My husband tricked me into marriage just to facilitate his trip to the UK, now I

There has been an impressive in flow of reactions to the unfortunate tale of a failed relationship between Shola and his wife. The reactions are being withheld until readers have seen the concluding part of the story. The lady in the eye of the storm continues her story from where she stopped last Saturday.

We left my parents’ place and went back to Ibadan, but I knew that I was faced with a bleak future with Shola, seeing that he refused to give my parents any assurance of a change of heart. In 2005, things grew from bad to worse, and as a result, I became very sick because my mind was never at rest.

In spite of my condition, there was no care or love from the father of the child I was carrying in my womb. I had to struggle through the discomfort of the first trimester of pregnancy. The burden of a first time pregnancy, in addition to constant quarrels with Shola was too much for me. When I became very sick, I had to travel to Lagos to see the family doctor that attends to my parents. I thought that would do me some good since Shola would not bother or even take care of his pregnant wife. I was placed on admission at a Lagos hospital for one week, yet Shola failed to come and see me.

To my greatest bewilderment, by the time I had fully recovered and I got back to Ibadan from Lagos, I found that Shola had changed the locks to the entrance of our apartment, making it impossible for me to get into the house. I had to stay out with a friend until I could have audience with him.

On March 5, 2005, which was a Saturday, I found that Shola had put together all my belongings in the house, including my kitchen wares and taken them as far as to the front of my office building in Ibadan and dumped them there. He thereafter descended on me and tried to bundle me out of the house, but I insisted on not walking away from my matrimonial home. When he saw that I would not leave, he beat me up, I sustained injuries and even bled in my pregnant state.

By Monday morning, the news of how my husband came to dump my things in front of my office and how he beat me was everywhere at my place of work. That caused me serious embarrassment. In fact, it led to my boss eventually asking me to resign my appointment with the bank. Shortly after he threw my personal effects out of his house and I lost my job, I learnt that he had travelled out of the country to the United Kingdom. It then dawn on me that he only deceived me into the marriage because he knew that I was naive. All he needed was to lay his hands on a marriage certificate to facilitate the processing of his visa. This fact was later clear to me because before he left, he had collected the marriage certificate and rings from me. He told me sternly to assume that we never met. So, I was left with no home, no job and no husband.

The impact of this incident was so heavy on me that I almost lost my life. I became very frail because I had been seriously battered. I suffered so much that I was always in and out of hospital. It was heart rending that I almost lost my mind to the experience. I really thank God for the people he used to help me out in the heat of my challenges. With the help of God through my parents who covered me with their blanket of love, and with the assistance of a Christian organisation, I gave birth to a baby boy in Ibadan on July 16, 2005.

Up till this moment, Shola has not returned to me. Nor has his mother or any member of his family deemed it fit to ask after the baby. This is very serious because I no longer have the contact of any member of his family. Shola had delibrately deleted all the numbers of his family members from my telephone before he sent me packing. To his understanding, that would totally cut me off from reaching any member of his family. I only remember that he used to have an uncle who worked with the Central Bank of Nigeria. I think he was a director or so. Some of the things Shola did then appear clearer to me now. Although I learnt that he has returned to Nigeria about three years ago, I still don’t know his whereabouts. I don’t know what went wrong with his desperate trip to the UK, but someone told me that he came back to Nigeria shortly after he left. One of my concerns is that my son will be five years old in July, but he does not know his father. I believe that by now, Shola should have settled down with another wife and maybe with children, but he has refused to come and see his son.

To make a brief diversion, there seemed not to be an end to my challenges. There was another ugly incident that further established my fears about men. It happened that sometime last year, I decided to file for a divorce from my marriage to Shola. I contacted a lawyer that was introduced to me by my neighbour, but he turned out as a fraudulent person. The lawyer asked me to pay half of the total sum that was charged for the case and I did, but he absconded after receiving the part payment. He later sent me a text message saying that he was no longer interested in the case. Meanwhile, he refused to refund my money. That was like an attempt to stop me from getting the divorce and moving ahead in life. I wonder if this is how some lawyers enrich themselves by cheating on prospective clients. I fear men!

To think that he had the liberty to decline on a case because he was no longer interested in it and yet refused to return the money to the client is quite amazing. Since that time, I have learnt to put the fragments of my life together and face the challenges of life with fresh strength and vigour for each day.

Now, to bring my story to a close, two years after my baby was born, I secured another job with a bank, but I lost it again during the recent mass retrenchment in the banking sector. Right now, I am in dire need of another job so that I can take good care of my son and live a truly independent life. I am not really in a good mood. I need help from kind-hearted individuals to get profitably engaged.

This lady desires to get along well again, and she is relying on the readers to make this happen.