OMG>>>Fathered by a ghost,
married to another ghost
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The 25-minute journey on
amotorcycle from Akoda junction to
Odeomu to Gaga to Odansidi to Omodeere
to Olodan to Abese to Ayetoro and finally
to Tonkere village, all in Ayedaade Local
Government Area of Osun State was
uneventful. Members of the sleepy and
rustic communities, from their homestead,
waved at Saturday Tribune’s TAIWO
OLANREWAJU and OLUWOLE IGE while
some who met them on the way greeted
them expectantly and some currency
exchanged hands. They were on the trail
of a woman found to have been sired by a
ghost and married to a ghost.
Before now, chilling stories had been told
of individuals who continued to
experience life even after their clear
deaths. The Yoruba call them Akudaaya.
To the Hausa, they are Satalwa. Time
after time, there were stories of how the
dead, who were supposed to be six feet
under the ground, would still stick around
on the surface of the earth and lead lives
as normal, regular human beings albeit in
faraway places where their chances of
bumping into either families or
acquaintances who had previously bade
them goodbye from this world are
virtually zero.
Many have dismissed such stories as
fictions, hallucinations or fabrications, but
the recent experience of a 20-year-old
Taiyelolu Abdulrahman, whose father,
who died almost 20 years ago, nurtured
till she was married to another dead or
“ghost” husband, is lending credence to
such weird developments.
It was a Herculean task getting Taiyelolu
to grant Saturday Tribune an interview
because, according to her, she had
already spoken at length with a popular
Yoruba magazine which she claimed only
used her story for economic reasons.
“Where is the assistance they promised
would come my way as a result of the
interview I granted them?”
Her father-in-law, Mr Raufu Gbadamosi,
also was not favourably disposed to
Taiyelolu granting another press
interview. He showed disapproval when
he shook his head, disappeared into his
room and then reappeared with a cap and
just exited the house.
When she finally opened up, it turned out
that nothing could be more bizarre than
Taiyelolu’s story. She and her twin
brother, Kehinde, grew up with their
father in a flat at the Ajah area of Lagos.
They led a relatively comfortable life in
the house where they only depended on
generator as the only source of electricity.
Although their father was not engaged in
any kind of work, he provided for them.
“My father was not working. He never left
the house except on a few occasions at
night. But if I asked for N50, 000, he gave
it to me. We had no visitors and we
visited nobody,” she said.
All they had to do were sleep, eat and
watch home videos.
Asked about her mother, she said she and
her twin brother grew up to know only
their father. They did not see any woman
with him. To go out of the house, their
father gave the twins a small gourd each
which they simply clasped to their palms
and then they burst out on the road and
board vehicles to the market to purchase
food items like wheat, semovita,
macaroni, spaghetti and rice. They never
consumed amala (yam flour meal).
On a particular day, however, Taiyelolu
forgot to take her gourd and as she
stepped out of the house, what
confronted her was a cemetery with a lot
of vaults and a bushy environment.
She screamed and dashed back inside.
Then, her father told her to pick the
gourd, atona (guide) as it was called. As
she clasped the object to her palm and
then ventured out, this time, she found
herself on a busy tarred road.
Another incident which frightened her
happened in the night. “My father went
out whenever he wanted but it was
always around 10.00 or 11.00 p.m. He
would not take anyone along with him.
But there was a day I begged him to take
me out to where he usually went and he
obliged. When we got there, something
strange and fearful happened. It was like
a canteen and there, I saw a small
cooking stand with a big pot on it without
firewood or fire and the food was boiling.
I asked my father how it was possible for
food to cook without firewood and fire
and the woman selling the food became
angry and slapped me. She asked my
father who I was; that I was not part of
them but only wanted to expose their
secrets. My father begged her and we left
the place,” she remarked.
After the incident, her father refused to
take her out again so that she would not
be privy to the secrets and circumstances
surrounding their true identities. Since
then, she refused to take food from her
father, but only cooked her own food.
By the time Taiyelolu came of age, her
father did not allow her the choice of a
husband, but asked her to marry someone
identified as Abdulazeez. The man moved
in with them and behaved like her father.
Soon, she got pregnant. And when she
eventually went into labour, she said her
father went out, brought back a particular
kind of leaf which he applied on her
navel and she was delivered of a baby
boy without any complication. Her father,
who acted as the midwife, took care of
the placenta. She bore her two other boys
in the same manner. Her children were
named Abdul Qayum (now eight years
old), ‘Rokeeb (four) and Jamiu (two and a
half).
But what revealed the true identities of
her father and husband? She disclosed
that all the jealously guarded secrets
began to come to the open when Kehinde
declined to marry a lady recommended by
their father.
They continued their routine life until
their father considered Kehinde mature
enough to get married and brought a lady
home for him. But Kehinde was said to
have refused outright to marry “one of
them.” Taiyelolu said she asked him what
he meant by “one of them” but he told
her not to bother as she was only a
woman who was oblivious of what was
happening.
“One day, Kehinde was eating and he
suddenly coughed, slumped and died. My
father did not feel any sorrow as a result
of this. He buried my brother in an
unknown place. When I asked him about
where he buried him, he said some
Muslim clerics had come to pray over his
body and he had buried it. Not convinced
by his response, I said to him: “When I
had my babies, no clerics came for the
naming, but they came for the burial of
my brother?’”
Disturbed by the shocking death of her
brother, Taiyelolu confronted her father
that she wanted to know his family. That
decision marked the beginning of her
journey into a new world.
“Eventually, my father agreed to take me
and the children to his hometown, Offa,
Kwara State. He said he was from the
imam’s family. When we almost got to his
family house, he said he wanted to check
on someone close by and pointed the
house to us. He asked us to ask for Alhaji
Hussein Salmoni, his uncle. When we met
his uncle and explained ourselves to him,
he was taken aback. He eventually
showed us his grave. He said my father
died over 20 years ago,” she said.
Amid bewilderment, Taiyelolu left for the
only place she knew as home, Ajah,
Lagos, but could not locate their house
again. What worsened her situation was
the mysterious disappearance of the gourd
which her father had given her and could
have guided her back to the house.
She went to Ilorin in an effort to locate
her mother’s family house which her
father told her was Isale Koto. She
managed to strike up conversations with
some people who introduced her to a
radio presenter who narrated her story
on air. She also met a lady who she
followed to Ede, Osun State, and stayed
with for about a month. It was while in
that city that she traced her husband’s
parents.
She claimed that she was walking by the
road one day when a car parked by her
side and the driver told her that it was
her birthday and in order to felicitate
with her, gave her a handset with a SIM
card. Taiyelolu is uncertain of her age,
but assumed that she could be more than
20.
“It was when I got to ‘this world’ that I
realised that I am too young to have given
birth to three children with the fourth on
the way. Also, I did not know that there is
a place where people struggled to earn a
living until I got here. It saddens me that
I now wake up every day with no money.”
She said she never attended a school, but
that her father had the knowledge of the
Qur’an and had western education.
According to her, her father was the one
who taught her and her brother Arabic
and a bit of western education,” she said.
It is obvious that Taiyelolu is truly versed
in the recitation of the Qur’an. Her
children now attend a primary school in
the village.
On how she got to Tonkere, she said she
went to observe the evening prayer at a
mosque in Ede when, after prayers, she
was chatting with the imam and an old
man appeared and told her in clear terms
that she was suffering.
The man then asked her why she was
obstinate about returning the children
with her to Tonkere, her husband’s place
of birth. The man said if she refused to do
so within three days, something
unpleasant would become of the children
and the man disappeared.
Then she asked the imam if he saw the
old man who just interrupted their
conversation, but the imam said no. She
then collected N200 from the cleric,
fetched her children and the four of them,
at about after 8.00 p.m., boarded a
motorcycle to Akoda junction for N50.
At the junction, she asked another cyclist
to take her to Tonkere but the man,
because of the fact that it was late in the
day, charged her N1000, whereas she only
had N150. But it was necessary that the
children got to Tonkere that night
because their father, who was deceased,
demanded that she took them to his
people.
As she pleaded with the cyclist, a car
parked by them and mediated in the
matter. The driver asked the cyclist to
convey the woman and her children to
their destination for N500, which was the
usual fare. The man gave the cyclist the
N500, wrote down the motorcycle’s
number and warned the cyclist to take the
passengers to no place but the mosque at
Tonkere.
As they alighted from the motocycle at
Tonkere, Taiyelolu said her husband
appeared to her physically.
She said he pointed to the shop opposite
the mosque as his mother’s and the third
building to the shop as his father’s house,
saying “I should ask for his father, Pa
Gbadamosi. As they conversed, her
husband said a lady who was passing by,
Tosin, was his sister and he called her.”
Between the time Taiyelolu looked in the
direction of the lady and looked back in
her husband’s direction, he had
disappeared.
The lady is with her husband’s people
now, but they did not receive her with
open arms because the aged parents of
Abdulazeez were confused about how
their first son, who died at a tender age,
could have fathered three children. They
are suspicious of their supposed daughter-
in-law and are acting cautiously around
her. But she dismissed any suspicious of
band motives asking why she would want
to lie herself into a poor home.
Also, Taiyelolu’s mother-in-law, the
Iyalode of Tonkere, had been down with
stroke and the father-in-law is a farmer.
Financially, they are not capable of
supporting Taiyelolu and her children.
The lady, who said the clothes she uses
now were given to her, added that they
were rags, compared to the ones she wore
in her father’s house. What pointed to the
fact that she could truly be from another
world was the way she was lamenting
openly about the treatment meted out to
her by her in-laws. She said if she had
made up her story, rather than bringing
her children to the old mud house, she
would have taken them to the governor’s
house. The mud house, she said, did not
compare with her father’s house in “the
other world.” She said she only left her
father’s house with a black bag and a
Qur’an, which are still in her possession.
She also claimed to have dreamt of her
father once, who was all tears, lamenting
with his finger in his mouth that he
warned his daughter not to embark on
this journey. She said her husband
pleaded with her in her dreams each time
his people offended her. She said her
husband said the reason he insisted she
took his children to his parents was for
his parents to have the joy of raising his
children as they did not have such
opportunity with him even as a first child.
The parents said they could not remember
where they buried Abdulazeez.
The survival of heavily pregnant Taiyelolu
and the future of her three children pose
a challenge to her. She said the aged
parents of her “ghost” husband could no
longer work, hence, the fate of her
children hung in the balance.
When she called our reporter last
Monday, she said she was having signs
that she would soon put to bed. She,
therefore, appealed to the Osun State
governor, Mr Rauf Aregbesola; his wife,
Alhaja Sherifat, other well-meaning
Nigerians, including corporate
organisations and non-governmental
organisations to come to her aid by
empowering her so that her future and
that of her three children abandoned
could be secure.
What about her husband? She says he
these days appears only in her dreams

end time things! nothing wey i no go hear for this world! odi egwu oh

Wu talk xay make i read diz kin tin 4 nyt... #Eye wide Opened