Lagos lawyer and clergyman Femi Giwa-Amu returned to Facebook after more than 32-month absence to mourn his dead daughter, Renua, who accused him of sexually abusing her as a child.
Renua, who studied at Savannah College of Art & Design in Atlanta, Georgia, United States, committed suicide on Saturday, moments after revealing her plan on her Instastory and warning that family members should not mourn her.
Her death was confirmed by her uncle, Ozolua Giwa-Amu in a Facebook post.
“It is with the utmost regret it falls on me to announce, that our most beautiful daughter, Ohirenua Giwa-Amu, youngest daughter of Femi and Ngozi, passed away last night.
“This is a most heartbreaking day for us all.
‘On behalf of her parents, my mother, brothers, sisters, and the whole family I ask that you kindly say a prayer, light a candle, sing a worship song, for our little girl, that she may find eternal rest.
“Renua was a beautiful soul, may the Almighty have mercy upon her and receive her soul. Renua, with so much pain, pls know, we will love you forever!!!”, Ozolua wrote.
The day after Renua’s death, by 6.24 am on Sunday, her father posted a non-verbal message on Facebook, a photo of two hands holding a lit candle.
He did not write anything about the daughter. Just the candle.
Renua Giwa-Amu
Renua Giwa-amu taking part in EndSARS protest in October
Femi Giwa-Amu
Giwa-Amu has not been regular on the social media platform. His last post was on 10 April 2018.
His post attracted an outpouring of grief and sympathy from friends and relations, but some are wondering about the sincerity of it all.
On 18 September, Renua had gone public to accuse her father of sexually abusing her as a child. She called the father a pedophile and claimed he molested many other kids too.
Bella Kitan Joseph, saw through the hypocrisy and slammed Giwa-Amu for the post. “With all due disrespect, f..k you! How dare you mourn Renua when you’re the reason she’s dead?!?!, she wrote on Facebook.
In a second post, she drove her point home:
“Femi Giwa-Amu, you killed Renua’s spirit a long time ago, now she’s finished the job! You’re an abuser, manipulator, thief, drug addict and murderer and I pray you feel all the pain you caused Renua and everyone else still suffering because of you! I pray that pain stings you till the day you die! Even if Renua is dead, we know what you did and you cannot use her death to play the good parent! You are evil in its purest form and I pray you suffer!”.
In another post, she said:
“Femi Giwa-Amu! Renua’s death is on your head! You caused her an unbearable amount of pain and I pray it haunts you till the day you die!
But the hordes of wailers on Giwa Amu’s Facebook page did not care a hoot about Bella’s remonstration.
“Words fail me Femi, pls accept my heartfelt condolences. May the Lord comfort you all in these trying times. Amen”, wrote Priscilla Omai in her condolence.
Anne Ayanate Braide also condoled with Giwa Amu: My condolences and may the Lord strengthen you and your family”.
Okey Okuzu also said: My bro Femi. I have been on your wall and Ozolua. O. Giwa-Amu’s wall several times today – each time hoping no praying that this was some type of 2020 joke. Alas it was not so. Femi – take heart. God knows best. And he will help you and your family heal. May your daughter’s gentle soul rest in peace”.
By 10.am on Monday, Giwa-Amu’s grieving post had generated over 135 comments, with none raising an issue over Renua’s disclosure about her dad and her suicide thereafter.
Here is the 18 September hair-raising post by Renua on her father:
She titled it “A short open letter to a certain Mr OBAFEMI EHIMIGBAI GIWA-AMU”.
I know that you are a child molester, your numerous victims outnumber you and I remember everything now. All I have to say to you is this:
You, your rings of pedophiles, bullies, thieves, hired cronies and family gang can do whatever you like in eternum. You already do so, and my belief in karma is strong enough to know that you have already begun the processes that will eventually be your own downfall. But lately, I got triggered again into remembering details about certain threats against my and my siblings you often made against our lives if I was ever to become successful and return to Nigeria after daring to come forward with my truth. I already did that. I had the nervous breakdown in 2018 when the truth about your various exploits and smuggling schemes finally came back to me in a big, horrible way. So, take note; if really you want to live long enough to indeed be the old dog turning tired tricks that you already are, you would be advised to start covering your pedophile tracks more efficiently. We both know you won’t; that is how your specific and vile pathology works. I only feel sorry for the countless women and men who consciously or unconsciously allowed you access into their lives, homes, children and businesses over the decades of your horrific schemes. I wished that I could make you a better man when I was little and had no choice engaging in the things I eventually believed normal because of you. Not because you even deserve the simple joy of being a good person, but because this already wicked world never needed the vile stench of a soul like yours to walk it and the day you breathe last on it, will be a purer tomorrow. All of that is fact, already known widely and in private, but after having to watch helplessly before while you took various jobs, titles and high positions that allowed you, smuggle and steal, trick innocent parents into sending their children places with you when really you know anything you did for money was always a reluctant business front you used to scout more victims, sophisticated scams and channels to perpetuate more crimes across international borders…. after watching you do all that and still manage to get away, living scot free off whatever femme du jour, I must admit it’s too hard to stay quiet again as an adult. Most people already know the thieving facts about you, but many more fools searching for quick easy money will always be happy to associate with a crook like you. So at this point, I just have to make a necessary, painful but awkward and public announcement for people in respectable society to understand that you should perhaps be discouraged from being such a homicidal thieving pervert, or maybe at least not be able to ask their kids to sit in your lap casually anymore. People make strange choices indeed; I have never understood the adults in my life who had power to create positive change over certain situations and just simply never did. Some lack courage, some lack intuition, maybe others simply believe this is how the world works and don’t bother trying to fight anymore. Thankfully, the world has beaten, pissed on and shot me down enough (starting with a father like you) it has become a source of pride, joy, excitement, happiness and even vindictive pleasure for me to help make it a safer place, even just a little, by putting my feminist money where my mouth is and outing your miserable depraved self to the world and whomever might be concerned with this message. To people associated with us both who try and guilt me into forgiving you, I sincerely hope they find either the healing or direction to understand why it is they feel personally incensed to police the tone and actions of a former child sex slave, or why they are willing to stick their necks out for a continuously harmful sexually offensive perpetrator who is wanted in several states across the world. His current piggybank/wife has vulnerable & unwell children, and built him a makeshift church with a budding congregation over which he presided as pastor and held sermons. My pedophilic father renamed his third wife after me, and she bears the name Ohirenua willingly. An uncle of mine dismissed my feelings about it saying it was intended perhaps as a “compliment”…..meanwhile it makes my skin crawl. Some others have whispered of his political aspirations of seeking glory in the footsteps of his father who was once an attorney-general of the old mid-west states of Nigeria. So, sentiments and forgiveness aside, the man is still doing the things that nearly ruined my life, to others. And that alone makes me sick to my stomach. Someone needs to stop this madness before it affects a child you know, you knew or once trusted him with. Several of my nursery, primary school, and secondary school friends in Nigeria at some point or the other always had to eventually tell me they couldn’t come to my house anymore because my dad was “becoming a problem.” It has to stop. I did my part in stopping this man from continuing to thrive amongst the chaos and disorderly nature of Nigerian living, both as a child and now as an adult. I have spent enough years cracking my brain over this and wondering what to do ever since I first noticed and wondered why my father always seemed to lick his lips while hungrily staring at any light-skinned children he spotted in Nigeria, as though he was about to eat a sandwich. I went through hell telling several adults who ignored, punished and dismissed me about this, to the point that I finally just dissociated and forgot a lot of this even happened until fairly recently. Whenever I remembered what he did to me as a child and attempted to tell anyone, and whenever he put me through his molestations, what followed was always an intense beating that always caused me to pass out and wake up feeling incredibly confused. It was a horrible, long process. I do not ever seek out or ask for any informational updates about this man & his whereabouts as I do not associate with pedophilia in any format, and simply do not care to endanger my newly reclaimed safety by knowing him. Occasionally someone unwitting might think to use the concept of my child predator father to mock, insult or shame me. Source of shame that he is, I have no more guilt or anger towards myself and others who knew better, about this. Going through it all was the hardest part, but it took me many fractured years to piece myself together bit by bit, one PTSD flashback at a time, and it was a lifetime before I could look myself in the mirror and feel like I fully saw my own face. Entire chunks of my memory were once lost and taken from me, entire friendships and interests and hobbies and goals I had just vanished and might still not fully ever come back. Instead I carried around such intense feelings of shame, regret and self-loathing disgust that it consumed me most times. Good or bad, traumatic or not, those memories of mine that hurt me and triggered me for so long have finally woken me up and reminded me that I promised myself if I survived you, escaped, and somehow found enough sanity to be willing to return home that I would never set foot in Nigeria unless I had publicly acknowledged the fact that you continually raped me as a seven year old child until I had a possible prepubescent miscarry and almost died of sepsis. I wasn’t even in Primary 4 yet. Good or bad, traumatic or not, those memories of mine that hurt me and triggered me for so long have finally woken me up and reminded me that I promised myself if I survived you, escaped, and somehow found enough sanity to be willing to return home that I would never set foot in Nigeria unless I had publicly acknowledged the fact that you continually raped me as a seven year old child until I had a possible prepubescent miscarry and almost died of sepsis. I wasn’t even in Primary 4 yet I want you to know that my new, fulfilled and much happier family is made up of the abandoned projects you neither truly cared for as a husband nor father, and we were the only ones who loved you so blindly enough that while you destroyed us everyday on the inside, your kids only ever wanted to make you proud. The awful, scary truth is that we would have stuck by you through anything till the end of whatever this “family experiment” was for you, and could have helped you learn a better conscience and ways to take care of yourself. Instead, you freed us with your selfish departure and really, that is the one thing I can honestly say I will never stop thanking you for. You being a selfish piece of shit is eventually always going to be the best thing that happens to the people around you, because you will always plan to leave them when it suits you to change “sleeves”, as you once called me. One day though, you will run out of the means and channels to find new victims, and I want to hope that you remember not to be audacious enough to attempt manipulating any of your old discarded hostages into taking care of you. Most certainly not me. If you don’t want to suffer, my advice to you is that you either start saving some scammy bucks for old age, or you just find a private place where nobody else will be bothered & kill yourself. I can’t speak for my siblings, but me sha, I know old age is creeping on you around the corner and even if you mistakenly happened to tap any more heroin from your mother’s ass to call me one day and ask for help? I will personally ensure you kick the very first bucket that comes your way. Let me be clear, for summary and support: you do not exist. We do not speak of you. Your name has been changed mentally so that even in casual conversation we reference you as Jack or John or something, I forget. You need to know that what you did to me, your family, siblings, and all the poor people you took advantage of literally broke your father’s heart when he found out. What you were doing to me and the poor people of apapa & ebute metta he trusted you to care for, not to smuggle, rape and pillage, devastated my poor Gramps. It deeply disappointed him; he fell so sick that he never recovered and I finally remember why you never wanted me to tell anybody how & when you found out that my grandfather was sick. You killed him, plundered his estates to sell my birthrights away and ensure your siblings would have to suffer. But as we very well have seen, the truth endures. And now the truth about you has been shared freely, the entire world now is free and able to make educated decisions about associating with you. I know I wouldn’t, because I don’t. And no matter how many times you call me to threaten me, or beg through fake tears that you are sorry for everything you and your brother did to me, I am going to spend the rest of my life sticking to my truth and spreading the gospel of your horrible lifelong misdeeds. You can kill me tomorrow, the way you hired killers to track down & kill my mother for surviving the years of mental warfare and trauma you put her through including your messy stint in America (when you fled from Atlanta to Nigeria hiding from the FBI who are still hoping to catch you for the crimes of your drugs smuggling and child sex trafficking ring all over the entire state).
You could even succeed in ending me and it still wouldn’t matter because now, it’s actually worth it for me to die knowing I did for myself as an adult what I needed someone to do for me as a child, and to have survived here now. Nigerians might be an ignorant, unhelpful and irritatingly enabling lot when it comes to listening to children over the messy adults in their lives, but we are also a very very VERY nosy lot. Even if it’s just for the gist, people will certainly have lots of inconvenient, nasty lingering questions about my disappearance if it occurs too swiftly after sharing this truth, especially in a country like ours where everybody knows you have henchmen & cronies on speed dial. By all means please, make me a martyr, I’ve enjoyed my time here and will go in peace. Just in case your sorry, loathsome, dimwitted, tiny egg balloon dick having self still is unfortunately dumb enough to spite your own soul and seek me out, pray you don’t find me. If you do? Better turn heel and flee like it’s the FBI approaching. Because it just might be.
You fucking failure of a son & fraudster.
Inna lillah, wa inna ilaehi raji unn (“Verily we belong to Allah, and verily to Him do we return.” )
This is tragic and sad! I pray that God rest her soul in perfect peace. Having read her story, it is difficult to believe that her case is suicide. She anticipated that she may be killed and it came to pass. She never talked about suicide. But this is Nigeria where the appearance of justice eludes every average and underdog citizen. This young lady was failed at too many levels and by too many people in life and the system is set to fail her again in death. The enablers of the heinous crime against her who are possibly perpetrators of similar crimes themselves, shall all give account. The Lord is the God of justice and His judgement is inevitable and endures.
Rest In Peace. I weep!