Caring dad dumped by ungrateful kids

Broken homes are a global phenomenon not peculiar to Nigeria. Many social vermin stalking our space are products of failed marriages. There are many factors that fuel busted marriages. These include poverty, unfaithfulness, incompatibility among married couples, interference from external family members, especially mothers-in-law and barrenness.

A husband and wife lived in Osogbo, Osun state, with their four lovely kids. Life was so good to them and they co-habited as one big, happy family. They became the envy of their neighbours. However, about 10 years into their conjugal journey, the tables turned against them. Eventually, the family head lost his plum job. And the entire family had to live off the meager income eked out by the wife. When the man got the entitlements from his work place, he went into a private business, selling motor spare parts.

But his business soon suffered a setback. Unable to cope with the turn of events, the wife gathered her belongings and fled her matrimonial home, leaving their four kids with the husband. So caring and loving was the man that he refused to remarry even when it was obvious that his first marriage had collapsed beyond redemption. He could not imagine a situation where his kids would be subjected to the maltreatment that is normally visited on step-kids by wicked step-mums.

Somewhere along the line, his business picked up again. He sacrificed so much to train the kids – two boys and two girls. Out of her matrimonial home, the woman, obviously unable to cope with the hard times which her man’s job loss had thrown up, abandoned her petty trading and veered into contract business. Endowed with a pretty face, it was not difficult for her to attract patronage from big shots in the Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) in Ibadan.

Her contract business began to boom. She had plenty of cash to play around with, having divorced her man, and she began to visit her kids in their various boarding schools. She asked them to keep her visits secret from their father and lavished them with expensive gifts. She even lied about how their father was planning to marry another woman who would end up maltreating them. Then she began to feed them with the idea of crossing over to her side.

Overwhelmed by the good life their mother was enjoying, the kids began to have a rethink. Until their mother surfaced and began to shower them with gifts, life had not been quite smooth for them at school owing to the limited income their father was earning from his spare parts business. Things became tougher when the eldest boy got admission into the university. By then it had come into the open that their mother had covertly been in constant touch with them. Both parents then agreed that they should team up to train the kids.

As time went by, the kids began to spend more time with their mother at her Ibadan base where she had built a big bungalow and could boast of two choice cars and some pickup vans she uses for her supply business.

Eventually, all the four kids graduated. But before then, they had abandoned their father. By this time, old age had caught up with him. His business has also been seriously affected by his investment in the education of the four kids and he has little to fall back on. Presently, he lives from hand to mouth and depends on neighbourhood kids to run errands for him. Oftentimes, he is rebuffed by the kids who taunt him for being without his own kids. In his old age, the vision of remarrying is dimmed. And his ex-wife has seen to it that the kids do not go visiting their old man.