Min. Of Finance Director TajudeenAdenekan’s Wife Talks To Global News – Says, My husband collects my bath water for rituals
We featured in our previous edition how he divorced his wife for having female children and the actions he took in the process. In this interview we were able to track the wife down and she poured out her heart on the incident and explained her ordeal in the house of the man and the hardship she’s been facing in catering for the welfare of the five children who were chased out with her by the director. Excerpts…
Can you recount what really happened between you and your ex-husband that led to the divorce after 12 years of marriage?
The problem started years back when I was about delivering my second child. He returned from Abuja where he was based and I discovered he started coming home dead drunk. On many occasions people would help me bring him home. It was usually embarrassing and I kept imploring him to stop this only for him to tell me I was too young to advise him; his family also joined in talking to him all to no avail and he later graduated to moving around with different kinds of ladies. He would come home with all sorts of condoms that he was not using on me and whenever I questioned him he would say he could not afford to throw them away without using them as that would amount to wastefulness. Friends and family members tried to talk him out of his new habits but to no avail…
(cut in) And you did not take any steps whilst all these were happening?
His family begged me not to go since I had children for him, it later turned to a situation where people started withdrawing their female children from coming near me for fear that my husband, who had then become more notorious with women, might sleep with them. The shame brought about by his acts severally led to quarrels between us that his family members chastised him about the way he treated me. I later accepted my fate with the hope he would change as time goes on.
What do you think warranted the way he was treating you?
I met him when he was nobody. Though working in Abuja then, he used to come to our place to repair his car which he used for commercial purpose (‘kabukabu’) to support himself. Though he had been married before, the marriage that lasted for 17 years with no child had packed up before we met and I have never met the woman. It was under two years after I got married to him that he got all he has now. His family members were even saying my marriage to him turned around his fortunes and along the line, I started seeing strange things, like shadowlike forms entering the house and pressing my neck even while I was not asleep in the. It was during this period that he returned home saying he did not want me dead as he was suspecting that his ex-wife might be having something to do with the strange occurrences happening around us, having seen that we were moving up, in contrast to when they were married. In order not to lose me he consulted spiritualists who he claimed gave him a soap with which I was to take my bath by 1 a. m. at junctions, but he said since he knew I would be afraid to go out at that time of the night he had demanded to know if he could help me by taking the water with which I take my bathe out to junction for me after I take the bathe in a bucket. In obedience to his instructions I did so for seven days; he took my bathe water away to where I did not know. He also returned one other day to say that he dreamt I ran mad but that he had done his spiritual consultation again and they asked him to bring the headscarf I used frequently. When I gave him the scarf he asked me to use it regularly for some more days after which he took it away…
(cuts in) While he was doing all these so-call rituals to preserve your life, has there been any improvement in the situation?
No, the situation then became worse and that is the reason I joined Mountain of Fire Ministries even though I’m a Moslem. It was there they told me that my husband was behind my problem. I asked him what was really going on, that they said the person responsible for the problem was somebody close to me. When the problem persisted the church asked me to have some prayer programme in the church after which they told me my husband buried something where I must but pass on daily basis, but before that he had buried something at the entrance of the house which he told me was a charm to ward off thieves. His mother also corroborated this saying I should be watering it every day. One day when one of my children urinated on the rug, I remove the rug to mop the floor only for me to see that he had dug the entrance to my room and re-plastered it. The whole thing aroused my curiosity that while he was around I called a bricklayer and I told him I was going to remove the charms as I had not been watering the charms meant for thieves which as I told him might be responsible for the struggle against shadows in the house. He gave the bricklayer N200 to rent digger but while the bricklayer was still procuring the tools, he started threatening me that if I removed those charms he’s going to deal with me. When the charms were eventually removed the way he was shouting and doing things were embarrassing. Before we could even remove them he summoned his mother and other members of his family to report that I wanted to kill him. The next thing I knew was that he applied for divorce at the Igando Customary Court last year and the court has since separated us…
Is it true that the court only asked him to pay you N100,000 on the judgment?
Yes, the court asked him to pay me N100,000 and that he should be paying N10,000 every week after that but in the judgment which was eventually procured by my lawyers as the court clerk had made it very difficult for us to have the judgment so that the period of appeal would have lapsed, the weekly N10,000 stipend was even omitted…
(Cuts in) Does that mean you are not satisfied with the judgment?
Yes and we have filed our appeal at the Ikeja High Court and the case will open on the 7th of May.
How have you been taking care of your children?
It has not been that easy but I can say I’m used to it as he hardly pays their school fees even before now because they are all girls, he usually says he will not reap from any labour he might have put in on the children, he has said it several times in the presence of his family but his mother usually quarrels with him over such statement and because of his belief that the children will not be of benefit to him he has not been paying their school fees.
But he claimed you took his children out of school and that he’s taking adequate care of them, one of which he said is attending the Command Secondary School.
That is a lie. I can give you the number of their female proprietor. He said he can’t pay the school fees of children that won’t be of benefit to him and the one attending Command was because he was sometime ago the one to audit the account of those people and in the process talked to the commandant about bringing his child which was accepted and that is the reason she’s attended Command. He had before that time said he’s not paying their school fees and that they should be withdrawn from the school they were attending then to public schools, so his claims are false. How would I take my children away from proper education?
You claimed he owes you, how come?
He does not only owe me small, he owes me big. There was a time when an association my mum belongs acquired land somewhere in Ogun State and I was invited to buy a half plot for myself and I informed my husband and he convinced me to divert the money I intended to use for the purchase, to start his house in Isheri with the hope that we would move into that after we finish it as his shameful acts in the street had become a thing of embarrassment to me then. It was after he married me that he finished the house he’s living in at the moment; that he bought another one on the street, that he bought a land and developed it in Abuja and all these he did with me investing one thing or the other. That apart, he also refused to let me pack my belongings after the divorce. On returning to move my things I realized he had broken into my room, moved all my personal property to an unknown destination and used another key to lock the door. When I called him that I wanted to come and pack my things he said I didn’t come to his house with them. The case was reported at Area M police station and the commander waded into the issue, he initially denied touching my properties but when the commander ordered the search of the house some of the belongings where discovered before he later confessed to packing the loads, but when he took them to where he said he put them the valuables were missing. He just placed the scraps in the shop I was using while still with him. Some of the property cost millions. Before the crisis, II was planning with my siblings to sell our gold jewelries to buy land and start something on it but those jewelries are also missing now.
His reason for instituting divorce proceedings against you, according to him is that you called his mother a prostitute and his father an idiot, how true are these?
They are all lies, his family are those I will really love to have relationship with in the case of reincarnation but for him I will not want to ever have anything with, because of my issue his family had several quarrels with him, the prostitute issue came about when his mother claimed during one of the period he abused my parents which made me cry, and his mother in response said if he abused my parents again I should call her a prostitute because she had children for three different men while married to four and that is the reason he claimed I called his mother prostitute knowing well that even with the advice I still can’t call her prostitute because she’s a very good mother to me, it was not too long that they settled the grudge between him and his mother who he claimed is backing me. He even boasted that he will deal with his mother later after he’s through with me and since he’s now the breadwinner of the family his friends have to wade in so that he won’t abandon the mother because of me.
I learnt he’s an assistant director now…
I heard the same thing also though he won’t say anything about it. He even sacked his driver because that one did not approve of the way he’s treating me as the driver is a member of the Deeper Life church. He now drives himself; he has also issued quit notice to a tenant for intervening when he was beating me.
You mean he also beats you?
There was a time he started some minutes after 10 pm, when he claimed he would not enjoy his labour over the children and he beat us (me and the children). He later pushed us out and drove out to bring a policeman whom he asked to arrest us; he was planning a case against me in the court but when the policeman saw us he was furious with him and started lambasting him over his actions.
What is your next plan of action?
To get what is rightfully mine from Adenekan so I will be able to take care of my children as everything he has also has my money and other inputs in it; he used to collect money from me from time to time. I also want people to know that if anything happens to me he must be having a hand in it as he has said times without number that he would make sure I die before him, he even said it in the presence of my first child one day and I have reported the case to his parents and my parents as well.
Thank you for your time
Thank you, God will also help you in your different ways.
