A Series of Bad Decisions

“From a very young age, I have always tried to escape the inconvenience. I never stayed in one place for a long time. Once a base became inconvenient by my standard, I’d find someplace else to run to. My parents had a good home and, in it, we all grew together in love. My mother was a hairdresser at the time, she had a shop where her operations ran smoothly. Given the nature of her work, she always had apprentices who would come and learn the work, sometimes some of these apprentices would stay with us.

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One day, we discovered that my father had impregnated one of my mother’s apprentices who lived with us but he did not marry her.

By the late 90s, my father married a second woman and we all lived together in the house.

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My father had always lifted his hands on my mother but she never left the matrimonial home but, upon marrying a second wife, the beatings became more incessant, and the hospital trips after the beatings became more frequent. It was as the beatings got worse that my mother moved out of the house, she returned to her own mother’s house. When she did, she took our last born with her.

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My eldest brother moved to Lagos to hustle and I had another elder brother. My father was hardly ever around, and my father’s second wife began to maltreat me. Whenever my father came home and she reported me to him, he would believe her and not even give me a chance to be heard. I eventually left the house to go live with my mom when the evil had become overwhelming for me. If I felt my mom’s place wasn’t comfortable enough for me, I’d find someplace else to move to. In fact, I once moved to my father’s family house, just because I was looking for comfort and convenience. This was how my running away from inconvenience began.

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At some point in my nomadic lifestyle, I went to a family friend of ours who lived in Akinbile, and I explained to the man what I was going through. Theirs was a stable and very comfortable family – the wife worked in UNICEF at the time. He asked me what I wanted from him and I was straight forward about it, I wanted them to adopt me so that I could live with them in their house because that stability would let me focus on my studies.

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The man said his family had no problem taking me in and sending me to school but that, first, my mom had to give her consent because they knew my father to be a fighter, things could get dramatic real quick with my dad if he got to know I was with them. I returned to my mom’s place and told my mom what I’d been about and how I needed her to give her consent for me to stay with this family friend of ours.

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Somehow my eldest brother, who had gone on to Lagos to start a life for himself, heard about the arrangement and felt it was improper that another family would take me in while I had family members in the same city. He’d returned to Ibadan from Lagos and so he refused to let my mom give her consent. He came over to the family-friend’s house and took me away to come live with him instead. This was sometime in 2001.

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In 2003 when I completed my Secondary School education was the same year my brother, whom I lived with, got married. At this time, my father had moved to Lagos for work and so accessing him had become cumbersome and for me to pay my WAEC and JAMB fees, I’d to see him. I’d travel to Lagos to see him and, every time, he wouldn’t give me the fees. Sometimes he would promise that he would send the fees and that I should return to Ibadan. He never did and time was counting down.

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I had always heard that he had a big brother who worked at the Secretariat but I had never set my eyes on him before. As the deadline for payment approached, I got frustrated and, one day, I headed to Secretariat. I had no clue where I was going, I just had some faith that if I got to the Secretariat, somebody would know my uncle.

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I entered the complex and was confronted by the enormity of the size of the Secretariat. I walked into one of the offices opposite the Governor’s Office and I mentioned my uncle’s name. “Ah, oruko Oga niyen – that’s Oga’s name” that was what everyone kept saying in the office.

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I was directed to the Ministry of Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs and it was when I got there that I realized that my uncle was a Permanent Secretary of the Ministry. He looked at me as I was ushered into his office, there were deep furrows in his brows, unsure if he knew who I was. I greeted him. When I mentioned my name and the son of whom I was, he became more receptive and warmer.

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He told me he hadn’t heard from my dad in a while and then asked what I wanted from him. I told him I wanted to go to school. He sat in his seat for a while, pensive. He later handed me his card and told me to give it to my dad to contact him.

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It was barely over a month after Bolanle broke up with me that I met Funke. I was still trying to figure out my way back to normalcy when we became friends. Every day, we would chat. I told her about my story, my heart break, my status as an unemployed, everything. She told me her story too – she had a child out of wedlock, and she was running a business. She lived in Bida but she said she sometimes came to Ibadan to buy things to sell back in Bida. It did not take very long that I met another girl, Jumoke.

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Like it was on 2go, back in those days, I was only there to mingle. I was meeting ladies just so that I could have a female company to relate with. For me, I was looking to fill the gap created by Bolanle’s departure. I clearly loved Jumoke more than I loved Funke but, while Funke cared about me deeply, Jumoke was not really into me.

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In our chats, Funke would ask for updates regarding my job searches and all that. She advised me to fast and pray regarding my condition and I did. She joined me in the fasting too. In the end, I got a job as a fuel station manager and Funke was excited for me.

Since Funke cared for me and Jumoke did not, I just asked Funke to be my girlfriend. She told me up front that she wasn’t interested in a relationship that was merely for the fun of it. She wanted a relationship that will lead to marriage.

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I did not think too deeply about it at the time, I just told her that I was also serious about getting married to her. Our relationship began and things were indeed serious. She came down to Ibadan, we met. I liked her enough but when I compared how I felt about her and how I felt about Bolanle, hers came short. It wasn’t anything close to what I felt for Bolanle at all.

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We kept the relationship going and in 2013, we fixed a date for our introduction. Her dad was from Ilesa but she was born and raised in Bida so the introduction held in Ilesa. The plan was to have a small ceremony that would just be family only but, in the end, when my family and I got to their place in Ilesa we saw tents spread out. They’d also killed a cow. These were the first signs I saw that made me know that her folks had taken this event more seriously than my own folks had.

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At first, I protested the elaborateness of the event and threatened to not go through with it, but when I was told Funke had no hand in it and that it was her siblings who blew things out of proportion, I decided to go with the flow. What was supposed to be an introduction between families turned out to be a traditional wedding and once the ceremony was over, her family wanted us to return to Ibadan with her.

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We told them to give us time to return and get things in place as we didn’t know that she would return with us. Her family agreed. For her family, the introduction-turned-traditional wedding was sufficient for them and it was up to me to come for my wife once I put structure in place for us to begin to live together.

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My family and I returned to Ibadan and life continued. Out of the blues, months after the introduction ceremony, Jumoke reached out to me, this time she was now interested in me. Jumoke and I chatted very frequently and my feelings for her grew deeper and deeper.

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I soon found myself brooding over how to turn things around, undo the traditional wedding I had done with Funke in Ilesa. Whenever I thought about Funke, it felt like I had robbed myself of a great opportunity to be with a great lady in the person of Jumoke. In the end, I began to think of a way to get myself out of the introduction/traditional marriage.

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I thought for many weeks and eventually I came up with an excuse to wriggle my way out of the traditional marriage. I called my family members and I told them to cancel the big wedding. When they asked me why, I told them that I had just found out, when we visited her big sister, that she already has a child who was about seven years old.

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My mom and a couple of other family members did not think that was a good enough reason for the wedding to be called off but I maintained my stand. To some others, I told a different story – I told them that after the traditional wedding, she had an affair with another guy and got pregnant. I just needed a solid story that would justify calling off the wedding.

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No one knew that there was a new girl in the picture and that she was the reason for my change of heart.

When I told Funke that I was pulling out, she was distraught. She begged me profusely, asking me what she had done and how she could make amends. We both knew that, she had been upfront with me about her status as a single mother, she never hid anything from me so she was shocked that I was holding something I was fully aware of from the beginning of our friendship against her.

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She came to Ibadan to beg me but I wouldn’t listen. Her family members called me but I turned deaf ears. My own family members called me and spoke to me to think very well about my decision but I told them my mind was made up and that was it. Meanwhile, things were moving well with Jumoke and me – our love was going strong. It was everything I wanted and I was loving it.

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I left my job, after having worked for about ten (10) months and went to Lagos to stay with a “sister” who happened to be a family friend that had become really close to my while in Ibadan. She and her husband welcome me with open arms and they let me stay in their house. She took care of me and made sure that I did not lack anything.

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Funke tracked me down to this sister’s house and began to plead with me again. My sister and her husband still regarded her as my wife and so they had no problem allowing her stay with us in their house. They put her things in my room and believed that, maybe, if we stayed together, we could resolve whatever issues we had. I was frowned at the hospitality my sister extended to Funke but I couldn’t protest.

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I made it a point of duty to avoid Funke in the house. One time, while Funke was around, I left Lagos for Offa to go see Jumoke who, at the time, was already a branch manager at one of these grooming centres. I returned to Lagos and Funke was still in the house. One midnight, I was in the sitting watching TV, I was drifting into sleep when I felt someone trying to seduce me. Everything felt like a dream, but I remember repeating that I was not interested. It was in the morning that I realized that we had had sex.

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I was livid about what had happened, I packed a few clothes and returned to my mom’s place in Ibadan in order to put some distance between Funke and me. Jumoke had reached out to me before the whole sex incident happened that their offices would be recruiting soon and so I was sure that I was going to have a job pretty soon. I believed that with the new job, and with my relationship with Jumoke growing, I wouldn’t need this Lagos-sister anymore and I could be my own man.

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I stayed a few months in Ibadan and, in that period, I wrote the aptitude test for the company. After the exam, I sent my examination number to Jumoke who assured me that she would forward the number to the appropriate quarters.

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While still in Ibadan, Funke called me and told me that she was pregnant for me. I didn’t let her make her case before I pounced on her. In my head, I believed I was so desirable and well sought after and she was trying to trap me down with the pregnancy so that we could continue with the wedding plans. I made it known that I was not interested in fathering a baby with her and that she keeping the so-called pregnancy would not make me interested in pursuing the wedding any further.

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My final word on the matter was that she should remove the pregnancy and carry on with her life without me. I guess she saw my resolve and she never disturbed me anymore after that. While I was waiting to hear from the grooming centre regarding the job, things took a shocking twist – Jumoke became incommunicado. I don’t know what happened but she just cut me off.

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The job never came through, I lost Funke, and I lost Jumoke. I couldn’t return to my sister’s place in Lagos with everything that had happened. I stayed in Ibadan without a job, living off on people while applying and hoping for a job. Just like what it was when Bolanle jilted me, I lost everything in a flash – my life was back to zero.

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Much later, when I spoke with my sister, she told me that, truly, Funke was pregnant for me but that when it became evident that I was no longer interested in her, she went on to terminate the pregnancy.

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My eldest brother was conversant with the filling station business, he worked as an oil tanker driver and had relationships with people across that field. This time, he was back in Lagos. One day, he reached out to me about an opportunity to work as a Station Manager at a filing station brand with multiple outlets across Lagos.

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Since I was very familiar with the job description from the time I monitored my late uncle’s business. I applied. Fortunately for me, I got the job and that was how I returned to Lagos. Eleven of us were recruited and we were posted to different outlets. The branch I was posted to was doing fine but there was another guy who was posted to another branch and that branch of his had begun to incur losses in huge sums. In the end, I was reposted to this branch to handle things.

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The work at this branch was overwhelming, because business flow along that axis was huge. Every week, we sold two tankers of petrol. A tanker carries 33,000 litres; that means in a week we sold 66,000 litres of petrol. That’s a lot. There was still diesel, kerosene, and gas which we also sold in large volumes. The station had only a manager, no assistant manager, nobody to support the manager. I was able to plug all the leaks that led to the losses in the first place and things stabilized.

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Where I stayed before was too far from the new station and, because of the immediacy of my resumption at the new station, I didn’t have a permanent lodging arrangement. I always slept in a hotel and the company always paid for the expenses. The work became overwhelming for me and, in the end, I requested for an assistant.

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The management told me that they looked around and couldn’t get anyone they could post over to the station. I was then tasked to pick one of the attendants at my discretion and saddle them with roles so as to ease the stress off my neck. One of the most dedicated attendants was a girl called Funmi. She was hardworking, serious minded and she was efficient, far above her colleagues at the pumps. Her dedication to the job was impressive.

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With those stellar qualities, she stood head above the rest and so, it was easy to pick her as my de facto assistant. By reason of the ‘promotion’ she had an office which was almost opposite mine. We began to alternate the opening of the station in the morning but I always closed it.

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The headquarters did not increase Funmi’s salary despite the fact that she’d been given much more roles to play. I put myself in her shoes, I reckoned I’d not be happy if I was doing so much work and I was being paid so little. I decided to add N10,000 from my salary to whatever she was being paid by HQ. Whenever I wanted to eat, I’d send her to buy for me and I’ll tell her to buy for herself too. All these were supposed to be some form of equity and also a motivation to keep her being at the top of her game.

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One night, after everyone had left the station, as I closed to leave, I noticed a shadow in the Mart section of the station and I moved closer to check who it was. It was Funmi, I was surprised. She had said goodnight to me about an hour before then so I was surprised to find her laying out cartons to sleep on in the mart. When I interrogated her about why she was sleeping there, “I have accommodation challenges,” she replied.

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She explained that she and another friend, Romoke, were squatting with a lady who had a room. The lady once worked at the filling station but had left before I resumed as manager. She told me the lady’s boyfriend rented the room for her and so, whenever he was visiting, every squatter had to leave. I asked her for how long she had been sleeping in the mart, she said three (3) days. I did not feel comfortable with her sleeping in the mart and I asked if she would stay in the hotel I was staying. Reluctantly, she agreed.

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Again, from my funds, I paid for another room for her to sleep. After doing that for 3 days, she approached me and nervously said that she did not feel alright putting me into such expenditure just because she had accommodation issues. She politely suggested that we could both stay in the same room and that, after all, it was just to pass the night. I thought about it and agreed.

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For the next ten days (10) we slept together in the same room and on the same bed. Since we alternated the role of who opened the station, she always had her bath in the bathroom at the office whenever it was her turn to open the station.

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On the eleventh day, I woke up to her hands caressing my body and her eyes drilling into me. I asked her what she thought she was doing, rubbing her hands over my body. It was then she began to confess that she was in love with me and that she would like us to have sex. We dragged the matter for a few minutes and in the end, I caved in, we had sex.

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At lunch that day, I called her aside and we had a talk about it. I told her that I didn’t feel comfortable with what happened. She admitted that she was the one who initiated the sex and that it was because she loved me, and that she would want us to be in a relationship together. I told her that I couldn’t be in a relationship with her as we worked in the same workplace, and I was her boss. Besides, I did not have any feelings for her and so I couldn’t have anything to do with her romantically as it would be one sided.

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She wasn’t very happy with my position but then she agreed to respect my decision. Things returned to normalcy, her accommodation issue was sorted and we related well from then on as just friends. I even got to know her co-roommate, Romoke.

Down the line, she encouraged me to take my own apartment instead of staying in the hotel.

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When I raised my reservation that I didn’t know when I might be moved to another branch, hence it would be a waste renting an apartment, she convinced me that since I had spent about 5 months at that station already, it was very unlikely that I would be transferred anymore. I reasoned with her and decided that it was time for me to get an apartment. There was a challenge, however, given then nature of my work, I rarely ever had time to go inspect apartments and all that.

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Joyfully, Funmi agreed to help me with the house-hunting. She found an apartment that was befitting, and she went the market to source for curtains, carpet and other furnishings – of course, I gave her the money for the market runs. That was how I got my apartment in Lagos.

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The hectic nature of my work did not give me the chance to know my neighbours, I was always out of the house by 5am and I returned, usually, at midnight. If I needed to get anything from the house during the day, I would send Funmi to go and pick whatever it was that I needed.

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One night, I returned home to meet Funmi in my house. I asked her how she got in and she just laughed jocularly and replied: “what kind of question is that? I have a copy of your key of course!” I was shocked! I looked at the time, it was a few minutes to midnight, I couldn’t send her out so I allowed her to stay. I let her take the bed while I slept on the sofa.

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It did not take very long after that she came at me and began to touch me seductively. I tried to fight back but I was in my weakest point and, once again, I caved in again and we had sex. I let her know that would be the last time anything like that would happen and when it was morning, I collected the key she had from her.

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Work continued and there was no awkwardness but I began to pray for God to create an opening that will take Funmi out of the station. We had a customer who liked me very much, he owned a real estate company and our station was the oil company that fuelled their cars and generators. One day, the man approached me that his company was seeking to hire a confidential secretary and he asked if I could recommend anyone. I knew that was an answer to the prayer I had been praying.

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I told him about Funmi who was a graduate of EKSU, was hard working and diligent. We called her in and the man began to ask her questions. In the end, she did not get the job, the major setback was that she couldn’t operate a computer. She then suggested her friend, Romoke, who always came to the station to see her. Romoke studied Office Management at the Polytechnic Ibadan and she could operate a computer. Romoke was called in for an interview and, in the end, she got the job.”

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Romoke resumed at the real estate company and every day, when returning from work every day, she would come over to the station so that she and Funmi would go home together. The house she and Funmi lived was not far and she had to pass in front of the station to get home. Soon, everyone at the filling station got familiar with her and had a rapport with her.

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I, on the other hand, didn’t always join them downstairs to play and gist as I was always upstairs, busy with work. She’d come up, say hello and return downstairs to play with the attendants and supervisor.

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One evening, Funmi told me to prohibit Romoke from coming to the station. I found it laughable. I asked her why she would tell me to ban her roommate from coming to the station and she gave no concrete reason. In the end, I told her that she and her friend should resolve whatever issues they had between each other at home.

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On another day, while Romoke was downstairs, I had a light workload and so I joined everyone downstairs. Not long after, Funmi came downstairs and, in the presence of everyone, told me to march her friend out of the station. I blatantly refused. Dissatisfied by my response, she returned upstairs into her small office.

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Not long after, a police van drove into the filling station. The officers were regulars at our station, they usually bought fuel from us. For this reason, at first, I’d thought their coming was a casual visit until the approached us and said someone called to report that a certain lady was constituting public nuisance at the station and that that was why they had come.

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Once I heard that, I knew that it was Funmi who had called them. ‘Look around, see for themselves how everyone is jolly and peaceful,’ I said. I further told them that the lady being reported was my guest, and as evident by the peace and calm they could see too, she wasn’t constituting a nuisance. I apologized for the misinformation, gave them some fuel for their van and they got on their way.

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It was that day that I reckoned that the issue between Funmi and Romoke was a very big one, and I did not want to be caught in the middle of it. From that point on, things crumbled very fast for me at the filling station. Funmi conspired with people at the head office, one thing led to the other and I lost the job.

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The house which I rented and paid for, I never took a pin out of it. Funmi had conned me. She claimed the apartment was hers and that I was the intruder, the squatter. When the matter about who owned the house became heated, I presented the receipt she had given to me to the agent. It was a fake receipt. The original receipt which the agent gave her on my behalf for the apartment, was in her name, not mine.

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Worse, there was no one to vouch for me; not even the neigbours. They couldn’t vouch for me that I was the owner because they hardly ever saw me around, I always left the house by 5am and returned almost at midnight, and I worked 7 days a week. They knew Funmi, she was always coming by the house regularly to help me get some things or sort out things so they reckoned that she owned the place and I was just the guy perching there.

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My life hit ground zero, back to the very beginning. I had no job, no place to live, no money. I called the guys who were in the wheel alignment section of one of the other branches of the filling station I last worked. I explained my story to one of them and he allowed me to come live with them till I could sort my life out again. This guy and his flatmates lived a rough life, smoking weeding, rolling with dangerous people and I knew I could not stay there for too long.

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I got a job in as a waiter at a four-star hotel, and while I was working there, Romoke reached out to me and we began to communicate. She had left Lagos and had moved to Ijebu Ode where her boyfriend, at the time lived. We would chat every day and, in those cosy nights when everyone and everything was at ease, she began to tell me things. She confessed to me that she had liked me from the very beginning but that I didn’t seem to be interested in her.

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It was at this point that I realized that I was the ‘issue’ between Funmi and her. The whole time I did not want to be caught in the middle of drama, I didn’t realize that I was at the centre of the drama.”

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As things escalated with Shade, I began to drift towards Temmy. Though Temmy was not exactly my kind of girl because of the level of her education, we liked each other still and had kept communication all the while. She knew all about Shade but Shade did not know about her at all. I told her how I had made a mistake with Shade and how I wanted her (Temmy). With Shade still pregnant, Temmy and I began to date. She would send money to me which I would give to Shade to take care of herself. When Shade’s became full trouble, I left her in her sister’s house and moved in with Temmy.

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Somehow, Shade’s sisters found out that Temmy and I were dating and then they launched an onslaught on her. One of the sisters went to madam’s shop, she acted like she had come to buy a piece of fabric. Once Temmy sighted her, she recognized the face as similar to the pictures of Shade she had seen on my phone. While going through the aisle, Temmy did a short video and sent it to me for confirmation. I confirmed that it was one of the sisters. The sister eventually confronted Temmy and told her she would be back. Indeed, she came back. This time, she returned with all of Shade’s sisters and they caused a scene.

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There were times when they waylaid her on the road and shamed her. There was an instance when she was roughed up. Meanwhile, I’d left the station under a dark cloud and I was wanted. If madam or the boss himself knew that Temmy had been in communication with me all along, it could mean trouble for her too. I called Shade and told her to stop the attacks on Temmy. She promised to continue unless I returned home. I promised her that I would and so I left and returned to my place of suffering.

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I had made up my mind that I wouldn’t marry Shade but Temmy but it was a struggle trying to give Temmy the love and attention she truly deserved. At some point, she also rethought the whole thing. Her commitment dropped and things began to die quietly and quickly between us. One day, I went to her apartment and I met another man there, it was obvious that they had just had sex. I was so pained, and I won’t lie to you, I beat Temmy because I felt she had let me down. From then on, there was no going back. Temmy became a closed chapter of my life. I found out recently that she’s got married.

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My life has been a mess for the last nine years. Since 2013 when I lied against Funke in order to call off the traditional marriage we had in Ilesa, I have never been able to keep a job for a year, every job I take, I make a mess of it. I have no roof over my head anymore, and how can I have money when I don’t have a job? I have no wife, I have a son but Shade wouldn’t let me see him. I haven’t seen my son in two years.

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I have gone to several mountains to pray and everywhere I go, they tell me I have offended a woman and that I should seek her forgiveness. The problem now is that I do not know where she is or how to reach her. I have lost her number through the years and she no longer uses the Facebook account I opened for her back in 2013 when we were planning to marry.

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Recently, I carried my brother’s sewing machine without his permission, sold it and used the proceeds to travel to Bida, it was the only way I could raise the money for that trip. My thought-process was that if I could fix my life and things fell back in the right place, I’d replace the sewing machine and I wouldn’t be a headache to my family anymore. The fact that I sold my kid brother’s laptop has sown a form of rife between me and the rest of the family.

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I travelled to Bida to try and trace Funke but my effort was futile. I didn’t even meet anyone who could point me to wherever she might be now. I found another Facebook account with her name and she was wearing the same attire with a man, looks like a wedding picture but it’s been years since anything was posted on the account. I have left messages in the inbox of the account. The messages haven’t been delivered since then. I have also not been able to replace the sewing machine I sold till now.

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This is my story and I hope that young people out there would learn a thing or two from it. To love gently and tread softly. The person you think you’re catching cruise with is a human being like you and has his/her own eleda. It is not every time you cheat people and get away with it. A decade of living and working hard with nothing to show for it.

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That’s the story of my life and unless God steps in to deliver me, I am scared that this is what the rest of my life might look like.”

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[The End]