… sends family to uncompleted building
- He sold off our house, abducted my son – Wife
- I only relocated them due to recession – Captain
How could the seemingly innocuous decision by a mother of four to pick up a job to augment the earnings of her husband, who was about to retire from the Nigerian Navy, have incurred the wrath of the man to the extent that she would not only allegedly become his punching bag, but also be ejected from the family house along with her children, and the property allegedly sold off?
old off? This is the puzzling and confusing situation Mrs. Oviguerie Onoberhie and her children have found themselves, after she took up a paid job, some years ago, with a popular foreign airline against the wish of her husband, Captain Diamond Onoberhie, who was recently retired from the Navy.
Curiously, Captain Onoberhie’s wife alleged that her husband had abandoned his family in the past nine years, just because she disobeyed his order not to engage in any paid employment.
On this day, around 5am, my husband led some armed Naval ratings and hoodlums to break into our house while we were still asleep and began to throw all our things out. In the process, I was beaten to the extent that I suffered a dislocation on my waist
The distraught mother of four also alleged that her husband had since abdicated all his responsibilities towards her and the children, as he had long stopped paying their school fees and giving them feeding allowance.
She also accused her husband of allegedly “abducting” his last child from his school in Lagos and keeping him in an unknown location.
The retired Naval officer’s wife had thought that she had paid enough for daring her husband, having allegedly suffered several physical assaults from him, until February 19, this year, when Captain Onoberhie allegedly led some armed Naval ratings and others to the family’s only property at Alagomeji, Yaba, Lagos, to forcibly eject his wife and children from the one-story duplex.
Unfortunately, Mrs. Onoberhie is now paying for her alleged “intransigence” to better the lot of her family with her marriage, which is now on the line.
For now, the mother of four and her children have been forcibly displaced by her husband, who allegedly sold off the family’s only property at Alagomeji and rendered them homeless, as claimed by Mrs. Onoberhie.
Also, the whereabouts of her last son, 10-year-old Dominic, who was a Junior Secondary School 1 student of the Apostolic Faith School, Anthony Village, Lagos, has yet to be ascertained.
Explaining her family’s ordeal to The Point, Mrs. Onoberhie alleged that the trouble that led to the current situation began when she got a job with an airline company against her husband’s will.
She said, “I have been married to my husband, Navy Captain Diamond Onoberhie, for the past 21 years.
When things were not going on fine in the family, I decided to pick up a job against my husband’s will, and he decided to punish me for that, by leaving me with all the financial responsibility in the family.
“On countless occasions, I was beaten mercilessly at the slightest provocation in the house. This year will make it the 9th year that he has not consistently provided feeding money or paid our children’s school fees.”
Speaking on how she was allegedly battered recently by her husband in the school premises of their last child, Mrs. Oviguerie said, “After registering our last son, Dominic, who is 10 years old, in Apostolic Faith Secondary School, Anthony Village, one day I was refused access to him by the principal of the school, Mr. Amidu, who said he acted on my husband’s instruction. Immediately, I called my husband and he said he could do whatever he liked. All efforts to retrieve my son from him were frustrated, despite the petitions sent to the police and Naval authorities.
“Later, I was invited by the School Chaplain, Rev. Ayo Adeyemo, on a vacation day so that I could go with him to know my son’s whereabouts. But I went through hell in my husband’s hand on that day. I did exactly that and my husband got angry. He forcibly pulled me out of his car and started beating me right there in the car park of the school. I started scream ing and that attracted other parents, school authorities and security operatives. By then, I was bleeding and I begged Rev Ayo Adeyemo to call the police, but he refused. I held onto my son at this point and then the school authorities forcibly took my son from me and kept him in a building, where they hid him from me. Later, they brought him out and forced my son into my husband’s car and his orderly, OS Ejembi, drove off.”
She added, “I reported the case at Anthony Village Police Station, where they asked me to go and treat myself and return with a medical report. According to them, they called my husband but he refused to show up, saying the police was too small to call him and so the case was transferred to the Police Command Headquarters, Ikeja, and nothing was still done.
“I was left with no choice but to call domestic violence helpline, which took the matter up and petitioned the Commissioner of Police for not doing anything. The commissioner responded and told the Area F Command to take the matter up. My husband still didn’t show up after he was invited. So, again, the case was transferred to Panti extension at Hogan Bassey Street, and till date, nothing has been done.”
She further claimed that since her husband forcibly took her son away, she had yet to know his whereabouts, as she had been denied access to him, even on the phone.
On how she and her children were ejected from the family’s property, Mrs. Onoberhie alleged that her husband led some armed personnel of the Nigerian Navy, aided by some hoodlums to the family’s residence at 20, Tokunbo Street, Alagomeji, Yaba, Lagos, on February 19, to execute their ejection from the property.
She narrated, “On this day, around 5am, my husband led some armed Naval ratings and hoodlums to break into our house, while we were still asleep and began to throw all our things out. In the process, I was beaten to the extent that I suffered a dislocation on my waist.
“He used armed Naval men to monitor the removal of our things and dumped them in an uncompleted rented apartment in Badagry. He did all this with the help of some of his brothers, too, who came with him to chase us out. I called the police at Adekunle and the RRS team, but they could not do anything, when they saw the presence of the armed men of the Nigerian Navy.”
As a result of the incident, during which Mrs. Onoberhie was allegedly manhandled, she was admitted in a hospital for two weeks.
Authorities of the Apostolic Faith School have, however, denied any complicity in the matter, saying that it was a domestic issue, which even the police, when invited, declined to dabble into.
The school’s chaplain, Rev. Adeyemo, told The Point that Captain Onoberhie left an instruction that the school authorities should no longer allow his wife to go away with his son whenever she visited him in school.
He added that, following the disagreement between the parents of the 10-year-old’s student, the school’s legal adviser had advised that the boy should not be allowed to return as a student except he came with a legal note from his parents’ lawyer and the state government.
hie’s daughter, Marilyn, said that she and her siblings had disowned their father over the alleged ill-treatment he had been giving them and their mother.
She alleged that Captain Onoberhie had refused to cater for the family for many years.
“I personally stopped talking to him for more than three years now. My dad wanted my mummy to stop work and this was the beginning of the entire problem in our family. He has forcibly taken my younger brother from us for months now, and we don’t know his whereabouts. We can’t even talk to him to know if he is alive. He also ejected our mummy from the house and dumped her in an uncompleted building in Badagry. As I am talking to you, we don’t have a house to go to if we leave school. The whole thing is just unfortunate,” she said.
Insinuating that her father might possibly be under some negative spiritual influence, Marilyn said, “Our father used to be a nice man until he woke up one day and turned to a monster. I could recollect that my dad had ever been nice to the family, actually.”
The first son of the family, Damien Onoberhie, accused his father of allegedly ill-treating his mother for picking up a job to cater for her children.
He also explained that his mother was earlier compelled to resign from her former place of work, only for his father to neglect her. The situation, according to him, made her to look for another job to enable her to take care of her children.
“For a long time, she has been neglected as a woman, as a wife. It’s not just right; you can’t just throw your family out of the house over what is not. I just know it’s not nice, especially to take a 10-year-old boy away from his mother. This is our daddy that could not set our mummy up in business, when she decided to stop the work he asked her not to do. I wonder, if she didn’t work, how would she sponsor our education? I just feel the law should do something about it,” Damien lamented.
When contacted on the phone, Captain Onoberhie denied all the allegations levelled against him by his wife.
He said, “All she’s going about saying are far from the truth. Is it possible I abduct my own son? I am his father; so, how will I abduct him from his school? Of course, being a father, I can go to his school to take him. So, I don’t see any big issue in all that.
“I am now a retired Naval officer, and as a result of this fact and the recession in the country, I decided to relocate to an apartment that I can afford in Badagry, and I don’t see this as an issue.”
The Director of the Community Women’s Rights Foundation, an advocacy centre in Lagos, Alhaji Lateef Akinborode, called for justice in the case of Mrs. Onoberhie and her 10-year-old son, allegedly abducted by her husband.
“It is a total violation of the child’s rights and domestic violence. We are currently on the case and we will ensure justice prevails,” Akinborode said.
aid. The Lagos State Police Public Relations Officer, ASP Olarinde Famous Cole, could not be reached as at press time.
