27/7/23

When we released our initial statement, we hoped that it would spur Precious into taking accountability and owning up to her actions. However, from her last two updates, it is unfortunately clear that she has no intentions of doing so.

We first noticed the discrepancies in Precious’ story to us individually about the BMT, so one of us approached her in order to understand the situation, and ultimately advised her to share an update publicly. Precious Gaza agreed to do so immediately, and later made a post on Instagram (we cannot attach screenshots from the Instagram post because we cannot view Precious’ profile) simply saying she was awaiting visa approval.

As this was not the detailed update that we had agreed she would share, we encouraged Precious to do another post that had all the necessary updates about the BMT.

However, weeks passed without that happening, so we reached out yet again, concerned. It was around this time that we got to know Precious had been active on TikTok, making daily fundraising posts there, so we decided to bring everything up with her on our group chat.

Precious Gaza then apologized for ghosting (saying nothing about her activities on TikTok or why she blocked us there), and also told us she had been diagnosed with another chronic disease. To respect her privacy, we aren’t naming the illness.

Naturally, we were all concerned. As much as we were concerned for our friend, the history of her not being completely honest with us made it necessary for us to ask what type it was, and also to see a doctor’s report. To this, Precious responded by telling us we weren’t being supportive and she was going to exit the group; which she did immediately. It was at this point we decided to have a meeting at her house. At Precious’ house, she told us her dad was with the doctor’s report of her recently diagnosed chronic illness, and that she had spent most of the BMT naira donations (15 million naira) on drugs. She also told us she had been battling anxiety and insomnia.

After the meeting that day, it was agreed that Precious would go to the bank with her dad to stop/limit her access to the remaining funds, and also go to rehab/therapy.

Days later, she sent us a message that she was now at the rehab center, and would not be able to communicate.

(We had already begun to suspect Precious of dishonesty, so we doubted the picture she sent was actually taken by her. After extensive searches, we found out TODAY (27/7/23) that she’d lifted the image off Google.)