Like many of us, I think I read the corrupt version of the story about the child-bride that came from Bayelsa State last week. The story had it that a fiur-year-old girl was given in marriage to a 54-year-old man by her parents. The child is reported to have said that the 54-year-old was her husband in another world and she had been looking for him for years.
How did she find him? She had been born to different women at different times over the years while searching for the man she would die and be reborn to another woman, in another village perhaps.
My summation is, she is an abiku.
I used the word abiku because it is the appellation we use for children born to die and reincarnate, which is somewhat what this child is reported to have claimed to be. Her parents should have read “Abiku” by Wole Soyinka or the late John Pepper Clark. We know their type, “Once and the repeated time, ageless.”
The four-year-old is reported to have said the 54-year-old, simply called Elder Akpos, was her husband from another life. She had been searching for him by coming to the world through many mothers, dying and reincarnating while searching for this husband. The child was reported to have threatened to die if not allowed to marry the 54-year-old man and to stop this carnage, she was married off to him…imagine if the child had died, her grief-stricken parents may have followed, the lost and found husband would be heartbroken and die; the community as a whole would have felt they failed one of their own and this kind of failure can only result in nasty things happening to people…imagine!
Flip this story and you have the stuff of sci-fi time travel, if you like stuff like that, only this one is repulsive!
There was no one sensible enough to say stop this nonsense! How can you marry off a fiur-year-old to a 54-year-old who by some crooked means believes that he indeed is the lost husband from another time and place?
Who planted the marriage idea into this child?
But thanks to the media, a child rights advocacy group and of course, the Bayelsa State government, the child has been rescued from herself and her dumb parents and yes, from the hands of the predator masquerading as a husband!
Let’s unravel this BS little by little. What does a tattling four-year-old know about marriage to insist she had time travelled from one terrestrial clime to another to finally find a long-lost husband?
This child should be at je’leosinmi, i.e. local nursery school for children under age six, where she is reciting A-for apple, B- for banana and not be talking about marriage.
She should be learning her numbers by now, and the ability to count to 20 without missing a number should be what her parents are calling neighbours to witness and applaud her for, not talks of marriage.
At this age, the worry of any decent parent would be to ensure she is properly potty-trained and has begun to grasp the use of the water closet and not be talking about marriage.
And in an age where the innocent are too constantly abused, this child should be taught not to go sitting on any uncle’s knees and never let some uncle or daddy’s friend call her his “wife,” nor let them rub their hands over her because they are likely pedophiles…
But we hear that innocent lips are demanding marriage and threatening to die if not allowed to get married!
Many things are off!
Did anyone ask this child who her last mother was, so she could be traced to verify that indeed she lost a child at so and so time who likely looked like this four-year-old?
Where did she live in her previous life while married to this supposed husband?
Who was the governor or president at the time she supposedly lived with her supposed husband?
Did they have children, and where are the children?
Who was the mother-in-law or in-laws, in general of the supposed husband?
Where did she work, farm or live with the supposed husband in the life she claimed to have had before now?
Nobody thought to ask but they were quick to arrange a marriage for her and the so-called husband so that she would not die!
Now, what was the plan post-marriage?
Would the child have begun to have sex with the husband? I would assume not, you see at 54 years old, he is unlikely to begin to have sex with his four-year-old “wife”. But if we go by the theory of this lost husband thing, she may be four years old in body but actually an adult, after all, she has been, “Coming and going these several seasons”
For the sake of argument, let’s not be too harsh on him and think he would start sleeping with this child…(some sick people do, all over the world)…let’s say he wants to wait…say till she attains the age 15…that’s 11 years from now. She would be 15 years old and he would be 65. The mere thought of both of them together is disgusting.
A 65-year-old man and a 15-year-old child in bed! We know he won’t wait that long.
Which makes it all the more sickening.
An entire community arranged for this child to wed this man and no one thought about the consequences?
This is all shades of wrong and I am thankful the girl has been rescued. I hope the truth will be unravelled in this weird matter of a four-year-old marrying a 54-year-old. The Elder Akpos has to answer serious questions if he honestly believed the child to be his wife in a previous life. Is he currently married or has he been married?
Does he have children?
Was he also searching for this long-lost “wife?”
Too many things to unravel here but so glad the child has been rescued!