A guy reached out to me for help with his school fees some years ago. I took an interest in him and helped him out. He finished his OND and started a job somewhere in the Southeast. He was earning 25,000 Naira monthly. The money was nothing, and I could see the potential in him. I asked him to apply for his HND, proceed to a university for his http://B.Sc, or go into Tech.

He chose NOUN because he wanted to study and work at the same time. He gained admission, and I sent him the school fees. Two months later he invited me to his wedding. He said he had impregnated a lady who was a 300-level undergraduate, and her family had demanded that she bring home her husband.

The news was so shocking to me that I had not bothered to reply to his WhatsApp message to that effect till today. Of all the things that a young man can do to ruin his life and shape his destiny, getting married the way he did was the worst.

I am not saying he cannot make it big in life someday, I know the human spirit is resilient and when it is determined to rise, nothing can stop it. I am, however, saying, that the journey of forty days for him most likely turned to a forty year journey through that move.

After the marriage he had nowhere to stay, as the family whose Boys Quarters he was living in for free at Lekki didn’t want a family man living in their BQ.

He moved in with a pastor whose family had been waiting on the Lord to have a child for over fifteen years.  The pastor gave him and his wife a room out of their three-bedroom flat until he could find something doing. He and his wife could only stay there for three months before moving on.  He said the pastor’s wife was not accommodating as she should be because she expected his wife to help her with house chores even though his wife was pregnant. So he moved out. He moved to the house of another Christian brother who had three months left on his rent, but had to relocate to the UK to further his studies.

The Brother took him to the landlord and made the landlord promise to extend him some months of grace before renewing the rent because of his condition. The Landlord agreed. His wife delivered their baby girl in that house.

The three months lapsed, and the landlord also extended another three months of grace to him before he began to demand the rent. He moved out again, this time with his wife and two-month-old daughter. Help wasn’t as forthcoming as it was in the past; he took his wife and daughter back to his village. His mother and younger siblings were there. It was way better than sleeping on the streets

After a week at the village, he told his mother his plan. The plan was to leave his wife and daughter in the village while he would go back to the city to hustle. His mother couldn’t protest; it was the only obvious solution that any of them could come up with. His wife also had to understand. It was easier for him to stay with a friend or even sleep in church as a single man, but with a wife and child, it was too much of a liability to ask anyone to shoulder.

His mother, however, called him the night before he left the village and reminded him of his father’s journey before he died.

His mother told him that his father married her, had him with her, and then went to the city to work as a driver for a big company. That was the end of their marriage. He met another woman in the city, got married to the woman, and abandoned her in the village.

His mother told him to beware of repeating the pattern of his father, as he leaves for the city without his wife and daughter. He promised his mother he would not behave like his father. He would get a job, rent a house, and, within a year, he would return to pick up his wife and daughter so that they could settle down in the city as a family.

His mother blessed him. He left very early for the city the next morning. When he got back to the city, he found a job with a church. He joined the church and began to work hard.

Some weeks later, some ladies came to the church from one of the branches of the same church, which was located somewhere in West African country. They were students of the church’s Bible College’s online campus who had to spend at least two weeks in Nigeria for their final exams. He was assigned to them from the church secretariat. He and one of the ladies got close. She told him about life in her country and how he could get a job and make better money than he was making in Nigeria. The ladies left on a Friday by flight, he jumped on a bus the next morning, and travelled to that country.

His wife sent me pictures of him and the lady today. Romantic pictures

The lady is heavily pregnant. The wife has been abandoned in the village for three years. He was calling and sending her money at first, then he left the country and cut off all communication. Somehow, the wife got a hold of the other lady’s name and social media handles and unearthed the mystery behind his disappearance. She wanted me to know what had happened and what she planned to do. She wanted to save some money, travel to that country and fight!

I laughed when I heard that. Of what use would fighting be? Will it make him rich or able to provide for himself and his family? If she fights and gets him back to Nigeria, would that prevent him from repeating the same game play with another lady? He was no longer in charge of his own destiny. He lost the plot the moment he got sidetracked into marriage at 27.

Now at 30, he had no qualifications and a lot of responsibilities. Going to fight him will be a waste of time. So, what do I do? She asked me. I told her to take her baby and return to her parents’ house. She dropped out of the university in her third year.  She needed to finish her studies. She needed to turn herself from a liability to an asset. She needed to pick up some skills and start making money. That is the only fight that is worth it. Not the fight for a man, but the fight to put her destiny back on track for success.

She said, “So I will just let him go like that.” I said, “So you want him to return and still meet you as he left you?”

PS: We must learn to make our own destiny, to predict our own outcomes through our actions

Success is not a result of luck but the result of deliberate actions and their consequences

Marrying a man without a source of livelihood is the worst thing a woman can do in this life, especially if she also has no means of livelihood. The chances of a marriage surviving in hunger is almost zero. When hunger comes in through the door, love flies out of the window. A hungry man is easier to seduce than a man whose belly is full.

–GSW–