Wedding at ‘gunpoint’

Wedding at ‘gunpoint’

We have heard about shotgun wedding which is an instance of a union forced down a man’s throat via pregnancy. But we had never heard about wedding at ‘gunpoint’ until recently when a playboy got his fingers burnt after playing a fast one on his fiancée. 

The guy, who came from a poor background, was jointly sponsored through his university education by his elder brothers following the death of their parents. After graduation, he was lucky to secure a job in one of the new generation banks in Port Harcourt. Along the line, he met and fell in love with a beautiful lady working in an oil company in the same city. This lady is loaded with cash as she earns over a million naira per month from her job. Besides, she is well-mannered and cuts the picture of an ideal wife. After some time, he took the lady home to introduce to his family. His people in the South-east were elated that their brother found the lady of their dreams to marry. They too fell in love with her. They were impressed by her character, her looks and lucrative job. They saw in her the Messiah their family had been waiting for, who would liberate them from poverty. They believed that the lady would help their children to secure scholarships in her company. They dotted on her as they awaited their wedding day.

However, just before they could fix the date, the lady was sent abroad by her company to undergo a 6-month course. And she had to leave immediately, so there was no time to rush their wedding. But they both came to an agreement that they would get married as soon as she returned. After she left, however, the playboy nature of the guy got the better part of him and he decided to play a fast one. He met a female youth corper and had what he thought was a fling with her. But alas, the lady handed him a pregnancy. Infuriated that this corper was trying to ruin his life, he denied the pregnancy and told the corper to go to hell. Unknown to him, the girl’s uncle is a military officer in the city. She left quietly but returned with her uncle who promptly picked him up and detained him in the barracks for three weeks. During this period, soldiers tortured him on the orders of the corper’s uncle. The torture was to last till he agreed to marry the girl he impregnated. Unable to bear the torture any longer, he eventually owned up and agreed to marry the girl at gunpoint, literally speaking.

His family was disappointed in him for throwing away such a great opportunity to marry a decent and wealthy lady who would have turned their family’s fortune around. In the middle of the drama, his fiancée returned from overseas. When she discovered what had transpired in her absence, she wept uncontrollably, just as the guy’s family did. Thereafter, she severed relations with him. But his family kept in touch with her, hoping she would still be able to help their children in future. She met someone else and got married to him. And her former fiancé’s family sponsored three people to represent them at the wedding.

As for the banker, his family wore sad faces on his wedding day. They attended only because he was their family. And as if losing the lady he loved was not bad enough, the corper he was forced to marry knows nothing about being a good wife. The guy is currently living in misery, complaining to his family members that his wife cannot even boil an egg, not to talk of preparing a decent meal. And his family does not hesitate to throw “it serves you right” at him each time he complains to them about his predicament.