I’ve not even enjoyed my husband for nine months and now I hear he is dead. But how can they say he is dead when there’s no body?
My husband’s name is Bolaji Owolabi. He was born 38 years ago and used to run a small printing business at Shomolu. I met him some two years back when I came to print calendar for a client. Bolaji’s printing shop handled the job and they did me such a good job with a generous discount. That’s how we became friends.
Ours was not love at first sight because when I met Bolaji, he was married and I was also still in another bad relationship. Bolaji was a very pleasant man who always spoke about his wife. He was a devoted husband, though he told me he was still expecting his first child after five years of marriage.
I couldn’t reach him because his phones kept giving me:”The number you are trying to call is not available at the moment, please try again later”.
After about three months, I called him again, this time he picked it and I was able to commiserate with him but he kept telling me its ‘ayan man’, meaning fate or destiny. I just thought it was a coping mechanism for him. I had to accept he was right; can one change one’s fate?
I also continued to patronise his business and gradually friendship graduated into something more intimate. He would ask me to help him buy foodstuff; he would call me at night on how to soothe a crying baby. Though his younger sister was staying with him because of the baby, he didn’t seem to trust her judgment. He told me his own mother and his late wife’s mother were both deceased and unfortunately, his wife was an only child of her mum, though she had step-siblings.
After sometime, he began to tell me we were fated to be married. He said, it’s our ayan man to be man and wife. I didn’t think twice before I settled with him; we were happy, for nine months.
Now, printing jobs are seasonal; printers get very busy from October to the second week of January because that’s when people print calendars, Christmas cards and stuff. So when Bolaji began to sleep at the shop due to printing deadlines, I wasn’t bothered. Besides, we live in Ikorodu and I’ve often told him to sleep at the shop instead of risking his life by coming home late.
He was away for two days in late December and on the morning of the second day I called to find out how the job was going. One of his boys at the shop picked it and told me his oga was busy and would call back. I called back about three or four times with one of his boys picking and telling me the same story of him being busy. The following day, I decided to go to Shomolu myself.
I mean, how busy could Bolaji get that he would neither pick my calls nor return them. I was a few meters away from the shop when I saw a crowd of people. At first, I thought, “No wonder he couldn’t pick my calls, look at all the customers at the shop.” But when I drew close, I discovered that they were no customers; the machines in the shop weren’t rolling out print jobs instead the people in the crowd were like mourners. Immediately, I knew this had something to do with Bolaji and I just screamed.
I was later told that the day before, at about 1.30am, the oro cult came out and as usual, before the cult activities, everyone within the area had been warned not to come out at night. My Bolaji had gone out to pee sometime that night and while he was out, it seems he encountered the cult group.
His boys heard him shout and that was all. They rushed out but my Bolaji had disappeared as if swallowed by the earth; neither did they see any oro cultist around. Bolaji just vanished! Some said he is already dead; a sacrifice to the cult group but if dead, where is the body?
Can the oro cult kill a human being and take away the body as well?
How would I report a faceless cult group to the police? Who will they arrest?
What kind of ayan man is this?
-Based on a true story and compiled by Peju Akande.