My dad has a saying I wished at some point he would stop telling us his kids, “you can’t say because you are hungry go picking food from the dustbin.” He used this to illustrate to us that, no matter how desperate we got, we shouldn’t lose that which makes us human.
But, if I were to pick at his words and apply a literal meaning to it; I’ve seen people pick food from the dust bins…
I’ve seen some street kids rush after other people’s leftovers at parties and restaurants…I shudder to imagine the leftovers of who…someone with some sickness they could easily contact?
Poverty is real and so, when I see people get this desperate, I force my father’s words out of my head. I can accept that poverty messes up the brain; poverty pushes people to go eat from the bin.
But I know papa isn’t being literal, as an elder, speaking in proverbs is his best mode of communicating hard facts. Like I said, it’s about not being desperate enough to lose our humanity.
That humanity is what I’m struggling to understand as I read the story of a man in Ogun state, one Kinsley Essien, who sold his wife, Bright Essien, into prostitution in Mali for N1,400,000 and sold his son for N600,000 after she had gone.
According to the report in Punch, “Bright reported that sometime in October 2021, her husband, Kingsley Essien, informed her that he had secured a job for her in Bamako Mali, and that he had assisted many people to that country for greener pastures before. She explained further that being her husband, she didn’t suspect any foul play until she got to Mali only to discover that she had been sold to a human trafficker cartel headed by a woman at the rate of N1,400,000.”
My initial reaction was to laugh, as in, though the matter isn’t funny, it’s just… well, short of weeping for the woman, I laughed in the hope that there’s a mistake somewhere. But I read further and found that the woman managed to get back to Nigeria…after being on the job for a while, got enough money, and located the Nigerian Embassy in Bamako, who assisted her with getting back home.
On getting back, she found out that their 2 year old son she left behind in her husband’s care, had been sold off by his father for N600,000!
So, no, this isn’t poverty, Kingsley cannot claim poverty as his reason for selling his wife and child!
This is an animal in human skin! Kingsley Essien is officially an animal!
He broke a trust so deep by lying to his wife about her journey to Mali.
I can imagine that things must have been tough for the couple that the mere suggestion of going out of Nigeria to Mali to hustle will sound like a bright one to his wife. There would have been talks between them, that in a matter of a year or two, she would have accumulated enough money to send home for them to build an empire.
Only Kingsley omitted that prositution part.
I have no idea what skills Bright possesses to make her think she would excel in Mali but we can’t put it past Kinsley not to have magnified her talents in her eyes, assuring her that once she got to Mali, she would just begin to pick up all the money lying on their streets…(by the way, what currency do they have in mali, West African Franc CFA)
That currency has a sexier name than our naira, so yes, Bright Essien fell for her husband’s lies and hopped on the bus/plane, keke, truck, whatever means she used to go abroad.
when she got to Bamak, it was a different story!
Who does this?
Who prostitutes his own wife…well, yes, so many men, I hear do this…they even do so to their daughters, even some mother’s too. But after that, sell his own child?
Like we say in Nigeria, I weak for Kinsley Essien.
He got N1,400,000.00 Off the sale of his wife; what did he do with the money?
Certainly not to start any business or trade; he, like we say in Nigeria, “chopped it.”
When done, he looked around for what would make him quick money, picked his own son up and sold him for N600,000. That’s the worth of his own bloodline!
It’s obvious he fully didn’t expect his wife to come back from her sex slave trip otherwise he wouldn’t have thought of selling their son for profit; he didn’t sell the boy because he suddenly got hungry and couldn’t afford to raise the boy, he sold him for gain.
Does he get haunted by the boy’s cries?
Does he wake up I cold sweat, wondering if his wife would survive life as a sex slave in Mali?
It just beats one’s imagination silly to imagine the thoughts, if any, that Essien must have had over selling his own wife and son for profit.
This isn’t poverty, its mindlessness and the only creatures capable of such, are animals; in fact, dogs and a few other domestic animals are a lot better than this Kinsley Essien.
But maybe we shouldn’t judge too quickly or too harshly. The police are already involved and he would soon be charged to court.
Let’s not be too hasty to set him on fire like the blood thirsty hounds in Sokoto did to Deborah Yakubu last week.
Let’s give Essien a chance to tell us why his wife and son deserved to be sold; could be they were making him miserable.
While we wait, I’m just wondering, is Bola Tinubu going to abandon APC or get muddied in the potopoto being created in that party?
Just wondering aloud.