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She is only 14; the age at which many of her peers are still striving to have a clear vision of life. But Taiye Jimoh has already made history, albeit negatively.
She is only 14; the age at which many of her peers are still striving to have a clear vision of life. But Taiye Jimoh has already made history, albeit negatively.
Taiye dropped out of school in primary four, but on account of her affairs with the opposite sex, a man has already been dispatched to the great beyond, while another is facing a murder charge.
It all began around August this year, when she succumbed to advances by Abiola Ebenezer and they started a romance they least suspected would land both of them in trouble. A new-comer in Lagos, Taiye felt she was on top of the world when 20-year-old Ebenezer began to overwhelm her with gifts.
She told Saturday Punch correspondent that though she got proposals from several other men, she opted for a relationship with Ebenezer. Incidentally, the experience turned out so sweet that she felt she could cope with one other man. So, she soon started dating 21-year-old Bola Opke. Incidentally, both men were hardworking mechanics who continued to shower gifts on her and Taiye felt she was having the best of two worlds.
'Don't blame me, Oga; I don suffer plenty plenty. So I wan enjoy small," she said, in defence of her action. According to her, she had known nothing but poverty since she was born in Ilorin, Kwara State. And she believed that she deserved credit for enduring the situation for 14 years before she decided that enough was enough.
'As at January, I was in primary four, not because I was dull, but because I had to stop my education so many times. I would work on the farms for some time and then go back to school when I could afford to pay school fees, only for me to drop out when the money got finished," she recalled.
She said she would not blame her mother for being unable to afford her school fees since her father had died before she could really know him. Her mother who then became the bread winner could not put any bread on the table for Taiye and her twin brother, Kehinde: 'We could not afford to eat more than once a day. Some days we didn't even have anything to eat at all. The suffering was too much to bear."
When Taiye could no longer bear the suffering at home, she decided to leave her mother and brother back in Ilorin and headed for Lagos in search of better life. When she arrived Lagos, the city in which she had no relation to stay with, Taiye decided to earn a living by selling pepper at Iso Pako, in Ebute Metta East.
Good-looking and young, suitors were never in short supply as far as Taiye was concerned. 'But I rejected all of them because they all looked unserious. But when Ebenezer came, he gave me many gifts and I knew he was serious," she said further.
According to Taiye, her relationship with Ebenezer was sweet, as she completely fell in love with the man who obviously knows how to spoil a girl. When she was not selling pepper, she was spending time with Ebenezer at his one-room apartment on Oloto Street in Ebute Metta East. And on many occasions, she spent the night with him.
On his part, Ebenezer enjoyed the company of Taiye and was even said to have boasted to friends that he was the man that deflowered Taiye and the only man that would continue to have the privilege of seeing her nudity.
But unknown to Ebenezer, his co-tenant, Bola, was eyeing Taiye and was scheming to snatch her from Ebenezer. According to Taiye, whenever she went to visit Ebenezer, Bola would find a way to engage her in one conversation or the other. 'I knew what he wanted, but since he didn't come out to say it, I also pretended I did not know," said Taiye.
The hide-and-seek continued until Bola also decided to shower Taiye with gifts and money. Soon, Taiye started dating both men, who were living in the same compound. 'Although Ebenezer was giving me money, when Bola started giving me money too, I could not refuse it because I needed money to go back to school. So I continued to sleep with both of them," she confessed.
However, Saturday Punch learnt that for almost one month, Ebenezer was the odd man out of the trio. He was not aware that the teenage girl he deflowered and boasted of having a patent right of sorts on, was actually cheating him. And she was not doing so with someone else but his co-tenant.
According to another resident of the building who spoke to our correspondent on condition of anonymity, 'for a long time, Ebenezer was the only one that did not know that his girlfriend was also going out with Bola. Every other person in this compound knew, but nobody could dare tell him to avoid trouble."
But everyday is for the thief but one day is for the owner goes an adage. Taiye's double game came to the knowledge of Ebenezer last Saturday and hell broke loose.
Narrating the incident to Saturday Punch at his cell in State Criminal Investigation Department, Panti, Lagos, Ebenezer said that Taiye, who had slept in his room the previous night, got up from bed at 5 am, recalling, 'She told me that she was going to the toilet." But what normally would not have taken her more than three minutes to accomplish continued to drag on until Ebenezer began to feel that something might have happened to Taiye on her way to or from the toilet.
'Since the day had not broken, I couldn't sleep. So I took my torch and went to look for her because I feared that something odd might have happened to her, particularly as there was no light at the backyard where we had the toilet."
Perhaps Ebenezer would have restricted himself to imagination if he had imagined the scene that was to confront him that morning. But as he came out of his room and approached the staircase, Ebenezer noticed the silhouettes of two persons making love under the staircase. 'Since there was no light in the passage, at first, I was afraid because I thought that they were thieves hiding under the steps. Then I decided to point my torch at them," he recalled.
Ebenezer could not believe what he saw. Said he, 'What I saw really surprised me. It was as if I was watching a film. I saw Bola on top of Taiye, making love.
'I was shocked when I found that they were making love. I had seen them together once, when she came to visit me, but I never suspected that she was also going out with him since I had warned her not to be involved with any other man. So I was very angry and I decided to teach him a lesson."
But Bola could not just resign to fate, as Ebenezer made to attack him with a broken bottle. He too had quickly grabbed another bottle, smashed it on the wall, and with the sharp edges of the bottle, he pounced on his rival.Taiye watched with amazement as her lovers engaged each other in a battle of supremacy. 'I shouted and told them to stop fighting but they did not listen to me," she said.
Alerted, other residents of the compound trooped to the scene to watch both men tackle each other with bottles. One of the residents who spoke to Saturday Punch on condition of anonymity, said that Bola was the first to smash Ebenezer's head with the broken bottle that saw blood gushing out. 'In retaliation, Ebenezer stabbed Bola with bottle; he fell to the floor and died."
One of the residents, who witnessed the incident, quickly phoned the police, following which policemen from Denton Police Station, Ebute Metta got to the scene. Both Ebenezer and Taiye were arrested while Bola's lifeless body was deposited at the mortuary of the general hospital in the area.
Ebenezer told Saturday Punch in Panti, where the case was being investigated, that he attacked Bola in self defence: 'I didn't plan to kill him, but he broke my head with a bottle and I paid him back. I no fit siddon dey look am when him dey sleep with my girlfriend. Him go think say I be fool."
However, Police sources at Panti said that Ebenezer would be charged for murder while Taiye would face conspiracy charge.
Also commenting on the incident, Lagos State Police Command's spokesperson, Bode Ojajuni, said that appropriate action would be taken after police investigations.
SATURDAY PUNCH, November 12, 2005