Five years was lost. Five years 41-year-old Efosa Ehiosu would never get back in his life.
The discussion about that dark phase of Ehiosu’s life that nearly drove him over the rocks, took place over an internet video chat but there was no doubt that part of his life still hurts him.
Ehiosu, a businessman based in Dublin, Ireland, explained in the chat with our correspondent, how he met his now ex-wife during a visit to Nigeria early in 2008
He said, “It was not long after I settled in Dublin. I just decided that it would be good if I could settle down and allow my wife to handle my business in Nigeria till she would come and join me here. I came down to Nigeria and I met my wife and we got married almost immediately.
“We had tried to have a child for about two years. Between that 2008, when we did a hurried traditional marriage, and 2010, I was constantly in Nigeria almost every two months to ensure she conceive and also because of my business.
“We tried as much as we could. For more than a year, there was nothing. But she later conceived in late 2010. I am an educated person so I knew some things about conception.
“When she told me, I tried to double-check by calculating the time of our last sexual contact and the number of weeks she said she was pregnant. It correlated and I praised God that I would soon become a father.”
But did he already have a suspicion for him to double-check? Ehiosu said no. According to him, he only did the cross-checking out of excitement and just because he wanted to be sure.
In 2011, Ehiosu’s wife put to bed.
Soon, he travelled back to Nigeria for the pomp and ceremony that came with the christening of his son, spending many weeks afterwards just to be with the newborn baby.
He said even after that, his visits to Nigeria became more frequent.
“My wife is Yoruba while I am Edo. There was no indication that she was getting any ‘action’ behind the scene. She did not come across as a sex-starved young woman, who could not hold herself for a few weeks before my next visit to Nigeria. I took great care of her and the baby and lavished them with gifts,” he said.
His family developed in love. He felt great because he had become a father. Or so he thought.
Fast-forward to 2015, things started heading downhill.
With his baritone voice, which he said was one of the features that his ex-wife fell in love with, Ehiosu said, “I noticed that as the child grew up, I was increasingly becoming a stranger. I called him ‘mummy’s boy’ because anytime I carried him, he was always crying. That was initially. But later, I started becoming concerned because almost every time I held him, he would scream and kick.
“It kept bothering me because it happened every single time. I was forced to ask my mother what could be wrong and she said, ‘Not to worry; the boy would get used to you as he grows’.
“How would I have a son I could not hold? When I had to tell my mother again that the problem still persisted, she sat me down and asked if I was sure I was the father. You can’t imagine how angry I was. She did not exactly support the marriage in the first place. She only grudgingly let go when I told her I was old enough to make my own decisions.”
But the seed of doubt had been sown in Ehiosu’s heart.
He explained that he did not ask his then wife any question nor did he confront her with any question but simply told her that he needed to take his son for a DNA test which the young woman did not argue against.
The DNA test was conducted in Lagos in March 2014.
“My brother, I have heard and read this many times but did not imagine this could happen to me. My son – the boy I loved so much and lavished with gifts, that I could even swear resembled me – was not mine. Do you know how that feels?
“I felt like my wife had crushed my legs with a car and laughed in my face. Betrayal did not even come close to what I felt. I never imagined it in my wildest dream.”
The marriage never survived it.
Ehiosu said all he told the young woman, whom he has now divorced, was to take the child to the rightful owner.
“I don’t think she even knew that the child was not mine. She begged and sent her family to beg me also and they did.
“What I did not understand was why anybody would think I could remain in that marriage? She admitted she was afraid that if she did not give me a child soon then, I would send her packing because we had already been married for almost two years without her getting pregnant. That was why she decided to try it with someone else.”
While cases such as Ehiosu’s raise numerous questions and sometimes pity, it hits at the heart of the issue in a society where a marriage remains on a shaky foundation so far it has not produced “a fruit” – child.
In many African societies, infertility is still treated like a bad luck, or a situation inflicted by a malevolent force.
Sociologist, Monday Ahibogwu, explained that this age-long notion may have been the reason infertility still threatens the marriages of many Nigerian. He said it does not matter whether the couples concerned are educated or not.
“You must remember that you are a product of your environment. No man can function outside the understanding held by his environment. No matter how educated people are, what have been ingrained in their mind since birth would remain so long,” he said.
Experts say this archaic understanding of infertility is why many women are forced to have extra-marital affairs to save their marriages.
Ahibogwu said some men, who already know they cannot conceive, may choose to keep quiet about it when their spouses bring an illegitimate child home.
“From a subjective point of view, what you don’t know cannot kill you. It is like eating a snake or dog meat without knowing. It is when you are told what you are eating that you start feeling terrible,” Ahibogwu said.
Incredibly, geneticist and founder of the DNA Center for Paternity Testing, Lagos, Dr. Abiodun Salami, said his experience in the last 14 years of practice in Nigeria shows that out of every 10 fathers, four are fending for a child that is not their own.
Salami is not alone in this line of thought, another DNA expert in Lagos, Dr Oyinwola Oni, corroborated the statistics that 40 per cent of men do not know they are not the biological fathers of their first child.
With this statistics, one can only assume there is a generation of illegitimate children out there, many of whom would never know their true fathers.
For people like Ehiosu, one might say luck was on his side because he got to know the truth while the child was still three years old.
Ehiosu, our correspondent learnt, met his current wife, another Nigerian, in Dublin early in 2015. Now, they have a child. The current wife and daughter have now become Ehiosu’s world. If not for them, he said he might not have recovered from the trauma of knowing that a child he had thought was his, biologically belonged to someone else.
“The funny thing about this whole thing is that my current wife became pregnant soon after we met. I believe God has a way of teaching us great lessons and my ex-wife was my own bitter lesson,” he said."
Culled from PUNCH
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