I stumbled on clips circulating across Hausa social media, an interview with Kannywood star Fati Karishima on Hadiza Gabon’s talk show. Like thousands of viewers, I found myself infected by tears before the story even finished. Her account is not just one woman’s pain. It is one tale among millions of dehumanization and exploitation that women and girls navigate quietly every day. I had to pause listening, yet the ache, disgust, and sense of tragic fate refused to leave my mind. I wasn’t demoralized because I believed the victim was blameless. I was shaken because the pattern keeps repeating: the strong, the rich, even the ordinary but deceptive, finding it easy to take advantage of women who are hoping for love, security, or dignity.
According to Karishima, her “worst life decision” was marrying a top official in President Tinubu’s government during the 2023 campaign. “That campaign was the worst thing in my life,” she told Gabon. “I married a big man in Tinubu’s government. He rented me a luxury house and furnished it, but for over a year he never once visited where I was. He also didn’t allow me to go to where he was. We only did video calls.” Months into that ghost marriage, she said her body turned against her. “I was bleeding for five months. Doctors ran tests but found no cause. I was fainting for long periods.” As her health collapsed, the man vanished. “He blocked all care. Stopped picking my calls. Stopped sending upkeep money.” When she finally asked for divorce, his reply was cruelty dressed as logic: “He said he never married me, so how could he divorce what he didn’t marry? And that he didn’t even know me at all.” She added, “Everyone avoided me” after the abandonment.
This only scratches the surface. She also recounted a parallel tragedy: her father fell critically ill at the same time she had no money. She reached out to fellow actors. Some responded with real help. Many others, including relatives who could afford it, ignored her completely. The timing exposed a harsh truth Frantz Fanon once warned about in The Wretched of the Earth, power distances widen fastest in moments of vulnerability. Research on gendered exploitation by scholars like Sylvia Walby shows how economic dependence and emotional need create openings for what she calls “private patriarchy”. control masked as care, until the woman’s utility expires.
I blame Karishima last, and not from sentiment, but from sociology. The strong always have more choice, control, and moral room to resist seduction than the vulnerable. There is a wide gulf between a man who is overfed, lavish with money, and bored enough to “taste variety,” and a woman desperate for affection, stability, or basic survival. That gap is where exploitation thrives. I’ve written before about how bride price, though culturally symbolic, becomes a token when paid by men with excess wealth. For them it is pocket change. For her it can feel like the only door to security. The transaction looks mutual, but the power is lopsided.
Still, I worry about the cost of telling. I do not see it as weakness for anyone to speak out, but I question the calculus when legal redress is off the table, when the identity of the exploiter is hidden to avoid controversy, and when the story itself becomes currency. By refusing to name him, ” a big shot in the Villa” who swore he would never take another wife, and would do it without his family’s knowledge, Karishima may have protected herself from a smear campaign. In fact, that silence makes her account feel more sincere than performative.
Yet broadcasting such a humiliating, compromising narrative also risks stigma, judgment, and reputational harm without delivering healing. Erving Goffman’s Stigma theory reminds us that once a “spoiled identity” enters public view, society rarely lets it heal privately. Meanwhile, the talk show gains traffic, comments, and relevance. Gabon’s platform thrives on celebrities turning private wounds into public content. It entertains, but not every confession leads to closure. Some become reference points for future judgment.
This is one hazard of celebrity: the expectation to report every personal decision, wound, and choice as if the public owns the narrative. The pressure to “be brave” by exposing pain can feel like strength, but it can also reopen trauma. I empathize deeply with Karishima. I sympathize with the fatherless nights, the hospital bills, the blocked calls, the relatives who looked away.
And like Bashir El-Rufai’s recent confession that women always approached him first, Karishima’s story carries a lesson for many girls and women. I understand the pull toward “well-to-do, ready-made” partners to reduce financial insecurity. Men chase wealthy women for the same reason. But comfort and power can dull conscience. When a man is overfed, he often experiments with people the way others experiment with hobbies. The motive isn’t love. It is the spice of variety, the privilege of wealth, and the intoxication of unchecked power.
Her tears are a warning, not just a story. And the question left ringing is simple: in a world where access equals appetite, who protects the hungry from being consumed?
*Bagudu Mohammed*
bagudumohammed15197@gmail.com
