Avoiding spousal violence

Lately, Nigeria has become a theatre of spousal violence leading to gruesome killings. Couples who were head over heels in love and had romantic peregrinations during courtship are known to turn against one another after marriage. The reasons for this sad state of affairs are many. Among them are failure of the relationship to stand the test of time, resulting in toxicity; love familiarity or fading love due to wear and tear; temptations; mutual suspicion/distrust and poor performance in the other room. In fact, the list is endless.

Just last Tuesday, a senior police officer and his wife brutally ended their lives after having what was described as a domestic altercation in Ado-Ekiti, Ekiti state. The tragedy, which occurred in the Ita-Eku area along Igirigiri Road, sent shockwaves through the community.

The police officer identified as Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) Leramo Caleb, allegedly engaged in a heated argument with his wife, Tate, over accusations of infidelity. The situation later spiraled out of control, leading to a deadly confrontation. It was reported that the wife rendered her man weak, having laced his meal and allegedly cut off his manhood in his effeminate state. However, the enraged officer gathered the remaining strength in him, reached for a machete and hacked his assailant wife to death, after smashing her head and face.

The officer, who was said to be in his second marriage, had got his wife’s man friend arrested after investigations that confirmed their unholy affairs but he was advised to go home and rein in his spouse instead. The man friend was then released. Officer Caleb died of loss of blood from the mortal injury to his subjacent weapon. The question is why did Tate go for her spouse’s manhood as if she was fighting off a rape attack?

About a year ago, precisely on Friday, February 9, 2024, there was a similar tragedy that shocked the people of Akure town in the neighbouring  Ondo state when an oil mogul, named Sesan Adelabu, alias Emirate, caught one of his security guards having a hot session with his wife right on their matrimonial bed. Enraged, he produced a machete and allegedly butchered the guard alive. He did not stop there. Emirate then pounced on his pretty wife, Bolu, and hacked her to death too. Mission accomplished, the billionaire turned against himself… not with a machete, of course. Rather, he reached for a bottle of Snipper and gulped down the deadly liquid. In one fell swoop, the household located at the Government Reservation Area (GRA) had three cadavers to contend with.

Also not long ago, a man knifed a bishop to death when he found him with his estranged wife in the bedroom. The cleric was said to be on a reconciliation mission to the house. But it seemed the attacker was pissed off by the choice of the bedroom for the execution of the mission.

Acts of infidelity resulting in disasters have been occurring in different parts of this country long before now. On January 2, 2015, a Maiduguri man was knifed to death after being caught swimming in another man’s river in the bush. The river owner, Bulama Modu of Ngamma village, near Maiduguri, was arraigned and subsequently convicted a year later on a one-count charge of culpable homicide, not punishable with death, contrary to section 224 of the penal code. Bulama Modu bagged five years or a fine of N250, 000 for his murderous effort.

According to the report, Modu had told the court that when his river, Faltama Kundura, flowed from his house on the judgement day to attend a “wedding ceremony” of her friend in a neighbouring village, he became suspicious and stealthily tracked the flow. He had suspected the deceased named Bunu Zarami of having an eye on his spouse. So, he made sure he too never went off his radar.

Eventually, he tracked the duo to the bush where he found Bunu pants down and swimming vigorously like a catfish on top of his wife. He told the court that when the swimmer sighted him, he panicked, drew a dagger and wielded it menacingly in order to scare him (“an intruder”) away. But the river owner took advantage of the shocking state Bunu found himself momentarily, fended off the dagger and knifed him repeatedly until life deserted him.

The Maiduguri calamity came not long after a similar episode took place in Bayelsa state where a 53-year-old man, Raphael Solomon, in a fit of anger shot dead a man believed to be his wife’s lover while he was digging his wife at a cassava processing mini plant located in the Aduku Community of Sagbama Local Government Area.

A close family source said the deceased lover boy, identified as 28-year-old Preye Bernard, was the owner of the cassava processing plant used by the couple to process their produce after cultivation in Odi community.

It was gathered that the angry husband, who had been informed of his wife’s alleged immoral relationship with the younger and perhaps, more active with his digger, trailed her to the venue and caught them in the midst of hostilities, to use sportswriters’ parlance.

When I was growing up, an uncle of mine told me that if someone threatens to shoot you while hostilities are at the peak or you are about to melt down, you will tell the gunner to open fire! I hope that was not what happened on the Aduku cassava farm that tragic day.

But one thing has continued to baffle me. I thought the average Yoruba man would not waste his precious time administering jungle justice like Emirate and Caleb did. In a typical Yorubaland, the men have perfected all manner of checks to scare adulterous men away from their spouses. Those who refuse to be scared do so at their own peril!

The checks or traps include magun, cockcrow, agglutination and maje’la (don’t eat okra or okro) just to mention some. And this is how they function:

Magun (not to be confused with Mangun, a community in Plateau state) is a deterrent. It is planted in the river. Once an adulterous swimmer dives into the river, he will come out and somersault three times and thereafter answer his final summons.

The cockcrow is a trap. The swimmer, upon jumping into the river, will feel like crowing like a red-headed fowl. In fact, he will announce to the partner that he wants to crow and there is no stopping him. The swimmer will announce his arrival in hell with a deafening crow after giving up the ghost.

Agglutination is a dog-based talisman. Once the swimmer jumps into the river, he stays trapped in it in the manner of mating dogs and the duo may remain inseparable until death will do them part! Or the lacer is gracious enough to unlock them.

Maje’la. This is a tricky one. You can swim freely and get away with it. But the day the swimmer will answer the final summons is the day he tastes okro soup. So, if you see a man avoiding okro soup like a plague, it could be that he is an adulterous swimmer playing safe.

I once advised trigger-happy and knife-wielding spouses to apply any of the solutions listed above instead of dispensing jungle justice that could backfire on them. Juju is not known to law. If any adulterous man gets his just dessert while on the illicit sexual activity, the juju lacers cannot be held liable let alone suffer the kind of punishment the law prescribes for husbands who mete out jungle justice to the groove diggers.

Perhaps, Emirate and Caleb were not privy to my advice. My late mum once told me that if a man hugs his early grave on account of a woman, more than a thousand and one prostitutes will gather to weep on his grave, blaming him for being so unreasonable!