By joshua 
NATASHA’S TALE: NOT A PRETTY F!GHT BUT A NECESSARY ONE
In this country, brilliance is not enough when you are a woman. Your degree, certificates, experience and sweat… all mean nothing the moment a man decides he wants more from you than your mind.
Nobody teaches you, growing up. You only hear: “Work hard.”
“Be the best.”
“Be humble.”
They never warn you that when you finally reach the door of opportunity, a man will sit behind it asking;
“How badly do you want it?”
“What are you willing to give?”
You pass all the tests and shine so brightly, even the blind can see you.
Yet, one man with a fat belly and a fatter ego decides the price of your opportunity is the dignity between your legs.😩
You refuse politely and become blacklisted in rooms where your name once shined.
You become the proud one.
The arrog@nt one who doesn’t know how the game is played.😏
You know nothing about this fight if you have never stood alone without a rich father’s influence, without a mother’s connections, without a family name to open doors for you.
Many of you mocking her today are not standing on your own feet.
You are carried on the tired shoulders of parents who bleed in silence to keep you afloat.
You grew up in houses where your dreams were sponsored.
You have never had to earn your own place at the table.
That is why you scoff at the pain you do not understand.🥹
A lot of you think life is fair because your road was cleared before you ever started crawling.
So when a woman who has had to build her ladder from dust with empty pocket, begins to climb, you cannot see the broken nails in her fingers.
You cannot smell the bl00d she bur!€d just to survive another day.
You cannot understand what it means to walk into a room knowing nobody there believes you deserve to stand, let alone speak.🗣️
When you mock a woman who refuses to open her legs for survival, you are mocking your own daughters, sisters, future wives and the dream of that girl child.
Today it is Distinguished Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan.
Tomorrow, it could be the daughter you love more than life itself.🤷🏼♀️
If you think Natasha’s battle is just about politics or herself, you have missed the whole point.
She is fighting for all the women who want their names to open doors and not their bodies.
For the daughters who are still learning to dream, for the women whose degrees and brilliance are reduced to “Who be her papa?”
She is fighting a system built to break women who know their right and stand on it.
Oh, it stings because she refused to play by their dirty rules.🥴
A society that destroys its strongest women is building its own coffin.
When you silence women like Sen. Natasha, you silence hope for women who come after her.
You silence the dream that a woman can stand on merit and not sleep her way up there.
I don’t stand with Natasha because she pays me. She doesn’t and I seek no favour from her.
I stand with her because I know the hell we have to cross just to have a voice.
I know what it is to be told, “You know the right thing to do.”🙄
I stand with her because I know what it is to have your competence overlooked for your body parts.
I know what it is to lose an opportunity you earned with your sweat, just because you refused to pay the price with your body.😢
There is no power greater than a woman who knows her worth and refuses to rent it out cheaply.✊
Women clapping today while men pull another woman down, do remember:
You are watering the TREE that will Hang your own Dreams tomorrow.
When a woman wins by merit, she defeats a system that says her gender is a cur$e.
She cracks a wall that has stood against us for centuries.
To those who think they can crush women like Natasha with in$u|ts and bl@ckm@!l:
You are not powerful enough. You are only predictable and predictable men are the easiest to defeat.
Call her stubborn, proud or anything you like, but you will still call her unstoppable in the end.
The truth is like water:
You can spill it, soil it and spit on it, but you cannot k!\\ it.
One day, those who mocked her will have to clap. When that day comes, they will pretend they always believed in her.
When a woman rises with her dignity intact, she lifts the soul of a nation with her.👌
I am ILUO DePOET, and my ink is just!✍🏻