You forgot the ones who will get up at 2AM stamping their feet all over and slamming all the doors in the house as if they’re quarrelling with the door

What you guys are not understanding is that even if there was no diabolical input from the second wife, there’s no way the stress and heartbreak of the situation didn’t have a detrimental effect on the health of the poor young chap.

So whether directly or indirectly, we can still blame the shameless lady…

They should do what Singapore does. If the Singaporean government offers you a full scholarship and pays for you to train, then you should stay back for a few years and help out.

But if you pay for your training without government aid you should be able to come and go as you like, no problem.

This bill has gone wrong from the start because it supposes that Nigerian healthcare practitioners are emigrating out of greed or malice rather than the fact that the country is basically unliveable.

If it were possible to stay and lead a dignified life, most people would. They ought to revise the tone of the proposal so that it sounds less accusatory.

spiceadole:
Big blow for May.

Anambra man don use his son do money rituals.
Smart guy..He knew he was going to lose a child ,so he got a second wife to bear another child in an attempt to replace the one he will sacrifice.

Poor boy...May his soul RIP

😧 What a theory…

malali:


Very true, Otedola's handle it maturely, Autism and showbiz in Nigeria......would not be welcomed too warmly.
i came very close to buying Davido's house but offers were rejected, that would have been my pool.....on inspection of the house, the doors were bulletproof and going in required biometric sensors and codes and also when locked from the inside, it also required biometrics and code.
If the boy was inside the house and the door was locked..

There is no way a 3 year old boy would have opened those doors. I strongly believe there is more to the story. We are not all as stupid as they want us to be.

Yes, Otedola approach was better, but one that would be expected from someone of his standing. Actually Davidos family background means that his approach could have been the same but for the path he chose. Like you mentioned, his lifestyle of razzmatazz and celebrity is largely what dictates his steps, even now.

As for the second part of your post …

It seems you are privy to a little more information than the rest of us which is maybe why you are so adamant that the circumstances of the boys demise were suspicious.

Anyway, a month and change later they seem to be coping well…the past is the past, I guess…

Kdsml:


I am not paying rent but i have contribute with foods what about the 24 years old lazy man who is not contributing on anything he want to rely on our mother and siblings , if his two younger sisters 22 and 19 are out there working like everyone else and why can't him do the same when he is not disable ?

This is another important conversation which is the infantilisation of male children and the adultification of females in African families

They will spoil and spoil the boy and when you ask the guy to do something that befits his status as an adult male and a responsible member of the family, he will refuse and even begin to raise his voice towards you. And the parents will support his laziness.

I don’t necessarily agree with letting him flounder without his school fees but your comment touched me because I have seen this family dynamic before.

They won’t teach the guy his responsibilities and then when he grows up he becomes everybody else’s problem…

Try to drop a token sum so your mother can get off your case. Then try to move away from there to stop the overfamiliarity because if it’s the way you’ve described it here, your mother will keep defending your brother leeching off you and it will lead to something bigger in the future especially once your husbands gets wind of it.

malali:


Thanks for correcting me, the boy certainly was certainly not neurotypical and the pressure the family would have faced knowing this......could have resulted in anything.
What is surprising me is they all know, Davido, Chioma most likely....because the mother always knows. But they refused to come public with it....like they usually come public with everything else.
I hate to believe ifeanyi's death was orchestrated ....however the preceding glamour and public eye events makes it even more suspicious. Well its Naija, it wont take long before a disgruntled element reveals the truth of what really happened.
You think someone of Davido's fame doesn't have CCTV camera in his house ?? The door wasn't locked in the house that has a pool ??
Oga's son was playing completely by himself .....in a house with at least 5 minders, security, nannies, houseboy, cook...........

There is more to the story !!
I still believe they offed that boy due to the stigma of autism.

Gosh! I really hope you’re wrong. But yes, all the commotion and hubbub, taking her from pillar to post, all over the world like a fast car ride…it was too much, to be honest.

With their wealth and influence maybe they could have turned it into a way of raising awareness? But I don’t know if he would go for that. His branding and image are more about being the “best” and not showing any cracks or flaws.

Hmm! It’s a tricky one.

Rest in peace, little one…

malali:


I am 99% sure, that boy had signs of autism, look at all his video, he doesnt engage, he is in his own world, he is 3 years old.He also does multiple movements know as "echolalia"
The Adeleke family knew and there were under pressure of time because 1 more year....the whole world would have know.By the time he is 4 years old even an illiterate person would have know this child is "off"
Look at multiple video with Davido and ifeanyi barely any interaction.
Even when swimming with Davido....Davido calls him "this one".....Who calls his child this one?
The boy hardly focuses on camera[/b]

Repeated movements are called echopraxia rather than echolalia. However what caught my eye about your comment was this “even an illiterate would know this child is “off””.

For some reason that I can’t explain, every time I came across photos of this boy I would always flinch or feel somehow disturbed looking at his face.

He had a slackness in his expression that made me uncomfortable and I noticed I would click off or move to the next post to avoid him. But I was confused as to why a picture of an infant I have no connection to would evoke such a response.

Now that you guys have started speculating about various disorders, I wonder if this is what I was having such a strange reaction to.

But whatever the case may be, I still hope that the most sinister and cynical of these speculations around the poor child’s demise are not true…

Kazim88:


Most women unintentionally poison their children mind against their dad or dad's relatives but at the end it is their children that still suffers it.

I absolutely hate this thing with a passion. And the worst thing is when the mothers side does even worse than the fathers, the mother will ignore it or make all manner of crazy excuses and justifications.

Unless the fathers family has done something heinous like violence/murder, people ought to face their own families because nobody is perfect.

Makinaki:


Secondly with all that money, surely Davido should have employed a professional nanny, not some village or Cotonou girl wey dem dey pay N25k monthly.

Yes. A professional nanny who is trained on early years development, health and safety and first aid. They pulled the boy from the pool but did they take any first aid measures before rushing him from one hospital to the other?

Maybe he still had a little light left in him that was rapidly dying while they were wasting time like one nollywood movie where people will be screaming and crying everywhere instead of doing something useful.

I sometimes feel that these very wealthy people purposely hire timid villagers who they feel they can easily intimidate rather than the standard of worker that their money and class dictates.

Uprightness100:
All I see that happened there was purely a Staged Coded Satanic ritual.

This is exactly what I thought when I heard what happened. I don’t think it was staged but I think he was compelled to do what he did by someone/something

Doesn’t make sense for him to start acting like this after being almost perfect for the past 30 years.

efficiencie:


A foul spirit is aiming to turn you against your mother. Your mother isn't a bad person but the entity she is yielding to unknowingly could be aiming to turn you into her enemy. You will be blessed soon, become rich and powerful and the forces of darkness cannot prevent that from happening but they can make sure you hate your mother and never reach out to her in her time of need. Do not listen to your mother's hateful words and don't let her hatred towards you make you abandon her. Instead keep praying for GOD to free her from the spirit of hatred and bitterness and grant her peace. When GOD blesses you, don't forget your mother. Don't let her bad behavior make you abandon her the enemy could use this as a legal ground against you. May the LORD grant you resounding success in this battle. Amen.

Anyway you may be right in a way but I do not yet have the perspective I need to look at the problem in the way you have presented it.

It’s going to take some time before I can apply what you have suggested to this situation, because whenever I share my success with her, like you mentioned, her behaviour actually becomes even worse.

It sounds funny but I sometimes get the feeling that she’s competing with me over something, but I don’t really know what. And at this stage it would be too costly for me to try to find out.

So actually I have to “abandon” her for a while because she hasn’t given me any other option.

I take your point though, thank you.

Kobojunkie:
I am happy to see that rather than blame your mother's faults on spirits and voodoo like most Nigerians, you have instead taken to accepting her for who she is and looking for ways to avoid the drama and headache of her.

Well I do feel that there is a spiritual element to this but right now my focus is working out a good practical approach to this issue to prevent her doing me (and me doing myself) any further harm.

I believe that once my position becomes more settled I will have the capacity to consider everything from a spiritual angle without getting too distressed.

Kobojunkie:


As for your spiritual life, I think you first need to understand that there are no special laws given us by God in Jesus Christ where blood relatives are concerned. So, what you need to pay attention to is learning obey the commandments as stated by Jesus Christ in the 4 gospels - Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

I will try it, thank you.

horpe132:
***
**
*
How does she relate with your father?

Where's your father?...
.
Whose your biological father?

I can recall a few times where he intervened and told her to stop shouting at me and she would fix up immediately but go back to the same behaviour after a couple of weeks.

For the most part he leaves us to each other as women and this is where all her manipulation comes in. She only needs to feed him one weird story or provoke me into losing my temper in front of him and that’s it

oldienavie:


So many mothers in Nigeria are toxic and bad examples but because of the sentimentalism attached to being a mother, many people are either blind to it, tolerate it of are in self denial...

I will use your method, thank you very much.

At the bolded, you understand the whole thing! Very frustrating, especially in our part of the world where it is often justified under the guise of “training” or “discipline”.

ImaIma1:
Keep her out of important moments/events in your life. When you are getting married, aside attending at the mother of the bride, don't let her handle anything. Let her know that there's someone handling them.

When you put to bed, don't tell her or invite her. Let another person tell her. If she wants come for omugwo, tell her that someone else is doing it.

Maybe when she sees that you are distancing yourself from her, she might start change. But don't budge still. Let your family get involved.

This seems exactly the right thing to do but I’m just worried about the implications. Blocking your own mother from wedding preparations is a serious business, you know?

But maybe it’s the only way.

Thank you everybody for your kind words and pieces of advice, I appreciate it a lot.

I agree with you that it is not necessarily a concrete must that my mother comes for omugwo.

The omugwo itself is not really the point, I was just using that to illustrate how awkward it is to be at loggerheads with your mother in a Nigerian context because these moments and milestones come up more often, so taking this kind of action is more noticeable and can end up reflecting badly on you.

I’m always around plenty of other Nigerians, Ghanaians, Pakistanis and the rest. Everybody is familiar with the story of the old-school, uninterested African dad but when it’s the mother suddenly nobody knows what to say.

I know that she was going through a lot when she had me which is why I kept giving her the benefit of the doubt but the destruction and havoc she wrought on my life was just too much. It got to the point that I was so confused and distressed I had to seek advice from a government helpline…even the case worker was apologising…lol…

And yes, of course the technology is there to communicate with any member of the family but the problem is her manipulating the interaction. She did that a lot even when I was staying in the same house as her… so how much more when I’m not even around to defend myself…hmm…

Somebody is asking if I have tried ignoring her…lol…you don’t know this woman…if I’m walking away from her without answering she will just follow me to wherever I am and carry on with the drama…otherwise she will remain silent and later on tell my dad one strange thing to provoke him into coming with full force.

I am just now realising the impact of not physically being around her because one thing she used to do is get very CLOSE to my face and talk very loudly without minding my personal boundaries…yet I overheard her advising one of my siblings never to allow any work colleague to come into her face and shout…that it’s a sackable offence. It seems like even she was indirectly advising me to sack her as my mother.

My main issue here is the situation in the long-term…I’m just wondering how long I can sustain this method without causing harm to myself.

This is the first time I haven’t tried to confront her directly and from all indications, she is already surprised that I lasted this long without caving in and talking to her or telling her my future plans like all the other times. I have received calls and messages from family members I haven’t heard from in years and I have had to ignore them because I can see that they are just trying to make themselves important as “peace-brokers” who handled the wayward oyibo who is quarrelling with her mother and not because they’re actually interested in my well-being. Otherwise where have they been all this time?

This is what I mean when I talk about the African social system as opposed to the Western one. It’s looking like war already and she’s started recruiting soldiers to her camp. I’m at a disadvantage here and I’m just wondering how I can offset it.

It’s so interesting that I made more progress by dodging her and being dishonest than by telling the truth, being assertive and expressing how I feel (as we are encouraged to do over here). As soon as I stopped crying and praying and looked at the whole thing without emotions like a school assignment, everything cleared up.

And my spiritual life is suffering because of this. What part of the Bible am I supposed to be following now when I can only get through by lying and being “disrespectful “?

Good morning Nairaland members, I hope we have all had a nice week and are looking forward to the weekend.

I brought this issue here hoping for workable suggestions after seeing how you have helped other people with their various problems.

Apologies for the long post but I really need your help.

As far as I can remember my mother has always had some kind of issue with me, I don’t know, it’s like she hates me or something. Constant screaming, embarrassment, reporting me to my dad or her siblings since I was small. I usually chalked it up to traditional African upbringing or that she was tired or stressed from work but after visiting family back home (I grew up abroad) and them also coming to stay here I can say there is a difference between traditional/strict parenting and actual abusive behaviour.

Children are the centre of every Nigerian mother’s life and even if they have some tough love techniques or discipline that may look harsh to me as an oyibo they always show their love in other ways that you can observe.

Like making sure the child always looks neat, teaching them things they need to know especially female children like cooking, washing. At least you can always tell that the love is there even if its not all kissing or “I love you” and all that.

A small example: I would always end up at school with my hair messy and tattered, I wasn’t allowed to style it in the salon even though she always make sure her own hair looked good. If I asked to get a nice childrens style at a salon she would report that I’m trying to be like all these Jamaicans, Akata and so on. But when I visited Nigeria I never once saw any little girl whose hair wasn’t done nicely, even if they were living in the slums. And again, other Nigerian/Ghanaian children in the same school never looked the way I did so how is this an Africa vs. Akata issue?

It may sound silly now but it’s just a small example of her neglectful and nasty attitude that does not relate to being from Africa or being a good Christian or whatever.

If I wanted to ask her something she would snap at me and start being hostile, after a simple mistake she would tell me that I’m like my father’s side, and she placed a curse on me that my younger siblings would grow up to surpass me. Is this from African culture?

If I’m cooking she’s nagging everywhere, why am I doing it like this, why am I slicing it like that, why am I taking so long, why am I this and that. That I should stop blocking the kitchen and allow other people to use it. But when I ask what the correct way to do it is, she won’t tell me; she would prefer to mock me in front of everybody. Knowing how important cooking is for women in our culture why chase your daughter away from the kitchen?

What bothers me the most is that she is always very nice and kind to other people’s children (cousins, classmates, neighbours) and just normal with my siblings but the complete opposite when it comes to me. If she were just a mean person who was horrible to everybody, it would be much easier to handle but she’s not! All this seems to be reserved for me and me only.

As I grew older and started university I thought she was mellowing a little bit because she would draw me closer and have conversations but I noticed that most times her “niceness” was actually just manipulation to get me to do what she wanted, using me to dump her problems with my dad or to stop me becoming more independent. Any sign of independence and the insults start flying again, this is from somebody who always narrates how children start boarding school in Africa when they are 11 years old and university at 16 years old and don’t need to keep staying near their parents all the time.

I tried talking to her about the way she behaves but it always ended badly with her getting offended, telling me I’m being disrespectful and so on.

Actually after reading similar threads on Twitter/Nairaland I realised that the majority of elder African people would feel insulted if their child tried to broach such an issue with them, so I decided to abandon that method and I actually quite regret it.

And I also regret answering her back and getting into arguments with her because it only dragged me down to a lower standard and messed up my temperament without solving anything. As well as providing a poor example to my siblings and giving her more ammunition against me to report me with. I don’t like myself whenever I’m near her at all.

Eventually when I realised she was never going to change and seeing the impact it was having on my life and behaviour I just dropped all contact with her and avoided her completely. I do feel much better and I wish I had done this sooner but I think it harms me in the long-term.

For example when I get married she will have to be an integral part of the arrangements and beyond but I really don’t want anything to do with her, I don’t miss her at all and I can’t stand her. I can’t imagine her coming to visit or doing omugwo or anything like that. Can you imagine doing all that with somebody who even drags the kitchen with you??

There are countless times where I went against my own wishes and obeyed her trying to be a respectful daughter only for her to turn around and blame me when it went wrong and I strongly suspect that my future marriage will follow the same pattern if I don’t keep her away from it. But this approach only obtains in Western society where you can get married without anybodys input and not in Nigeria where you need your family to back you in everything.

I dont stay in the family home anymore but I don’t know what to do because avoiding her essentially means avoiding my whole family. I can’t isolate any contact with them without her being involved in it somehow. At the same time I can’t imagine being stuck in her bondage again.

What do I do please?