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BBNaija Season 11 housemate Bells has spoken about a deeply personal family experience, recalling the day her father, a military officer, was kidnapped and how the family has lived with uncertainty ever since.
The incident happened when Bells wastillness el a student and had not yet turned 20. She was in the middle of her second-semester examination when the news reached the family.
"My dad was k!dnapp£d years back. Currently, we don't know his current state. They requested for money, but later rejected the idea, and said they were going to just keep him in the camp.
My dad was in the military. This happened before I turned 20. I could remember when this happened, I was writing my second-semester exam to transition to year two when this call came through."
Bells said the experience was particularly difficult because her family was accustomed to periods of silence whenever her father was away on military assignments. Sometimes, months could pass without seeing or speaking to him, so the initial lack of communication did not immediately suggest that something was wrong.
"When it happened, I was the first person he called. Sometimes we don't get to talk. They go to different wars, and there are times that we don't get to see him at length, like six months, and then one day he'll just pop up.
We didn't talk to him for a while. My mum felt funny, but you know, it's common when you have a military husband. Sometimes you don't even talk to them for months, and then they would just call you one day that they've been in the bush, there was no network."
The situation became clearer after the family eventually managed to establish contact with him. Bells said her father told them he had tried to escape but was eventually caught and taken back to one of the camps.
"I think we didn't talk to him for like seven days. When we finally reached out to him, he told us about how he was trying to escape. He could not communicate, but he got tired and was caught by one of their camps eventually.
And then he talked about how they were being r@!ded multiple times, expl0d£d their tankers, and when he got kidnapp£d, they gave him the permission to talk to us."
One particular conversation has remained with Bells. She recalled her father telling the family that they were being moved to Chad and that he might not be able to contact them for some time.
"One day he reached out to us and said they were moving them to Chad, that he might not be able to communicate for a while, but if he gets the chance, he would call us."
For Bells, that conversation carried a meaning she only fully understood later. She said part of her has always felt that it sounded like a final goodbye, although the military gave the family a different explanation.
"Part of me feels like that was like a goodbye call. The military said it wasn't, that they would have known if something had happened to him because those people would have sent them the information.
So hopefully, we still have faith that he's alive. I think that's what's been keeping us..."
The story also helps explain why Bells' emotional moments on the show surprised some members of her family. She said they had always regarded her as someone who could handle difficult situations without breaking down.
"That's why my family were surprised when they saw me crying on the show. They see me as the stronger person in the house, the person who can take things."
For Bells, however, the uncertainty surrounding her father's fate remains something her family continues to live with.
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