This are the shocking photos of an innocent girl who was bathed with acid by a male student for refusing to have sex with him.
"What did I do to deserve this? When has turning down a request for a relationship become a sin?”
These are the questions that have been pouring forth from the devastated mouth of Francisca Ogbu, a first-year undergraduate of the Federal University of Technology, Yola, Adamawa State (FUTY), who was recently bathed with acid, allegedly by a man seeking an affair with her.
Looking devastated on her hospital bed at the female surgical ward of the University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital (UMTH), Francisca painted the picture of a gloomy future and a jinxed academic career.
“My education has already suffered and I don’t think there is hope again,” she declared as tears rolled down her disfigured cheek.
Francisca’s ordeal started last year after gaining admission into the department of economics at FUTY. “One boy, called Bright, has been requesting to go out with me. He is not in my department. He was in 500 Level. He even bought gifts sometime ago but I rejected them. I told him I was not interested because I was very new in the school and I saw his request as a distraction,” she told our reporter.
She said she thought the matter was over. “I was reading in a classroom one day with a candle, because there was no light on campus that night. There were other people in the classroom. At about 11.30 pm, somebody called me to come out of the class but I refused, insisting that it was late and that I was reading. Then, I heard somebody calling my name again from outside. It was a familiar voice and I was encouraged to stand up from my seat and look out from the door. That was all.”
The decision to look out for the caller through the classroom door was Francisca’s greatest undoing. All she could remember moments later was the unbearable pain from the acid poured on her. With a badly damaged right ear which has since been cut off, the destiny of the young lady, the second in the family of seven, changed. She was rushed to the hospital in Yola and subsequently referred to the UMTH.
Unable to hold back her tears, Francisca lamented that her education has suffered. “I want to go back to school,” she kept saying. She said the incident, which happened barely a month after her matriculation, had shattered her dreams.
To return to school, she would need to undergo more treatment and facial surgery in India and it would cost over N5 million, excluding travel expenses and feeding but then, her parents, who have been supportive since the incident occurred, cannot afford the amount. In fact, her father, Mr. Ogbu, a civil servant, was said to have expended his entire savings on the treatment, which was initially borne by FUTY.
“The man was here last week and I really pity him. He is totally broke. He has expended his savings on the treatment of his daughter. He said he had sworn that the only legacy he could give his children was education but the man is now sad because he seems to believe his vision has been truncated,” an official at the UMTH told Daily Sun.
It was gathered that the suspect names Bright, has been expelled by FUTY. He was also said to have been picked up by the police and released later. Francisca is appealing to the government, corporate organisations and well-meaning Nigerians to assist her financially so that she could go for surgery in India as well as realise her dream of going back to school.
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