Stunned and unsure if it was not a case of a mistaken identity, she asked them what her offence was. Rather than give her a straight answer, the policewoman allegedly slapped her, unmindful of the fact that she was pregnant.
Vivian burst into tears but this did not deter the police team from forcing her into a waiting SUV. All the while, the cops ignored her questions. As she was being forced into the SUV, she sighted her step-father, Mr. Victor Oboho, and her mother, Mrs. Dele Oboho. Recalling her nasty experience in an interview with Sunday Telegraph, she said: “I realised that it was my mother and step-father that invited the police. As they dragged me to Elemoro Police Station, Ajah, Lagos, I pleaded that someone should call my husband.
It was at the police station that they started insulting and cursing me. They said I wasn’t married; that my marriage was not recognised. “But I know that I married my husband in a court. I wedded at the registry in Ibeju Lekki. My step-father said he had chosen a husband for me. The man is a medical doctor and currently waiting for me in the United States. The police said they would give me drugs to terminate the pregnancy. They threatened me endlessly. My parents hit me several times. They said my husband abducted me.”
Within a few hours of her getting to the police station, her husband, Mr. Kenneth Ikpa, also appeared, asking for his wife. He also demanded to know what she had done to warrant being arrested. “Rather than explain to me why they arrested my wife, the police pounced on me. They slapped me repeatedly from different directions. I started bleeding from my ear. Even up till now, I still can’t hear properly,” he said.
Though the police said Kenneth abducted Vivian, both of them were detained until nightfall. Vivian, who got married in 2013 when she was 25, said: “My step-father gave the police N25, 000 to arrest and torture us. I knew about the money because he said that I made him to spend N25, 000 at the police station.” Vivian said that she didn’t understand why her parents refused to acknowledge and accept her marriage.
She was even more shocked at her mother’s position on the issue since she was present at the court wedding and appeared to have given her support and approval. The four-month pregnant mother of a year-old child added that she didn’t understand what the fuss was all about, since her mother, together with the children she had for Victor, forced her to leave home.
Vivian said she sleepy in the open for close to three months, in the rain or under the sun. She said nobody cared whether she lived or died, adding that she would have remained homeless for a long time if not for the intervention of a Good Samaritan woman, who took her under her roof. The woman, Mrs. Ajakaiye Tawa, didn’t only offer the lady shelter, but gave her food and clothing, until she found another comforter in her husband, Kenneth. Fuming, Vivian said: “I don’t know what they want from me now! All I want is for them to leave us alone. I’m legally married. My husband is my life. He may be a pauper, but I don’t care. I love and want him just the way he is. When nobody wanted me, my husband did.”
…In the beginning
According to Vivian, the traumatic time she has been going through in the hands of her mother didn’t just start because of her marriage. She alleged that her mother hated her, describing it as a case of transferred aggression by her mother against her father. She said she grew up to realise she was living with her maternal grandmother in Ibadan, noting that she had neither seen nor met her father.
When she asked for her father, her mother told her that he was dead. When she asked for his relations, she was given the silent treatment. “My mother would curse me whenever she got angry. She said that my father had many wives and that was why, when she got pregnant with me, she had to leave him,” Vivian said. She said that even after her mother got married to her step-father and started having children, they left her with her grandmother. When she was 12, her mother suddenly came to Ibadan to pick her.
“She told me that my step-father wanted his kids and me to grow up together. That was how I started living with them. Her husband was residing in Italy, but later moved to the United States.” By the time Vivian came into Victor’s home, there were already three children from the marriage, while a fourth one came along later. Vivian, who spoke from Mrs. Ajakaiye’s home at Molete Ajah, said: “My mother loves my step siblings more than me. Sometimes, when she’s angry, she would hit my head against the wall. She calls me, ‘house borrower.’ By this, she meant that the home I was living in didn’t belong to me, but to her other kids.
I feel she’s taking her anger against my father out on me.” Recalling precisely what led to her leaving her parents’ home for the streets, Vivian said it had to do with her kid sister called Michelle Eboho. Vivian’s aim was to go to university, but she had to assist her mother in her restaurant business at Crown Estate. She said that many of the workers left over salary issue and the business eventually folded up.
Sick and tired of staying at home, Vivian joined a free computer training programme in the area, run by people offering training to indigent students. She, however, eventually got her chance go to a higher institution. But this opportunity came only because it was time for Michelle to gain admission to a higher institution.
Thus, both ladies attended National Open University of Nigeria, where Michelle studied Law, while Vivian took Computer Science. Soon it was time for final examinations. After their final papers, Vivian said they wanted to go home, but there wasn’t enough money with them. They decided to stay with one of Vivian’s male course mates and the next morning, they sourced for fund and went home to Ajah. A few weeks later, Michelle discovered she was pregnant. She told their mother. Vivian said she was blamed for the pregnancy. She recalled: “Michelle told our mother that I connived with boys to get her drunk and raped. I didn’t even know anything happened that day in that house.
She didn’t even tell me anything. I was in the kitchen one day when she just dashed in and slapped me. She attempted to use glassware to harm me. “I ran out and alerted my mother’s brother. By the time my uncle came with me, we discovered Michelle had gathered all my clothes, certificates and other items and set them on fire. My mother and Michelle started threatening to kill me. My mother said she didn’t want to see me in the house either dead or alive.”
Petrified that they might carry out their threats, the lady said she bolted from home. She located some Ghanaian friends and started staying with them, but her mother located her and allegedly threatened them. She said she left the place to avoid causing further problem for her friends who were already being threatened with the police. Vivian said that the only time she went to the Ghanaians’ home was to have her bath.
Good Samaritan’s intervention Vivian had been sleeping on the streets for three months when Ajakaiye, who was returning from a party one night, noticed a bundle in front of her shop. She initially didn’t know it was a human being until the bundle moved. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, it assumed a female form.
Ajakaiye drew nearer and woke her up.
“I asked her why she was sleeping outside. She said her mother wanted to kill her. She looked dirty and haggard. Anything could happen to her out there.
The following day, I called people nearby and told them about the lady I saw sleeping outside my shop,” she said. At night, some residents waited to sight the strange lady. When darkness had fallen, the lady shuffled to the place and prepared to sleep. The people all came out and started interrogating her. Kenneth said: “I looked at her face closely and realised that I had seen that face before.
I and some of my colleagues used to go to their restaurant at Crown Estate to eat. I knew her mother.” Vivian, weeping in a heartbroken way, poured out her heart to the strangers. Ajakaiye said: “Kenneth instructed me to start giving the lady anything she needed as a source of nourishment from my shop. He said he would pay. I took her into my home and took care of her.”
In the morning, Kenneth, with his younger brother went to see Dele, whose husband was outside the country when all these were happening. They tried to reason with her, begging her to take Vivian back into her home, but the woman allegedly refused. Ajakaiye said: “When Kenneth and his brother failed, I went with Vivian. I thought as an elderly woman, her mother would listen to me, but she didn’t.
She said she didn’t want to see Vivian. I have kids living overseas and I know that strangers must have assisted them in one way or another over there. It was my time to help somebody.
“Vivian was frustrated and I was afraid of what she could do to herself. I went to report the matter to the Baale in our area. That was how Vivian started living with me.” Wearing a frown, Vivian interjected: “When Mama took me to my mother, she said I maltreated her kids. She refused the reconciliation move. My stepfather even later called that I should go back home.
But the children ganged up and threw my things out. My mother was there and did nothing. I made up my mind that I’ll never go back to that house!” Vivian explained that not only was Kenneth seeing to her feeding, but he gave her money to get some new clothes. He also asked her to go in search of a teaching job, which had become her career before she left home.
What started as an innocent friendship blossomed into a full-blown affair of the heart and body and soon Kenneth and Vivian were dating. Ajakaiye recalls: “I was at home one day when Vivian came to tell that she was pregnant. I asked her the person responsible for the pregnancy; she replied that it was Kenneth. I said okay, he has an apartment, go and meet him.”
Vivian said she had gone to her mother’s brother, Shittu, to alert him about the pregnancy. She said Shittu took her to her mother. “In the presence of my mother, my uncle asked me if I would marry Kenneth and I said ‘yes.’ My mother called her husband, who directed that we should go and meet his elder brother at Akute, Ogun State,” Vivian said.
Vivian said that when her mother heard of the pregnancy, they agreed that the couple should go and meet Victor’s elder brother, Mr. Friday Eyo, at Akute. Eyo acted on behalf of Victor and Kenneth’s people were asked to bring the necessary items needed for a formal introduction. They did, according to Vivian. “We bought necessary things for the introduction. We went to Akute twice. We bought drinks, goats, yams and money. We carried things there twice.
The second time, they said it was insulting, that we didn’t buy a George wrapper which would be used to tie the goat we bought. They collected money for the wrapper from us,” Ajakaiye said. Victor was further said to have directed that the couple should also have a court wedding. On the day of the wedding, Eyo, Dele and other witnesses went to the registry with the couple.
The couple thought everything was stamped and sealed until Victor suddenly returned from USA this year, and began kicking against the union. Victor and Dele first arrested Ajakaiye on April 1, and used her to track Vivian down.
Ajakaiye said she escaped being taking to the police station after she told them that she needed to answer the call of nature and bolted away. On April 10, our correspondent visited the home of Vivian’s parents, also at Ajah but they were not available. A call card was given to one of their daughters, but the couple didn’t call Sunday Telegraph.
A few days later, Our correspondent called Dele to get her own side of the story but the woman insisted that it was not a a matter for discussion on the telephone. She urged the journalist to book an appointment to see her. After the April 11 governorship election, Sunday Telegraph called her to book the appointment, but the woman said she wasn’t interested in the issue any more. She said: “My sister, I’m not in a good mood at all! They have written a petition against me.
Didn’t they tell you that they wrote a petition against me? They are supposed to have let you know about the petition. The husband and wife wrote a petition against me, so you should remove your hands from the matter. I’m not interested in their matter. I’m the one that gave birth to my daughter.”
No comments:
Post a Comment