I’m a boxer but my biggest fight has been to stay here – my home of 20 years
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As I squared up to my Russian opponent ahead of my first ever professional boxing match, I felt electric.
This was at our weigh-in yesterday and I could see a flinch in his eye as I stared him down. I’ve been training my whole life for this moment and I’m ready to put it all on the line during our match tonight.
I felt alive, and that’s the sensation I always get when I step into the ring.
But this match is nothing compared to my fight with the Home Office. For what feels like an eternity, I’ve been going head-to-head with them to stay in the country I’ve called home for almost 20 years. It’s a match-up that I feel is completely unfair.
I grew up in Nigeria but always felt like I didn’t belong there. My mother – who I lived with – was from Benin and my father was from Lebanon, but I never saw him. I was mixed so I wasn’t like the other kids and I struggled to fit in – it didn’t help that I felt abandoned and neglected by my abusive mother, who has now passed away.
When I was eight, my uncle took me into his care and away from my mother. This is when I started to feel like I was alone in the world and if I wanted to succeed, I needed to look after myself.
When I was 14, my uncle told me one day that my father wanted me to move to the UK. I was ecstatic and it felt like someone was giving me the biggest gift of all – a world of opportunity.
As soon as I got to London, this quickly disappeared. I was placed into the care of a woman I didn’t know and waited everyday for my father to see me. But he never came.
The woman who was supposedly taking care of me was ruthless and never let me leave the house. I was forced to do chores all day like cooking and cleaning, and was severely neglected.
One time, I accidentally dropped a plate when I was washing it up and she brutally…
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Source : metro
