A deadly favour

A deadly favour

“Even if we are quarreling, death wish should never be part of it.” This is a common saying among the Yoruba folks. But a friend decided to be more Catholic than the pope as witnessed in Akure town recently. There was this housewife who was having it rough in her marriage. Her husband was a fairly successful trader and the duo had three children from their 10-year-old union. But for unknown reasons, the man was not taking good care of his wife. Philandering became his favourite pastime.

The mother of three, let us call her Mrs.T, was at the butt of the trader’s whip lash on regular basis. Against advice from her parents and relatives, she stuck to her bully spouse like super glue. Her reason for staying put despite the ill-treatment was for the sake of her kids who are still very young. She did not want to raise them as a single parent, more so that the man was fending for the kids at least.

There was this particular confidant of Mrs.T, a widow, who was always around her. Mrs.T would lament bitterly to her about how her spouse was philandering all over the ancient town. Oftentimes, he would return in the dead of the night reeking of alcohol.

And any complaints from her were met with heavy punches. One of those instances of spouse abuse landed her in the hospital where she spent a couple of days. And her bully husband was barely available to take care of her while on admission. Her kids had to be looked after by the widow. At one point when her parents could not bear the ordeal Mrs.T was suffering in her matrimonial home, they stormed the place and ordered her to pack out if she wanted to live. But she was adamant…all for the sake of her children

Then one day, tragedy struck. The bully husband woke up to complain of cramp in his tummy. He was given a local herbal concoction called “agbo”. His condition worsened and he was rushed to a nearby clinic. There he slumped and his revival became complicated. His case had to be taken from one hospital to another where his ailment could not be diagnosed. Eventually, he gave up the ghost.

After the demise of Mrs.T’s spouse, she became inconsolable. Her parents and relatives were perplexed by the way she wept for days and weeks on end, mourning a man that never cared a hoot about her. At a point, the parents of Mrs.T had to evacuate her and the kids to the family house to enable them to keep her under a close watch for fear that she might harm herself in the process of mourning.

One afternoon, Mrs.T’s confidant came to visit her and was pissed off to see that her friend was still deeply in a mourning mood and refusing to eat well. Then she dropped a bombshell. She told her widow friend that she was terribly disappointed in her in view of the extent she had gone to mourn the man she perceived to be devil personified. She revealed that she was the one who killed the “wicked” man for her so as to end the hell the late Mr.T had subjected her to all through their marriage. At first, Mrs.T did not understand what her friend meant by saying that she did her a favor by killing Mr.T. The confidant insisted that she had to kill her friend’s husband through witchcraft so as to put an end to the miserable life she was living.

To the consternation of the confidant, her bereaved friend raised an alarm which attracted everyone around. A motley crowd soon gathered where Mrs.T announced that the killer of her husband just confessed her crime. Slapping her palms in turns, the confidant admitted killing Mr.T, using witchcraft and that she did so to help her friend who could not save herself from the cruel spouse. The police were promptly called in and the matter was charged to court. What is not clear is what verdict the court would return since the Nigerian legal system does not recognize the existence of witchcraft or sorcery.