Revenge is a dish best served cold. This clichéd expression can’t be more on point than the case of Anita Ofili who claimed that the reason she stabbed her friend to death was that 10 years ago, the latter snatched her boyfriend.
Much as I want to sympathise with Anita Ofili, who on March 26, 2023, stabbed her friend, Glory Okon, to death in her apartment at Greenville Estate, Ajah area of Lagos, I pause again to interrogate the situation.
She waited 10 years to stab the backstabbing friend for real! Case closed!
Here’s what I think.
Anita and Gloria were friends. Anita was dating Mr. X. She probably introduced him to Gloria. Before Anita knew what hit her, Mr. X and Gloria had become an item. This left Anita stone cold and wondering why she didn’t see it coming.
I get that sort of thing. Happens all the time.
What I don’t get is, she waited 10 years for the “right time” to dish back. She didn’t seem to mind that Mr. X should have been the object of her hate but Gloria. Well, you could argue that Gloria was her friend and so she qualifies for hate. But Anita left Mr. X and went for Gloria. Who knows, is Mr. X still alive? Who knows, maybe she already axed him before now and buried him somewhere no one will ever find out. But this is overreaching.
Let’s dish out a few thoughts
Imagine, in all of the 10 years, did Anita not have another relationship? Well, looks like she didn’t, 10 years later she is still unmarried. Or maybe as one of her family members was quoted in the news, Anita “had character flaws.”
Was it “bad behavior” that led to Mr. X dropping her for Gloria in the first place? Maybe the same character flaws” other men saw in her and didn’t want anything lasting?
So maybe Mr. X was her last resort to hitch a guy. I understand her bitterness. Was there another man who wanted to replace Mr. X in Anita’s heart but she was too blinded with hate to see genuine love when it presented itself in all of these 10 years? As someone observed, there are over 90 million Nigerian men, eligible ones, not so eligible, married and half married…that she could have shared her life with, yet she closed it up, plotting revenge against Gloria.
We have to find a rational reason for Anita here.
Now, did Gloria and Mr. X remain an item? It does appear so, otherwise, there would have been no reason for Anita to still be bitter, right? If Mr. X had dumped Gloria the way he dumped her, then she would have had her revenge, right? Ok, maybe not, but let’s assume so.
So Anita spends 10 years nurturing her hatred against her friend, Gloria. She spent her waking moments, plotting, scheming a mindless murderous plot on how to lure Gloria to her home and kill her.
Anita must have lived a most miserable life in the last 10 years.
But along the line, in the midst of this 10-year revenge plot, she must have shared her thoughts with someone, a family friend, a colleague, a member of the family…or even a church member. I’m assuming she is a “churchgoer,” aren’t we all?
Did Anita not have good friends?
Did they dissuade her? Was she adviced to move on with her life or did they encourage the hate and malice her heart was gorged with?
I don’t know but I’m assuming they told her to move on. The best revenge would be to move on and thrive. But Anita didn’t.
She was cooking up a storm and getting ready to dish it. Anita got stuck in the mud of slime and hate and revenge and murder. She got her wish on the 26th of March, 2023.
Perhaps Anita figured she could get away with murder. Who knows? Reports said upon hearing noises coming from Anita’s apartment, her landlord’s daughter came running. “She peeped through the window and saw a masked person stabbing a lady. She rushed and called her father, who alerted other tenants that forced the door open, only to discover that the masked person was Anita Ofili.” Anita probably thought Gloria would go down quietly, take her stab wounds like the cheater she is.
I saw the photo of Anita with the murder weapon. It was a bent kitchen knife. Her rage and hate and anger that had been steamed for 10 years boiled over and consumed her. Her revenge dish came cold and hard!
I thought she would say, “ I didn’t know what came over me, I didn’t mean to kill her.” I would have believed her. No sane person carries a rage like that for 10 years!
But Anita Ofili kept her hate alive; she nurtured it most probably by stalking Gloria and Mr. X both online and offline. This can only be one of the ways to keep such rage alive. She had no joy, practically nothing to live for. Anita threw what was left of her miserable life away. She will remain locked up, and for the rest of her life. even if she pleads insanity, it’s Yaba left, if there’s a bed space. What’s the take away here? Be careful who you offend, some people are just loco.