Today, I am going to tell you all about one of my one-time clients who is now late because of domestic violence and negligence.
I used to see this girl in my church, she was a quiet girl and hardly associates with anyone except one person in the church. Fast forward to the time that her friend got married and relocated abroad with her husband, she became lonely and once church dismissed, she rushed back home.
On 23rd March 2023, I was surprised to see this girl in my shop. She came to make her wedding hair. I asked her did you mixed your way or you intentionally came to my shop. She smiles at me. It happened that her maid of honor was my friend and she was the one that directed her to my shop. When I was making her hair, I jokingly asked her how she managed to associate with a man to the extent of getting married. She told me that it was one of her mother's friends who told her mother about the guy, and then the guy was searching for a girl to marry.
When her mum heard about it, she pressured the daughter to marry the guy. According to the girl, the mum will always remind her that all her mates have gotten married. Due to the pressure from her parents, especially her mum, she accepted the guy's proposal, and on the 25th of March 2023, they wedded. After their wedding, the husband took her back to Lagos because that's where he resides.
Fast forward to January 2024, her mum went to visit her daughter in Lagos to take care of her because she was pregnant. On getting there, she noticed that the daughter was not looking good, and she asked the daughter why she was like that. It was then that the daughter told her what she had been going through in the hands of her husband. The husband beats her at any opportunity he gets. The pregnancy that she was carrying happened to be the third one. The husband beats her to the extent that she loses two pregnancies before the one she was carrying. The mum, after hearing everything that the daughter told her, couldn't do anything. She kept quiet without telling anybody even her sons.
January 2024, she decided to come back to Aba with her daughter because her pregnancy was almost due for delivery. Honestly, when I saw the girl, I told myself it was better to remain single than to enter into that kind of marriage. Although she was a slim girl before she got married, she was looking bonny when I saw her.
On her delivery day, instead of her mum carrying her to the hospital, she took her to a maternity home around their house. Why not take her to the hospital? Or it did not occur to her that the daughter might have complications due to the beating her husband gave her. She delivered her baby but unfortunately, she couldn't make it alive.
The husband, after hearing that his wife had passed on, came down to Aba and accused the mother-in-law of killing his wife by not taking her to the hospital for delivery, and the girls' mother accused the son-in-law of domestic violence, which led to the complications that the daughter has during delivery. It was in the middle of that argument that the sons got to hear what happened to their sister, and they gave the guy a serious beating, after which he later arrested the wife's brothers that they are accusing him of killing their sister. He told the mother-in-law to bring out evidence that the daughter died because of complications but, the mother has no evidence and, no one else knows about the domestic violence.
It was then that she started telling people what she saw when she visited the daughter in Lagos. People were asking the woman why she hid such information all this while, and she said it was because of what people would say. She said she was waiting for her daughter to deliver, and then she would not allow the husband to take her back until he explained to them why he was maltreating their daughter.
In the end, they decided to bury the girl on 29th November 2024.
Her burial poster
On the burial day, the husband came with policemen to secure himself because he knew that many people would like to revenge that day. That was how a 24-year-old girl lost her life in the name of marriage is for better and for worse.
What I learned from the story
What I learned from this story and would also advise my fellow ladies is that when you are in a tough situation, find someone you can confide in. Speak up, do not die in silence. It's better to leave that marriage alive than to die in pain and agony. Always bear in mind that no marriage is worth your life.
And for our mothers and future mothers-to-be, do not pressure your daughters or even your sons into marriage.
I am inviting @okere-blessing, and @goodybest to participate in this contest.