HI there! Now before you say this is looking like another Nollywood story with parts 1, 2 and 3; let me just tell you, this is not. Blame it on space constraints.
Back to the pandemonium that broke out at the housewarming of our beloved Mummy Innocent of the Women’s Corner crew now based abroad!
So we returned to our friends’ house from our escape place to find that a crowd had gathered in front of the compound next to theirs, blocking off the street. As we drew nearer, we were met with a shocker.
We saw people standing in clusters around a pregnant woman with a deep cut on the head that was being attended to by a nurse and a man with a torn shirt, sitting on the bare floor. He had some fresh wounds all over his body. On a closer look, we realised he was the culprit that disrupted our party earlier. “That’s the guy…that’s the guy that cost us our party Jollof …” Sexy Jola said, excitedly like a Sherlock Holmes that just caught a thief.
“Yes o, na him!” Christabel the fashionista concurred.
“What’s going on here?” asked Ada as we waded through the crowd to get to our friend’s house. My journalistic antenna was now very alert. So, while my friends were looking for the other crew, I was looking for another breaking story. I and Barrister Ada forgot about the Jollof, stepped on littered food, and began asking questions.
We discovered that the woman and man in question are a couple with six children between them. Problem started when the wife returned from the hospital after being admitted for severe malaria and found she was pregnant. And when she refused to abort the pregnancy, her hubby turned it rough and made life unbearable for her. The whole thing escalated to the point where their constant fracas drew the attention of neighbours. The man told them that before the current pregnancy, he begged his wife several times to take family planning measures but she refused. He complained that they could barely feed with six children and now she is pregnant again and it must be aborted.
We were told that all pleas to pacify him, turned on deaf ears, until that morning when they started quarrelling, feeling it was the usual fracas, the neighbours said they paid no heed to them. Only to hear a heartrending scream from their apartment with the woman begging, saying “Please don’t kill me and my children,” repeatedly.
When they rushed in, they found the woman with bloodshot eyes, bleeding on the head; and the man had already put the kids to sleep. The wife said he planned to poison the children, kill her and her unborn baby and then himself. And before they knew what was happening, the man pounced on the woman, pinned her to the wall, attempting to strangle her. After managing to break her free from his grip, the neighbours descended on him with blows and sticks. And when he could no longer take it, he ran out with his neighbours in pursuit. That hot pursuit caused a pandemonium that crashed our party.
It was learnt that the shock of seeing familiar faces running out of that compound into the street alerted passersby. And in a bid to save himself from being lynched by neighbours, he ran into us, sending our party to the gallows, causing chaos that led us to the uncompleted building.
“Why are men wicked,” Ada asked. “Do you know what you’ve done is attempted murder? In fact, Madam (calling the attention of the woman), please give me permission to sue this your husband. Na only woman dey do family planning, what about the men?”
Ada’s statement garnered a lot of backlash from the men, including Tamara and Jola’s husbands, who argued they shouldn’t be blamed for the man’s bad choices.
“Ada, I learnt she refused past attempts at family planning because they almost cost the woman her life. But besides women, there are family planning methods tailored for men. Men too should start exploring them,” entered our own Nurse Cordelia who joined us with her husband. Her statement tore the crowd apart. I nudged our crew to leave.
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