If you are a man and you suddenly find yourself jobless and at the mercy of your wife, you will also think of killing her and ending it all. I do not have any regret because this woman has really showed me pepper.
It happened that some years ago, I lost my job as a teacher at one of the secondary schools here in Umuahia. Yes, I am an NCE holder and I have undergone many teacher training courses. I taught biology at a secondary school here for close to 18 years before I was forced out of the school because the school shut down due to shortage of funds. Anyway, after that, I tried to find all sorts of jobs to do, I tried my hands at private lessons but after some time, some parents began to owe me. I tried my hands on trade but even that maybe because I am more into academics, it was a disaster but my wife, Njide is very good with trading, she sells bathroom sets and plumbing materials, so I used what I had left from my gratuity to support her so that her business can improve that way the family would not starve, because we have four children.
Did I not do well as a man?
After that, I decided to go to the village to engage my hands at farming. I left my family, my wife and four children in Umuahia and went to my village to farm, so that I will at least augment what my wife was making in the city, after all, they say the devil finds work for the idle hands.
Why was I quarrelling with her? Isn’t it obvious? I have observed that my wife likes to keep late nights. What is a woman selling plumbing materials and bathing sets doing out late? Sometimes she comes home as late at 10pm or even later. What I know is that even if people will buy materials, they know that market closes at the latest by 6 or 7pm but this woman never returns to the house until 10 at night sometimes 10.30 or 11pm!
It is very outrageous. A woman who has something doing with her family would never be coming in late like that, only a woman who has started having man friends will be keeping late nights. And every time I asked her say, “Where are you coming from?” she would answer, “Market.”
It cannot be true! Is it not the same market that Jude’s wife goes to? Jude and his wife live in our yard, the woman is home at the latest by 7.30pm! Not so for Njide, not so for her at all!
And on top of that, the woman will not even let me touch her! A married woman! What explanation do you have for that? One time it was tiredness, one time it was headache, one time it was back pain! I suffered.
Then one day, I came from the village without announcing that I was coming and that was when I went to her shop at the market. I was told she hadn’t even come to market that day, so I went to the house, lo and behold, she was with a man! In the house I used to pay rent!
Only God saved the bastard because he quickly ran away. I went for my machete and wanted to end it all because at this time, I did not know where that anger came from, I was boiling like volcano.
As I raised it to chop off her head, I had the mind to also kill myself because I was determined not go to jail for this evil woman. But she used her hand to block the blow, that’s how come the machete cut off her hand. I saw the hand on the ground like this and it suddenly dawned on me what was going on.
After all the noise and people came, I took the hand to my village to bury; I don’t know why people are saying I want to use it for ritual because they claimed there was no man in the house. I know what I saw, a man ran out of my house when I started shouting from the corridor.
I am a man who has been shamed by his adulterous wife, is there no justice?
-Compiled by Peju Akande