Bullied and broken: Victims share tales of lifelong scares

Behind the bright smiles that mask deep pain and laughter that hides invisible scars, countless people carry the heavy burden of bullying trauma long after the torment has ended. For some, those wounds never heal. The silent suffering, the unspoken anguish, and the constant battle to simply survive become an endless cycle. In this piece, victims open up to OGHENOVO EGODO-MICHAEL about their experiences and the consequences that remain long after the physical bruises have faded

Elohor, now 25, recounts her time in junior secondary school with a mixture of bitterness and sorrow. As a promising young girl from Delta State, she should have been enjoying some of the happiest years of her life. Instead, they became a nightmare she cannot forget, a memory tainted with pain, fear, and betrayal.

“I normally tell people that JSS 1 to 3 were the worst years of my life,” Elohor begins, her voice barely audible, as if recalling those years at St. Rita’s Grammar School, Ughelli, Delta State, still makes her want to disappear. “Imagine being afraid to leave school, not because of poor grades or teachers, but because you know what’s waiting for you outside.”

For Elohor, walking home became a terrifying journey, dodging hidden predators lurking in the streets—other students, her so-called friends, ready to pounce on her.
Her worst experience happened in 2011 when a single moment of trust cost her everything. She had confided in a friend, hoping for support, but it backfired.

A senior student, identified simply as Andy, insulted one of her friends, Wvarie by calling her a cultist and rogue, and she shared her hurt about what was said about Wvarie with her best friend, expecting comfort.

Instead, her friend betrayed her, and soon Elohor became the target of an attack. She recalls, with a haunting look in her eyes, how Wvarie and a group of girls ambushed her as she walked home.
“We were all going home when I noticed some girls trying to keep up with me. So, my best friend then told me that Wvarie was trying to track down someone who spoke ill about her. Since my best friend wanted to tag along with Wvarie and her friends, I decided to follow suit and feed my eyes.

“There was a lonely part of the road between our way from school to where I lived. The moment we took a turn into that road, I just felt someone flog me,” she recalls, and though it was over a decade ago, the sting of that flogging is still fresh in her memory.

She said, “I asked what happened, but she asked what I had said about her, and I told her that I said nothing.” Elohor noted that each word that came out of Wvarie’s mouth was accompanied by a stroke of the cane to her body.

In front of other students and random strangers on the street, she was beaten, humiliated, and shamed. Her tears fell, but no one stepped in to help. “Anytime I think of the experience, it makes me cry because I don’t think I deserved it,” she added.

For Elohor, the pain wasn’t just physical; it was the heartache of knowing her friends—people she trusted—turned against her, and the humiliation of suffering such abuse in broad daylight.

Another incident followed when Wvarie’s younger sister falsely accused Elohor of stealing money. “We were going home one day, and they accused me of stealing N1000. I told them to check my bag and body. They harassed me till I got home,” she narrated.

The lies didn’t stop. When more terrible rumours surfaced—one involving Wvarie’s sister coming to her house to wrongly inform her parents that she was involved in lesbianism at school, “my parents beat me so much to the point that I had a scar on half part of my face,” Elohor said.
The fallout at home was brutal. The scars from that beating run deeper than the ones that remain on her face to this day. “It was the last time I trusted anyone with sensitive information such as details of where I lived,” she said quietly, her words laced with an unmistakable bitterness.

Now, at 25, Elohor still feels the weight of those betrayals. The scars may have healed on the surface, but the wound festers deep inside.

Elohor’s alleged bully is now a popular influencer who randomly pops up on her social media feeds from time to time. Describing the hurt she feels each time Wvrie’s post popped up on her feed, Elohor said, “Seeing all those followers she has pisses me off. Seeing that she has a community of fans pisses me off because I feel like she does not deserve all those things but who am I to judge? All the humanitarian activities she’s just doing are fake. Most of the pain I went through, she put me through it. She did a lot.”

She speaks of the future, of how she plans to protect her children. “I will enrol my children in self-defence classes so they will never have to endure what I did.”

This is the reality of bullying—years after it ends, the trauma lives on.

She added that based on the lessons learnt from her bitter experiences, she would make sure all her kids attend Taekwondo and boxing classes so they can learn how to defend themselves.

Workplace bullying
However, Oluwadamilare Victoria, a 22-year-old student from Lagos, has a different, but equally heartbreaking story. Her bright future was dimmed by the darkness of workplace bullying. In 2022, while working at a hair salon in FESTAC, her nightmare began.

What should have been an exciting opportunity to earn a living and build her skills quickly turned into something far darker. Grace, her employer, took pleasure in making her life miserable.

What started with harsh words and demeaning comments soon escalated into terrifying physical abuse. Victoria vividly recalls the day her dignity and spirit were crushed beyond repair.

She said, “I started the work in December 2022 and didn’t stay long before I left in March 2023. We had a boss whom we called Grace and she provided accommodation where I lived with other colleagues.

“One day, while straightening a wig, my boss took my phone and asked me to open it. I found it disturbing that someone wanted to go through my privacy. Initially, I didn’t have a problem with it because I thought she just wanted to go through my pictures until she requested me to use my fingerprint to grant her access to my WhatsApp.

“I asked her why and she said I should show her my conversation with my boyfriend. I found it strange so I refused. As a matter of fact, I thought she was joking so I took my phone and started running around.”

Victoria said her boss ordered one of her colleagues to hold her down and she took a curler to press her hands.
“It was the most traumatic pain I ever experienced in my life,” she said. “I am light in complexion and when she removed it, I could see my inner skin. I was shaking and I immediately opened my phone and gave it to her.”

Speaking further, Victoria said she sat down in front of her boss as she shed tears uncontrollably because she burnt two of her hands.

“I don’t even know how many messages she went through that day, she just kept scrolling,” she added.

Victoria recalled that it was not the first time she had gone through such an experience at the hands of Grace which made her upset and uncomfortable.

She added that whenever anyone asked about the scar, she usually lied that she burnt herself in the process of curling a wig.

Victoria noted that the worst part wasn’t the burns; it was the shame. The shame of having to hide the truth from the world, of lying to protect her abuser.
Eventually, she left the salon. But the emotional toll of the bullying followed her, like a dark cloud. “I can’t trust anyone again,” she says, echoing the sentiment shared by many victims of bullying. Her experience taught her one thing: survival often means learning to keep people at arm’s length, even if it means never truly healing.
Boarding house of hell

For Ify, a former boarding school student at Queen’s College in Lagos, her torment came not from one person but from an entire system of cruelty.

Boarding schools often thought to provide structure and discipline, can also be breeding grounds for unchecked abuse. In Ify’s case, her years at the prestigious college left her with lasting physical and emotional scars.

In an emotional Instagram post on April 28, 2024, she opened up about the years of torment she suffered. “We were given buckets at least twice our sizes to go get water with and make sure it was filled to the brim. Some were given menstruation blood-stained sheets and dirty underwear and uniforms to go wash.

“You dare not disobey those seniors. One time there was a student who did, and we heard she was beaten by a mob of seniors. We were also told she had to withdraw from school.”

The humiliation was unrelenting. The price of defiance was severe, and soon, all the juniors learned to bow their heads in submission, allowing themselves to be treated as less than human.

One slap, however, changed Ify’s life forever. “I can’t hear from one of my ears because one day, I was slapped so hard by a senior that I lost my balance,” she shared.
The slap wasn’t just painful—it was damaging. The hearing loss serves as a permanent reminder of the powerlessness she felt every day in that institution. Her desperate pleas to teachers went unheard. The adults, the ones who were supposed to protect her, remained silent.

In a bid to get a reaction, our correspondent visited the website of the Queen’s College and reached out to the contact available. During the deliberation, a representative who refused to disclose her name said, “Bullying is everywhere and exists in all schools. It is not an unusual occurrence in any school.”

Cruelty of cyberbullying

For some, the pain of bullying doesn’t end with the school bell or the workplace clock-out. For others, it follows them home, invading the most private moments of their lives.

Cyberbullying, a modern form of torment, is relentless and pervasive. For people like Chidinma Adetshina, a Nigerian-South African beauty queen, cyberbullying became a daily assault on her humanity.

After competing in the Miss Universe South Africa pageant, Adetshina found herself at the mercy of cruel internet trolls. Strangers questioned her right to be there, attacking her nationality and identity with venomous words.

“I would cry myself to sleep,” she says, unable to find peace even in the solitude of her bedroom. The digital world became a weapon that inflicted wounds just as real as any physical blow.
Cyberbullying has claimed countless lives, leaving behind families and communities wondering how something as intangible as words on a screen could cause such devastation.

But for the victims, it’s all too real. It becomes a constant whisper in their ear, telling them they’re worthless, telling them there’s no escape.

Alex Iwobi, a Nigerian footballer, knows this all too well. After Nigeria’s 2024 AFCON exit, social media users flooded his accounts with hate. It became so overwhelming that he had to delete his social media accounts altogether, just to find some sense of peace. The hate follows, however, even after the screens go dark.

Crushing psychological toll

The effects of bullying run deep. They burrow into the psyche, feeding off self-doubt and fear, turning victims into shadows of who they once were. Victims like Elohor, Victoria, Ify, and Adetshina are not just fighting the bullies of their past—they are battling their own minds, trying desperately to reclaim a sense of self-worth.

A renowned psychologist and Executive Director, Global Initiative on Substance Abuse, Dr. Martin Agwogie, says, “Bullying can lead to depression, paranoia, and hatred for society. It can also lead to inability to relate with people because it breaks some level of trust especially when the bully is someone the bullied trusts or sees as a friend.”

Also speaking on bullying, a Professor of Psychology at the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Osun State, Toba Elegbeleye, stated that bullying has physical and psychological effects on the victim because the intention is to make one go through fear and lose self-esteem.
He added, “Also, if the instrument of bullying is mentioned in the presence of the bully, he is likely going to cringe or show signs of fear and you’re likely going to know that something is wrong. Some of them would even be evasive in discussions about bullying.”

Victims often isolate themselves, finding it impossible to trust others. The scars of bullying—whether physical or emotional—last a lifetime, and for many, there is no escape.

It’s not just the victims who are left to grapple with the trauma. Families, too, carry the weight. Parents watch helplessly as their once-happy children retreat into themselves, becoming distant, anxious, and withdrawn.

In many cases, bullying victims struggle with their mental health well into adulthood, facing challenges in relationships, careers, and social interactions.

Addressing the roots of bullying

According to rights lawyer, Inibehe Effiong, there is no law prohibiting bullying because the government has not taken it as a priority.

He stated, “It is a matter that should be addressed by the state government and agencies like the state ministries of education. They ought to introduce policies that would curtail the increased cases of bullying in schools and heads of schools should be made particularly liable for such cases.”
On his part, the first Vice President of the Nigerian Bar Association, John Aikpokpo-Martins, opined that bullying has a lot to do with the person who is being bullied because one cannot be oppressed unless one submits oneself to oppression.

He added, “Parents should try as much as possible to build up confidence in their children so they won’t be bullied. They should also bring up children in a way that they would be able to openly speak with them. A parent should also observe their children without them being aware that they are under watch.”

However, a security expert, Nnamdi Chife, noted that defending oneself in a situation of bullying depends on the circumstances.

“If one is at the risk of being fatally harmed, the person has the right to defend his/herself but if an opportunity presents itself for one to call on higher authority, then one should do so,” Chife said

Giving security tips for tackling the challenge, he said, “The challenge is majorly the local law enforcement. We need to have an integrated security approach to protecting citizens.”