Every week, Naijaonpoint spotlights the unfiltered stories of women navigating life, love, identity and everything in between.
What She Said will give women the mic to speak freely, honestly and openly, without shame, about sex, politics, family, survival, and everything else life throws our way.
The subject of today’s #WhatSheSaid is Adaeze*, a 48-year-old businesswoman based in Port Harcourt. She married one brother, and decades later, she is still not sure it was the right one. She knows people will judge her for this story. She says go ahead. Nobody was in her shoes.
I am Adaeze. I am 48 years old, and I live in Port Harcourt. I run a small business, a fabric and clothing store that I have had for many years now. I am a widow and a mother of four.
I grew up in a modest home. My parents were not wealthy, but they were decent, and they tried. There were two of us, two daughters, and they made sure we both finished school and university. It was a simple, happy childhood. I did not grow up wanting for love, even if we sometimes wanted for things. I always knew that after school came marriage and family. That was just how I was raised, and I accepted it. I was not lazy, I could sew, I could do hair, I knew how to generate income if I needed to, but I was wife and mother first in my heart. That has always been true.
I was 19, and I remember being fresh. It was my first year at uni, and my first time really away from home, finding my feet and my place in society without my family. As I already said, I came from a simple household; my parents were not wealthy people, but they were good people. So I was not spoiled, but they really tried to provide for me. Our fees were paid every year, including hostel accommodation. What they couldn’t always give us was pocket money, which is why I started making hair in the hostel and sewing so I could feed my sister and myself. Eventually, I made enough to buy a machine. Other than that, I remember being happy, open and ready for a higher education.
That is where everything started, yes. It’s where I met these two brothers on campus. They came from a big family with 12 children in Port Harcourt. They had not grown up with money, quite the opposite, actually, but their oldest brother, Sotonjo*, the first son in their family, had built something significant in shipping and oil services over the years and had begun pulling his siblings into it. By the time I encountered these two, the family was already in a comfortable financial position. The oldest brother, Sotonjo, was revered in the family. His word was law. He funded them, and they knew it, and they behaved accordingly.
The older of the two, Emeka*, found me first. He was 28, in his final year, and was really only on campus to defend his project before he left. But he was the kind of man who went after what he wanted. He spotted me somewhere near the faculty buildings, introduced himself, and asked for my number. He was confident and direct. He liked that I was Igbo like his mother; he told me that later. He started calling, took me out once or twice. I enjoyed the attention, and I must admit that he was a fine man with Ego.
Here is the thing. What Emeka did not know was that his younger brother Chidi*, who was 25 and in his third year, had already been aware of me for months. Since I first arrived on campus. We had seen each other around, had even ended up in a few of the same courses, but Chidi had never approached me. He had always been quieter, more reserved and content to just observe.
So the day Emeka brought me along and introduced me to his brother, imagine how that went. Chidi looked at him and said, “We already know each other.” Even I could hear the defensiveness in his voice and see the anger in his eyes. By then, we had even been put in the same assignment group. Emeka noticed the way Chidi looked at me. He said nothing. He was older, already earning from their brother’s business; he figured he had the better position.
He moved on to work, and Chidi used every single day he had left on campus. That is what I did not fully understand until later. He was deliberate about it. He was calm, where Emeka was loud, soft-spoken where his brother was forceful. He had gentle eyes and a patience that I had never encountered in a man before. He remembered things I said in passing. He showed up consistently without making noise about it. By his final year, we had started dating properly. It had not been rushed. It had just become obvious.
Kasala. There is no other word for it.
When Chidi went to his older brother, Sotonjo, to say he wanted to marry me, the house went up in flames. Emeka was furious. He felt I was his, that he had seen me first, that his younger brother had gone behind him. He was breaking things. He said he had been planning to come back for me. But where had he been in all those years since he left campus? Spending his new money on other women and enjoying himself while Chidi was here, present, and building something real with me.
It took their Sotonjo completely putting his foot down. He issued what I can only describe as a decree. And then, because this family does nothing in simple terms, they actually asked me directly which of them I wanted to marry. I was 23. Chidi was 29. I chose my boyfriend. I chose the man I loved.
He never fully got over it. He married by the end of that same year, brought a woman home and started his own family. But the resentment sat in him. He was not a gentle man at home, not easy with his wife or his children. He had something of the oldest brother’s energy in him, that belief that being the man in the room entitled you to run it however you pleased. He could be harsh. Tyrannical even.
He was the kind of man who reminded you constantly, without always saying it directly, that you existed within something he had built. He funded many of his siblings’ children’s school fees and some of their spouses’ businesses, yes. He opened a store for me before things between him and Chidi eventually soured. I ran it, and I was grateful. But his generosity always came with a weight you felt. He spoke to people anyhow. He said whatever he liked and expected everyone to absorb it because he was paying for the ground they stood on. Most of the siblings did absorb it because what choice did they have?
He pulled away slowly. The way he did everything. He had been building his own funds on the side, his own footing, and somewhere around ten or twelve years into our marriage, their oldest brother said something to him that crossed a line. Chidi warned him calmly and clearly never to speak to him like that again. And then he moved us. Got his own house, built completely separately from anything the family had provided. Something shifted after that; even Emeka looked at him differently.
It was a good marriage. I want to say that and mean it because it is true. Chidi was kind to me and to our children. We had four boys, the last two of whom were twins. He was not a perfect man, but he was a present one, and he made me feel protected without making me feel small. I was wife and mother first in those years, and I did not resent that. It was what I had always wanted. We had our life, and it was ours.
Then everything changed 5 years ago.
What She Said: My Parents Introduced My Daughter to Me as My Cousin
We were hit by a trailer, my husband, I and the children. The children and I escaped with minor injuries, but Chidi died.
He was the youngest in his family, and everyone was genuinely shaken. He was the calm one, the one people actually liked underneath all the politics of that house. When he died, everything moved very quickly in ways I was not prepared for.
Sotonjo came up with ideas almost immediately for managing Chidi’s trucks and business interests on my behalf. I understood what that meant. I had watched this family for twenty-five years. I knew exactly how they operated. I got lawyers involved. Sotonjo was not pleased. He made a remark, something to the effect that I would understand the value of family when things got difficult. He eventually let it go, but I knew the temperature had changed between us.
Emeka came with condolences like everyone else. But he stayed longer and called more. He found reasons to be present, to help, to check in. I was grieving and exhausted, managing four children and now, 2 businesses I was struggling to run alone, and Sotonjo was applying pressure about the trucks.
I eventually handed the trucks and the business interests back to Sotonjo. It was too much to manage on my own, and I needed peace more than I needed that particular fight. I know people will say I should have held on. They were not in my house at two in the morning.
He kept showing up. At first, weekly, then he started spacing it out to monthly. Gradually, and then entirely after a year, he became a constant at the house. He found his way back into my life, and I’m sorry to say I let him. I am not going to lie or try to make what we’ve done more acceptable. He still has his family, his wife and children, and I have my life, but I was so tired, and I could not fight him. The relationship between us now is what it is, alongside everything else.
I am not sure I do entirely. I ask myself questions I do not always have answers to. I think about the sequence of things. Emeka was the one who came for me first. He was the one who saw me and moved. Sometimes, in quiet moments, I have thought about what my life might have looked like if things had gone differently at the beginning.
Chidi was good to me, and I loved him, and I do not regret our life together. But I would be lying if I said I never wonder.
Whether I married the right brother.
I know how that sounds. I know what people will say. But nobody was in my shoes. Nobody knows what it is to be me, to have lived this particular life in this particular way. So I say it anyway. What is there to lose at this point?
At least we have a roof over our heads and clothes on our backs; I can feed my children, and their inheritance from their father will cover all their fees until they are done with school. Additionally, there is a father figure for them.
Of course not. It was a big fight, but she’s a woman as am I, and this is a man’s world. The family says if he can handle the two of us, who is anyone to stop him? His wife refuses to leave this safety net, and I will remain at least until all my children have finished university.
Everybody is managing everyone.
Nobody truly knows what it is like to be inside another person’s life. Nobody. I stopped explaining myself a long time ago.
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