I met my first husband- Bode, while in the college in the U.S. He was from a less-privileged background than I was and was on scholarship. Eventually, we fell in love and we started living together. Most of my friends didn’t like the fact that he was living off me and they labelled him an opportunist but I was too much in love to listen to them and besides he was a good man who treated me with respect and gave me all the love I desired. I was experiencing what I never saw my mother experiencing. My father was a wealthy man and though he was a great family man, he never treated my mother with respect. In fact, I think he treated her in a derogatory manner. She was educated to a certain extent, but my father was of a higher pedigree and a high court judge. When I got to the U.S. and became more enlightened, I made up my mind not to allow any man “look down on me.” I married my sweetheart – Bode.
Bode was much too laid back and I think he took my enterprising nature and wealthy background for granted and as such, I was the one who earned the most and took care of the family while he was always changing jobs and never earned enough. I loved him and I respected him, you would never know I was the bread-winner. We have a beautiful daughter, Morenikeji, whom I spoilt silly from birth and vowed to give the best things in life. When we relocated back to Nigeria, Bode could not get a stable good job while my late father got me a plum job and I rose through the ranks. Over the years, our marriage suffered due to Bode’s inferiority complex and before long, he started accusing me falsely of infidelity and battering me at every given opportunity – my father never did that to my mother. I lost interest in him completely.
In the course of Bode’s madness, I met Ropo who was like the soothing balm of Gilead. I wanted to be with him forever because there was this blissful calm always. He was ten years older but not wealthy, in fact, he had nothing as he also just came back from the U.S. where he had been studying all the while but I fiercely admired him for his intellectual achievement. Meanwhile, I was surrounded by money bags breathing down my neck, asking for my hand in marriage and almost offering me the Central Bank but I was never moved. Ropo proposed to me and encouraged me to divorce Bode and I did so without wasting time. When I took Ropo to my late father as the man I wanted to cleave with, he hissed on setting eyes on Ropo and walked out on us. He never allowed him pay my dowry till he died.
Ropo and I started living together and when I was four months pregnant, I discovered he had nine children from three different women. He gave a funny explanation and dispelled my fears. He couldn’t be bothered about their welfare or upbringing. This scared me about him. Out of pity, I began shouldering his responsibility by paying their school fees and at the same time, gave him most of my earnings to set up joint businesses and buy properties in our names. A life of not having enough set in. When Morenikeji gained admission into Oxford University, I had to sell some of my inheritance from my father’s estate.
One day, my second child for Ropo found a charm in form of a horn wrapped in a red clothe and screamed in fear. I untied it and discovered that my name and those of some heads of parastatals Ropo consulted for were written in it. When I confronted him about it when he returned home that night, he flew into a rage and left the house. Eventually, he relocated to Abuja and I heard he married a young lady at the registry while still having a subsisting marriage which we contracted in the church. By this time, I had given him all my retirement benefits for yet another project and I was left with nothing. He never bothered about my children’s welfare. He abandoned us in Lagos and filed for dissolution of our marriage. It then dawned on me that I had become like the other women who had children for him whom I heard he milked and abandoned. My world came crashing into smithereens.
When we got to court, he tendered our property documents bearing only his name, while those I have bear both our names. Now, he’s threatening to throw me out of the house.
Since Bode, my first husband (now re-married), got a juicy political appointment, he was able to win Morenikeji to his side. She began avoiding me in the past one year and would not return my calls. Here is a child I gave my all to and reprimanded several times for disregarding her father. I heard she came to Lagos early this year for her wedding introduction and I felt it couldn’t be true. Now, my only daughter is getting married in a big society wedding in December and her father has forbidden me to play my role as the bride’s mother and restricted me to attend as a mere guest. In fact, the invitation card carries his name and his new wife’s first name. Even my daughter has not brought her husband to me. Where did I go wrong? How could this happen to me? Can someone please wake me up from this horrible nightmare?
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