Who would have thought that the Okekes were living a lie? Okey and Ijeoma would pass as your quintessential power couple and everybody’s dream pair. They were the couple every other person talked about, the type that would be up there in your wish list assuming you were planning a party and wanted some ‘be seen with me and improve your image’ type of couple in the Nigerian standard to grace your event. Their 15 – year marriage was blessed with 2 lovely boys and a set of twin girls. They remained the envy of their close family friends who see them as the couple with everything going for them.
Okey is a hunk of a man and runs a successful architectural and property development firm in Abuja; he was one of the few people that moved into the city back in the day when Abuja was a dry land and lands in the town were selling for a dozen a dime. He had originally come to Abuja for his national youth service, on completion he left town briefly and lived in Port Harcourt for a while in search of his own slice of the oil wealth. Not making any headway, he relocated to Lagos until a chance meeting at the Lagos state government house in Alausa – Ikeja with an old school friend re-focused his direction. He accepted his friend’s invitation and moved to Abuja. Braving the odds, he eventually struck gold in the 90s fledgling Abuja property market, helped by the Babangida government’s compulsory mandate that all federal ministries and parastatals be relocated to Abuja.
Ijeoma was a super chic in her own right. She could easily have won the Most Beautiful Girl in Nigeria pageant had she been more bold and daring in her days of youth. To say that she looks like Bianca Onoh-Ojukwu may be doing her beauty and elegance a disservice, it may just be right instead to say that Bianca looks like Ijeoma. Ijeoma’s father (Chief Amuche Agbo) was a permanent secretary in one of the federal ministries in Abuja and relocated with his whole family from Lagos to Abuja at the federal government’s orders. Abuja being a small sleepy town at the time, it wasn’t so difficult to notice Ijeoma’s existence in the city.
It was Okey’s firm Tramex that Chief Agbo approached for assistance in securing suitable accommodations for his family. Tramex would eventually assist him in subsequent land and property transactions both for himself, family, friends and associates. This was in the sleazy 90s when corruption was rife. Okey’s meeting with Ijeoma was therefore inevitable and occurred finally one late afternoon at Chief Agbo’s office. Then a student at the Law school in Lagos, Ijeoma had briefly stopped over in her father’s office to collect a cheque on her way to the local airport and ended up in Okey’s car who had volunteered to drive her to the airport instead, thereby freeing Chief Agbo’s car and driver for other family errands. Their meeting just like their union seemed to be one match made in heaven and blessed by cupid himself. It was a classic rich beautiful girl and handsome successful man story.
Both Okey and Ijeoma were smitten by each other. Already used to the good life, Ijeoma saw in Okey an assurance that the life she lived and knew would be maintained. Okey in turn saw Ijeoma as the perfect wife; beautiful and intelligent with a good surname that will open doors to Abuja’s closed political and financial circle.
Okey’s proposal was seen as inevitable and the two families did not hesitate in blessing the union. Their marriage at the prestigious Nicon Noga Hilton was a show-stopper, and the stories of both their wedding and their honeymoon trip around the world featured prominently in the local tabloids.
As the years wore on, so did the love flakes begin to peel off, the beauty waned too and followed suit. What friends and family didn’t know however was that beneath the façade of power couple, and the glamour of living the Abuja good life, Okey and Ijeoma had a seriously troubled relationship. Okey’s specialty and hobby was in helping himself to the family’s many housemaids. Not once, not twice and not even thrice. Much as Ijeoma tried to cover up Okey’s failings by sending the housemaids packing after each new sexcapade is uncovered, Okey’s craze for the housemaids continued and refused to go away.
In the end Ijeoma accepted defeat and called for help, first from Okey’s friends one of whom was Ken. It wasn’t as if Ken didn’t know or hadn’t heard about Okey’s sexual preferences, boys talk, you know. At some point it was even rumoured that Okey was possessed, and that he belonged to a secret money cult at whose insistence he was sleeping with the housemaids as part of the conditions for fulfilling the pact he entered with the secret cult.
On the day that some mutual friends and some immediate family members had gathered to discuss the matter with the aim of uniting Okey and Ijeoma again as they had separated from each other following the latest incident, everyone present was quite taken aback by Okey’s reasons. They all found it baffling. Okey confessed that he dreaded the scents and odour that ooze out of Ijeoma’s skin calling them cosmetic, he debunked the secret cult allegation and said that he loathed making love to his wife because he always felt as if he was swimming inside a cosmetics bath tub. Okey then confessed to the amazement of those present that the house girls tasted raw and natural.
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A final resolution of the couple’s marital problems is still being worked out says Ken, “There may be some truth in Okey’s connection to a secret cult, if you live in Abuja, you may have heard some of the stories making the rounds concerning the high and mighty in Abuja and their occultist practices”, he concluded.
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A popular politician in the city was once exposed in the tabloids over his penchant for nightly female take-aways from Abuja’s red light district in Wuse district Zone 4, just by the old Sahad supermarket. Some of the girls were never seen again each time the randy politician visited.
There are also whispers of a city big girl and banker who is alleged to belong to a cult of women (super chics) who specialise in pounding newly born babies to death as part of fetish practices to maintain their social and economic status in the city, the newly born babies are sourced from local hospitals and from motherless babies homes.
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The author has taken care to substitute the names of the persons mentioned in the story and therefore bears no responsibility for any resemblance to persons living or dead.
