TRUE-LIFE STORIES WITH FUNMILOLA SOTUMINU
WHEN the matron began her confession at the police station, my wife became restless. She was shouting, saying that the matron was the one who pushed her to the spiritualist.
She was shouting so loud that the officers had to beat her a little so that everyone could hear what the matron had to say.
The matron said she and my wife were mates at the nursing school and had been close since then. She narrated how my wife had come to meet her immediately after getting a job in our hospital to tell her how handsome the owner of the hospital was; and that as good looking as the owner was, he was not married yet.
A month later, the matron said my wife came back and said she wanted to get married to me by all means, that she (the matron) should help her seek spiritual help in that regard, promising to compensate her for her efforts if she could get what she wanted.
That was how the matron took my wife to meet this spiritualist, who also eventually turned her secret lover.
I guess her juju met at the same point with my aunt’s nagging as I began to notice something beyond the ordinary in her and decided to date her. She was the very first woman I dated in my life.
How was I to know that she was a dangerous serpent? According to the matron, her brother promised them that I would worship her so long as she was able to convince me to marry her without delay.
When we eventually got married, the matron said they were immediately advised to bury an object in the hospital premises so that my wife would always have the last say in all matters concerning the hospital.
I did not understand what that meant to her. But I was shocked when she narrated how they had connived to kill the nurse that died a few weeks before then.
The matron said when my wife was on bed rest, during her pregnancy, she was not always at ease with the fact that I spent more time with the late nurse.
That was the reason the matron was planted to continue to nurture the object they had planted in my wife’s office. But the matron said I was getting too close for comfort with the other nurse and everyone knew that she was far more brilliant and more beautiful than my wife.
On the day I got home and my wife accused me of having spent more than one hour with this particular nurse in my office, the matron said that she was the one who reported to my wife; and that the late nurse did not also help matters, because when she came out of my office and she (the matron) confronted her, she simply gave her a bad look and went back to her station.
The matron said it was at that point they all resolved to “take care” of her. At this juncture, my wife cut in, saying that she only said she should be inflicted with an ailment that would not allow her go to work; that no one told her that she would eventually die.
But I knew she was saying trash because she had told me that the nurse would die during one of her shouting episodes over the matter. It was now about 4am the next morning, and none of us was feeling sleepy.
The senior officer asked me if he should send some people to go with the three criminals to the hospital to exhume whatever it was they had planted there; but my aunt thought differently.
She said she did not want me to be an object of ridicule in the office, that we would eventually go, but with pastors and plain-clothed officers, to ascertain the truth. But we had just listened to half of the story.
The officers beat them black and blue and said they would end up being killed. At that point, the spiritualist began to plead on behalf of his sister, the matron, saying that if we promised to set them free, he would remove the curse placed on me and would never go back to evil.
The story, however, changed when he said if we continued to waste time, I might also die within the next few days; that his sister had misused the charm that led to the nurse’s illness and eventual death.
That, according to him, was the reason my daughter was afflicted with the strange illness. He said he had to sleep with my wife to fortify her against the consequence of the nurse’s death because her people had taken certain strong spiritual steps that could wipe out the entire lineage of anyone that had a hand in her death.
Everything he was saying was hard to believe. I only watched things like that in Nigerian movies. Could it be real? They could not all be in front of law enforcement agents and be talking nonsense, knowing the implications.
So, at about 5am, I went with a plain-clothed detective and the matron to the hospital. To my surprise, she just went into my wife’s office, and used a knife to dig a small portion of the concrete that was only sand, and brought out a big padlock and two bottle gourds.
The officer told her to tie them in her wrapper and we went back to the police station. At the police station, I was told my wife confessed, when we left, that she had fed me with an evil concoction, which would make me resent all other women and do her wish all the time; and that the danger in it was that I must sleep with her at least three times in six months.
The spiritualist also narrated how he had told my wife that since he had slept with her, she must not meet any other man again, including me, her husband.
So, they had planned that when she returned home from Jebba, she would cause trouble up to the Point where we would not be able to meet for that duration of time. They had also mapped out plans to inherit the hospital and gradually begin to live together after I must have passed on, God forbid.
It was such a messy case. My aunt and her husband had to call in prayer warriors from many places to intervene. My aunt’s husband insisted that we should set the three of them (the spiritualist, my wife and the matron) free; that we should not open any official case file.
He said God had severed the tie between us Himself with the death of the baby. Her people tried to beg, but we threatened them with court action and they shamefully took their daughter away.
I fell ill for about six months, but I am a living testimony of the power of the Almighty God. My aunt left me for about one year after I recovered. But she has started to disturb me about a wife again.
She said I must take another wife, and that this time, God would choose for me. However, with my childhood experience of life in my late father’s house, and the horror movie with my devil ex-wife, I may just end up adopting children to carry on with my name.
(Concluded)
