How I almost missed marrying my poverty stricken husband, now multi-millionaire farmer

Each time I see my husband at the end of the month instructing the accountant of our farm business on how to go about the monthly salaries of our 40 staff, I am always humbled. I always shiver at my resolute thought of never to have anything doing with him some 12 years back because of his poverty stricken status.

I wouldn’t have believed that after going through so much and coming from a less privilege home, where the basic things of life, clothing, food especially were either scantly provided or not even available, I would still say I should continue such a miserable life in marriage.

I am Joke (not real name) and from one of the Southwestern States. I am in my late 30s, I am from a very poor polygamous home . My father, a retired clerical officer had two wives and combined his civil service work with subsistence farming.

My mother who is the first wife had eight children while the second wife had seven children. My mother was into food stuff trading but did not have enough capital to invest. She was always dipping her hand into whatever she made from the business to take care of our needs when Dad more often than not was always not ready to be there for us.

Fast forward a bit, after my secondary school education which I barely managed to finish by share grace of God and support from two of my friends whose parents were always willing to give me necessary support such as payment of school fees, buying uniforms, sandals, books among others, I moved to Lagos to stay with the younger brother to my Mum.

My Mum actually sent me there so that her brother could arrange for how I would learn tailoring or hairdressing after which I will settle down for marriage.

However, rather than doing this, his wife said that it wasn’t time for me to start learning work that in the meantime I should be following her to her fabrics shop at Idumota, Lagos to help with sales and even the twin, a boy and a girl she was nursing at that time.

Meanwhile, I had always prayed to God to help me that I don’t want to live the kind of life my mother is living, that despite working so hard there’s always little or nothing left for her. I just don’t want the kind of a life where feeding my kids and providing for their basic needs would be mission impossible.

I have therefore always purposed in my mind that I am going to be a nurse, at least I know of one ‘Anti Nurse’ in our neighborhood who had a car for herself and you would always see her taking the kids to school with the car. I said within me, if only I could also study to be a nurse, I might one day carried my mother who I thought she had toiled so much over us yet had nothing to show for it.

Three years after I had moved into Lagos with no hope of ever fulfilling my dream, one sunny afternoon while going to the market somewhere at Bariga, I ran into one of my secondary school friends, Tola who I said her parents were very helpful to me while we were in secondary school.

We couldn’t believe our eyes, we hugged and looked for a place to sit and catch up for the lost time. Tola said she was already studying Pharmacy at University of Lagos and that her parents had both relocated to the US a year ago and that she might join them that year except she changed her mind.

I cried my heart out, I narrated how my life has been miserable , that my dream of becoming a nurse can’t materialise, that my hope has continued to dim having been turn to an house maid.

She reassured me that God helping her, she will get in touch with her parents to see what could be done. She gave some amount of money to buy things for myself with her telephone number that I should call her after three days to know the outcome of the discussion between her and her parents.

I was practically fasting and praying that help would indeed arise from her parents and it indeed came because when I called her three days after from someone who was into phone call business at that time, she said her Dad said once I will prove obedient and not become something else that he would shoulder my education.

I told my uncle who I was living with in Lagos of this news and he was so happy about it. He had not supported how his wife had treated me but anytime he raised the issue with her wife it has always led to bitter quarrel.

My uncle actually supported me to re-sit my WAEC after all, he felt that the only way through which I could gain freedom from the maltreatment of his wife was to jump on an excuse to leave their house.

As God will have it I made my necessary papers and with the support of one of the friends of Tola’s father, I gained admission to study nursing in one of the Schools of Nursing in the Southwest and my friend’s father footed all the bills. It was just too good to be true to me.

To cut the story short, I think I was in my third year preparing for my final exams when I went to visit my parents and this guy whom I have also known from childhood came around from University of Ilorin where he was studying Yoruba, as I later got to know. He was in his final year too.

Tope (not real name) is not kind of my guy at all, yes he looks serious, God-fearing but his family is also poorer than church rat as we use to say. I was even surprised he managed to gain admission into the university but I later learnt that the local parish of one of these Pentecostal churches where his sense of devotion had been so recognised was footing his bill.

I wasn’t that a committed church going person but I feared my parents and God and as such, I hate immorality like nothing else. So, I wasn’t even expecting a devoted person like Tope to say he has interest in me when to his types, people of my circle are often regarded as sinners.

And so when after visiting our house every day for about 10 days that I spent with my parents, on the very last night we talked for a lengthy time virtually about schooling, aspirations after school and all that.

He then said he wouldn’t consider it a crime to have someone like me as his wife and all that. I was there just nodding not because I welcomed all that he had said but I equally don’t want him feel embarrassed. I had seen the handwriting on the wall and I have repeatedly told myself that Tope is no, no to me, poverty has dealt me enough blow, I don’t want to suffer what my Mum suffered.

While leaving that night, he collected the number of my roommates as I was still without phone that time promising to get in touch.

He was really faithful to his promise, he was calling from time to time and sometimes it will be epistle where he would tell me all manner of sweet things assuring that he would be a great husband to me.

I really don’t take him serious and more often than not I won’t reply those letters, though while speaking on phone he would have been informed that I indeed got the letter but was too busy to reply.

I will say what sort of future does this type of a person, a poverty stricken Yoruba graduate will have. Tried as hard as he could, I was always telling him I can’t marry him.

After I was through with my Registered Nursing programme, I put in for the one year Midwifery programme and while I was halfway way done, I went to visit my mother who was a little bit indisposed.

I bought some drugs for her and few other things that I could afford from the upkeep allowance my sponsor sends to me periodically. Before sleeping that night, my Mum said Joke, what are you doing about marriage. I said Maami, don’t trouble yourself, I am still in school and when I finish, I will work for some time and then begin to think of having husband.

My Mum however said things doesn’t work that way, you are not getting younger, blablabla..she further asked if there was nothing between me and Tope again because he seemed to be the only male friend whom I have somehow maintained a relationship with. I was really being careful not to fall into wrong hands.

At this time Tope just came back from serving the fatherland and I heard he was teaching in one of the private schools around. I sincerely told my mother my fear about marrying Tope. I said I don’t want to experience an inch of all that she had suffered, that I want to marry someone with good jobs, if possible a car….the point I am making was that I don’t want to suffer again in life.

My mother, may God rest her soul told me that life wasn’t like that, that all that glitters are not gold, that both of us can start small and grow big by applying our educational experience, she told me a lot that she was not forcing me to marry Tope but that he perceived that he would be a good husband.

I went back to school and not long after, one of our bachelor’s lecturers who most young ladies would have considered it a privilege to date started running after me.

He was handsome with good apartment and a car, his future looks so green and many of my female colleagues considered it that I have been lucky.

However, six months into our relationship, he reportedly impregnated one the students and but for the fact that his father was an highly influential person in the state, he would have lost his job, though he was on half salary for a year and got demoted.

After my Midwifery programme, I reluctantly accepted to marry Tope praying that things would really turned out fine.

A year after our marriage, Tope got teaching appointment into a federal government secondary school at Abeokuta.

He started a poultry farm at the backyard of our quarters and from fifty birds, the little business grew to 300 birds.

Two years after our marriage, I got appointment with one of the state hospitals and by this time, he had secured a vacant place, erected pen house there with about 400 cockerels and 300 layers. He had employed two boys who had just finished from secondary school to help in taking care of the birds.

Ten years after joining the federal government, Tope voluntarily resigned his appointment and faced farming squarely. He had 10 acres of land around Odeda near Abeokuta and he has now moved into fishery, piggery, palm plantation, planting of cassava, maize, feed mills among others. Over 40 people are currently working in his farm.

Truly, you have to be careful not to despise days of little beginning. My husband who I considered poorer than the church rats is now a multimillionaire farmer, only God indeed holds our tomorrow in His hands.