Horologist pays supreme price for forgiveness

Horologist pays supreme price for forgiveness

The two major religions, Christianity and Islam, enjoin their

adherents not to bear grudges, rather they should forgive one another. In a world where everyone is someone’s enemy (or friend), it is so easy to offend people. An Ibadan-based horologist, a Muslim by faith, practiced forgiveness but did not live to learn the lessons of pardoning his trespasser with wisdom.

The horologist had lived in Ghana where he got married and the union was blessed with many children. The family lived happily because the bread winner was good at his watch repairing business and he regularly travelled to neighbouring countries like Togo and Cote d’Ivoire to ship in choice wrist watches and clocks.

Then came the late 60s: the Ghanaian government came up with a harsh immigration law that forced virtually all Nigerians to leave the country. For good measure, the authorities saw to it that no Ghanaian woman married to a Nigerian left the soil with her spouse. The decision to put asunder what God had joined together was premised on the argument that Ghanaian women might become targets of transfer of aggression in their host communities. The Ghanaian government was right. Most Nigerians who were thrown out of the country had lived there for years. Many of them were born there, they built houses, owned choice properties and they were given little time to plot their exit. So, they had to dispose of their assets at give away prices. No doubt, the sight of any Ghanaian woman was bound to generate bad blood.

The most pathetic aspect of the exodus was that many victims of the Nigerians-must-go order got stranded in Lagos because they could not trace their ancestral roots. Majority of them ended their lives as destitute, using the Lagos flyovers as their homes.

The horologist and his family had enough resources to relocate to Ibadan. Being in a new environment, his business began to suffer up to a point that they began to live from hand to mouth. When the living conditions became unbearable, the mother of the house abandoned the family for a greener pasture. The children and their father trudged on until they began to find their feet again but things were not as rosy as they used to be back in Ghana. Meanwhile, the runaway mother had remarried and moved on with her own life but she still maintained close contacts with the children.

The horologist’s kids, having found their feet and even had their homes and families, became concerned about their parents living apart in their old age. They then put in place a reconciliation process. Because the father was so fond of the kids who had been ministering to his needs, it was not so difficult to get the duo back together even though the man was deeply hurt by the woman’s flight from her matrimonial home because hardship had turned the tables against them.

Eventually, the woman reunited with her first husband but danger lurked ahead. The man that the woman got married to did not find the development funny at all. He did everything possible to stop her from taking a second flight from him as she did to her first husband. He pleaded with her and whipped up the sentiment of the two kids that she had for him. At the end of the tug of war, he lost out. Unknown to her and the forgiving horologist, the loser had decided to act like a dog in the manger. If he could not have the horologist’s spouse, then no one else would. So, he laced her with juju.

A couple of days after the woman’s departure, the horologist began to experience some strange feelings anytime he visited the loo… he discharged blood instead of urine. Gradually, he began to dry up. His children rallied round and ferried him from herbalist to herbalist, and spiritualist to spiritualist after science could not locate the cause of his predicament let alone cure the ailment. The horologist’s life clock ticked to a stop a couple of weeks ago. Everybody knew that the horologist was a victim of diabolical attack by the second husband and the kids are swearing to take their pound of flesh despite entreaties from family members to leave vengeance to Allah.