My situation in Naija was deteriorating. The first blow came when I lost my job after COVID. I was a marketer for a pharmaceutical company, and although I had heard rumours about layoffs, I never thought it would happen to me. I assumed that those of us in the health sector would be safe because people always need medication. However, after only two years with the company, I was let go with minimal severance pay. Those with longer tenures received much better packages.
Determined to bounce back, I immediately started applying for other jobs while carefully managing the N2.2 million severance pay I received. I prayed for a new job before the money ran out on rent and food. I had no wife or children, just my two step-siblings—14 and 17 years old—who lived with me and relied on my support.
Speaking of family, I am the eldest of my father’s six children, each with different mothers. My mother never married my father and left me in the care of my paternal grandmother. The same happened with my immediate younger siblings. The fifth and sixth siblings, however, share the same mother.
Now, the fifth and sixth children are the ones that were living with me because their mother left my father…again. However, they had a sister, who was not my father’s child but who had lived briefly with us when her mum was still with my dad.
She was a child my stepmum had for another man before she met my father and gave birth to the two last children of my dad.
Anyway, this lady, Feli, as we called her, moved abroad through the influence or should I say support of her father’s people. She moved to the UK.
Ok, she was in constant touch with me as I was the one caring for her younger siblings. So, you see, we both had the same siblings, but we are not related but we told people that we were brother and sister and, in a way, we were.
Ok, o. So Feli settled in the UK, this was way before COVID, she left in 2013. Yes. She soon began to send money to me to help with her siblings and also for me as well.
After I lost my job and things became tough, Feli said she could help me move abroad if we got married.
I swear, the thought did not occur to me. I mean, how could I be seen to be marrying my own sister. Do you understand that feeling?
She said she would come to Nigeria; we would do traditional wedding, I would then go with her for court wedding, blah, blah, blah.
I was suffering too much to disagree because you see, at that time, my severance pay had gone into rent and school needs and food for me and my siblings. If I could go abroad, work, I would earn enough to send to them or even bring them over.
You say what? Why didn’t Feli send for her own siblings, instead of me?
Maybe at that time she had fallen in love with me because I was not the one who started this talk of japa to marry her. She did.
Anyway, we did as she said and though I went to the UK on a tourist visa, I had to come back to Nigeria for more than a year before I could go join her and Iive with her as man and wife.
Let me be honest. I was not attracted to Feli.
I wasn’t.
But I just thought our marriage would be for me to get my papers and settle …
Anyway, when I went back to begin to live with her….even before I went back. The first time I went…you know, Feli insisted that we slept together…ha, this was not what I bargained for…but she persuaded me saying, we had to make things look real. She told me all sorts of stories of how the Home Office found out the lies people told about being married and how they got sent back to Nigeria. So, I fell for it. I began to sleep with her…everyday…I don’t even know how it happened.
Then when I went back, I thought ok, maybe she will not be so demanding. You know. She was very demanding the last time.
So, I thought, maybe I have satisfied her, she would not be demanding.
She was demanding.
I tried to reason with her. I mean like brother and sister. But she was saying, if I do not do it, she would report to the Home office that I tricked her into marriage!
I swear, I was shocked!
This woman just changed 365 degrees to evil!
I spent three years living in her house…I saw hell!
There was nothing she did not subject me to, upon the fact that I was working in warehouses, doing shifts back-to-back. I had to clean and, many times cooked. I did the dishes, did the laundry, plumbing…because she said she cannot afford to hire a plumber.
I did carpentry…woodwork, gardening…
So, anyway, she was making sexual demands. She would insist after that, I washed her undies with my hands…even though a washing machine is there. She would not give me food, instead, she’ll say, since I was working. I should be able to feed myself.
Meanwhile, I paid her £600 every month. How much was I earning to be able to drop £600 monthly? She said the money was for council tax, electricity and gas, that it did not cover rent or food!
I know it didn’t cover much, but I tried really hard.
Feli complained the money was not enough. I told her, unless you want blood.
That’s when she told me she would drain my blood to the last drop.
Fear anyone who ever says that to you!
Many, many days, I would be too exhausted to even lift my hands…this witch would still be demanding of me otherwise; I would not get any sleep!
When I began to tell some of our people at work that this and that is what I am facing at home, they told me I had to leave her.
But leave her and go where?
So little by little, I began to save. Since I got my papers. I could open an account and was putting money there, while I was looking for a better paying job. Warehouse jobs are backbreaking, I swear!
Finally, one day, I moved out quietly. I did not even tell her. The next thing I knew, she called the police…they came to the place I was working and were asking questions.
I said, I have not raised my hands, my voice or anything against this woman. She is supposed to be my sister, but we are not blood. And because of this, I just want to go and live my life better.
The police were shocked. They said, are you having sex with your sister?
I said she is not my blood sister…they eventually left me alone because they saw I did not harm her. She was just being mischievous because her sex toy had been taken away from her.
(Series written and edited by Peju Akande and based on true stories)