.

I had gone to his office.

I ended up arrested.

My passports were taken.

For months I could not simply leave the country in the normal way I would have done.

I eventually recovered the passports in May 2024 after changing legal representation.

I was ready to go to court over what had happened.

I was ready for evidence to be put on a table.

I wanted the videos looked at.

Look at me walking into the office.

Look at how I behaved.

Look at what Austen did when I arrived.

Did I walk in there to attack him?

Did I go there to beat anybody up?

Yes or no.

Simple.

I wanted it tested.

I wanted facts.

Instead, from my perspective, there was endless power, police, intimidation, confusion and delay.

By the time I was physically free to leave, I had become emotionally and financially entangled somewhere else.

That is the tragedy of it.

One bad situation created the vulnerability for the next one.

The thing I keep grieving

I keep coming back to the money my friend gave me.

That exit.

I wish somebody had taken my face in their hands and said:

Rachel.

Forget everybody.

Forget Nigeria.

Forget the business.

Forget the promises.

Forget Austen.

Forget Ade.

Get on the plane.

Go home.

You can rebuild money.

You can rebuild work.

You can rebuild a business.

You can come back to Nigeria another day if you want to.

But first, get yourself out.

I wish I had done that.

God, I wish I had done that.

And I have to live with the fact that I didn't.

That is grief.

Not stupidity.

Grief.

Because hindsight lets you see the door you walked past.

What hurts me now

What hurts is knowing how happy I could have been.

How happy I still can be.

I know myself.

I actually like life.

I like creating things.

I like music.

I like travelling.

I like talking to people.

I like solving problems.

I like building projects.

There is a version of me that is incredibly alive.

And for a long time I kept meeting people who made me feel as though that light was something irritating that needed to be reduced.

And eventually you start wondering:

What is wrong with me?

Why does somebody meet me and decide I should be miserable?

Why do I care about people and somehow end up paying for caring?

Why does respect become an invitation to disrespect me?

Why do I keep having to fight just to be allowed to exist peacefully?

That thought has broken my heart more than once.

But I am starting to think it asks the wrong question.

Maybe there was never some mysterious defect in me that made me deserve bad treatment.

Maybe I simply trusted people who did not deserve the level of authority I gave them over my life.

That is different.

And more importantly, that is something I can change.

I underestimated myself

I think I have spent years walking into rooms assuming somebody else must know more than me.

They are older.

They have money.

They have status.

They worked at Transcorp.

They have police connections.

They are senior.

They are confident.

Therefore, maybe they know.

Maybe Rachel is confused.

Maybe Rachel is too emotional.

Maybe Rachel is impulsive.

Maybe Rachel needs to calm down.

Maybe Rachel should listen.

No.

Rachel knew.

That is probably the most painful revelation of all.

I knew when things felt wrong.

I knew when I needed independence.

I knew when I wanted to go home.

I knew when promises were no longer enough.

I knew when I felt isolated.

I knew when I was becoming financially trapped.

I knew.

I just did not trust knowing enough.

That is the mistake I am putting to bed.

There is no saviour

Nobody is coming.

I don't mean that hopelessly anymore.

I mean it powerfully.

There is no man coming to save me.

No relationship.

No wealthy person.

No powerful friend.

No respected elder.

No police officer.

No family member.

No business partner.

No institution.

Nobody gets to be the saving grace of my life.

Help is wonderful.

Love is wonderful.

Community is necessary.

But the steering wheel stays with me.

Always.

Because when you hand somebody else the steering wheel, you also hand them the ability to drive you somewhere you never wanted to go.

I did that.

I respected the wrong people.

And you can pay an unbelievable price for respecting the wrong person.

You can love someone and still have to leave them.

You can respect somebody and still say they are wrong.

You can appreciate somebody's accomplishments and still decide they are unsafe for you.

You can understand somebody's trauma without volunteering to become collateral damage from it.

I did not understand that strongly enough before.

I do now.

Ronke

One thing I will always be grateful for is meeting Ronke.

Because somewhere in all this fear and confusion, I needed somebody who was essentially going to say:

Don't let these people walk all over you.

Fight back.

That little bit of Lagos strength mattered.

It woke something up.

It reminded me that I could document.

Complain.

Ask questions.

Demand answers.

Refuse to disappear.

There were points where I had so little fight left in me that I don't know what would have happened if somebody had not reminded me that I was still allowed to have a voice.

So yes, I fought.

I fought Austen's situation.

I fought for my passports.

I fought the police process.

I made complaints.

I kept records.

I eventually made a formal criminal complaint about what I say happened in my relationship with Olulade Afolarin Adeboyega, asking the authorities to investigate psychological, emotional and economic abuse and coercion. The complaint identifies WhatsApp messages, emails, bank records, medical documentation and witness evidence that I said I was prepared to provide.

I fought.

And I needed to.

But I have realised something else.

I cannot fight forever

At some point, survival itself has to stop being the project.

I cannot spend the rest of my life waking up every morning thinking about Austen.

Or Ade.

Or police officers.

Or who apologised.

Or who refused to apologise.

Or who thinks they are the victim now.

Or whether somebody finally understands what they did.

I can't.

Because then they still have my life.

And they have already had enough of it.

I am angry.

Very angry.

There are moments where I think about the complete lack of remorse and it enrages me.

Because these are grown men.

Older than me.

Parents.

People with life experience.

People who would never want their own child stranded, frightened, financially dependent, socially isolated or fighting to get home.

And yet somehow when it was me, there was always an explanation.

Always a justification.

Always another version of events.

That hypocrisy hurts.

It still hurts.

But I don't need their remorse in order to know what happened to me.

That is where I am trying to get to.

This is my part

My part is this.

I doubted myself.

I stayed too long.

I believed promises after the evidence was already telling me to stop believing them.

I gave people too much authority because I respected their age, status, careers, connections or confidence.

I confused patience with wisdom.

I confused understanding somebody with being obligated to tolerate them.

I thought loving somebody meant I should keep trying.

I thought leaving meant I had failed.

Those were my mistakes.

I own them.

But owning my mistakes does not mean taking responsibility for somebody else's behaviour.

Both things can be true.

I should have left.

And I should not have been treated that way.

I should have trusted myself.

And people I trusted should not have exploited that trust.

I should have gone back to London sooner.

And somebody who claimed to care about me should not have made leaving harder.

I can own my choices without carrying everybody else's.

That is maturity to me now.

So this is the last thing I want to say

Austen.

Ade.

I loved you in different ways.

I cared.

I respected you.

I believed you.

That is why you were ever capable of hurting me in the first place.

There would have been no wound if there had been no trust.

But I am done treating my ability to love and trust as evidence that I am foolish.

It isn't.

The lesson is not to become cold.

The lesson is to become discerning.

The lesson is boundaries.

The lesson is independence.

The lesson is believing myself sooner.

The lesson is leaving when something repeatedly tells me to leave.

And the lesson is never again allowing another person's promises to become a substitute for my own plan.

I will never again sit there waiting for somebody else's money while my own life shrinks.

I will never again abandon my work because somebody says they are going to fund my future.

I will never again allow myself to become so financially dependent that an argument threatens my ability to eat, travel, buy medication or go home.

I will never again allow anybody's status to make me frightened of saying:

No.

You're wrong.

I'm leaving.

No doubt

That is what I want to take from this.

No doubt.

Not because I am always right.

I am not.

Not because I will never make another terrible decision.

I probably will.

I am human.

But I will never again assume somebody else knows what I need simply because they sound more confident saying it.

I know myself.

I know when I am unhappy.

I know when I am frightened.

I know when something is costing too much.

I know when love has stopped feeling like love.

I know when I want to go home.

And I know now that I do not need a committee to approve my instincts.

I underestimated myself terribly.

Maybe I didn't understand the light I was carrying.

Maybe I thought being humble meant making myself smaller.

It doesn't.

Humility is knowing I can be wrong.

Self-respect is knowing that does not mean everybody else gets to be right about me.

There is a light in me.

It survived Austen.

It survived Ade.

It survived Nigeria.

It survived coming home broken.

It survived the friendships I lost.

It survived the money I lost.

It survived all the nights when I could not imagine how I was going to rebuild.

It is still here.

And I am tired of apologising for it.

So this is not a revenge letter.

It is not me asking anyone to suffer.

It is not me begging for anybody to finally admit what they did.

It is a burial.

I am burying the version of me who waits for people to save her.

I am burying the version of me who thinks somebody's job title means they know better.

I am burying the version of me who stays because of what somebody promised instead of looking at what they are actually doing.

I am burying the doubt.

I cannot get the money back by grieving it forever.

I cannot get the time back.

I cannot magically restore every friendship.

I cannot go back to that moment, take the money from my friend, grab my passports and put myself on the plane.

I wish I could.

I really, really wish I could.

But I can't.

What I can do is refuse to make the same mistake twice.

And maybe that is how I finally honour the woman who went through all of this.

Not by spending the rest of my life fighting Austen and Ade.

By becoming the woman she was trying so desperately to survive long enough to become.

I was not confused.

I was hurt.

I was vulnerable.

I was manipulated.

I made mistakes.

I loved people I should have walked away from.

I doubted myself when I should have trusted myself.

And I survived it.

That is the story.

Now I want my life back.

In putting this together, I realized that I am ovedue some pschyotherapy/ Counselling. Havent actually had any sessions since 2020..