Nollywood actor Solomon Akiyesi was a viral subject of a multiple wedding saga that rocks social media like wildfire on April 13th, 2013.
The ‘confused’ actor allegedly married 3 different women within the span of 4 years or so. His jealous 2nd wife Lilian stormed his wedding with some hoodlums on the aforementioned date to disrupt the wedding service. Solomon akiyesi who has kept silent for a while has broken his silence. In this recent chat with Damiete Braide the actor said his own side of the story.
“I’ve not only suffered verbal attacks, but also vituperations and near fisticuffs, all because of another futile attempt of mine at my journey towards achieving that which I honestly and passionately desire – a peaceful home and family. Social network sites and blogs have been awash with how I left Lillian, my “pregnant” wife, to marry Uloma, my Lagos “mistress” whom they also claimed was pregnant for me. Nothing can be farther from the truth.
Only a mad or cursed man would simply leave his pregnant wife and elope with
another one. And lest I forget, I urge you, as you read this, to have an open
mind to listen to that which is true instead of taking sides and jumping into
wicked conclusions with its attendant wicked insults and uncouth commentaries
about how Solomon is running his life and how he is not. I’m not asking for pity
or trying to buy anybody’s love at this time.
This is my life. If at my
age I don’t know what I want, then I may just remain the dumb ass that I’ve been
called over and over again. I don’t think I need anyone to give me any lecturing
on how I should exercise my privileges.
For the record, I never planned
on marrying more than one wife. And unlike the serial husband I’ve been
labelled, I had dreamt and planned a lovely home and family.
And my quest
for this dates back to 2003 after I had moved into Port Harcourt. I soon settled
down with Ezinne, my university days girlfriend, whom I ran into in Port
Harcourt during her National Youth Service. As fate had it, we couldn’t help
reliving old times and one thing led to another. One fateful, rainy Thursday
evening in October, 2002, Ezinne came to inform me that she was
pregnant.
It was as far as I was concerned, a devastating blow to the new
life I was living; rap music, cars, money and women. So, I told her the
pregnancy was unacceptable to me. Besides, I only just started working and
needed stability. But months later, Ezinne was to inform me that she was
carrying a baby girl.
And knowing my attachment to baby girls and not
wanting to ever have a baby outside wedlock, I repented and changed my thuggish
ways and asked her to marry me, more so that I was mature enough in every
ramification. Or so I thought.
And so, sometime in April, 2003, I hired a
hall and invited a pastor to come officiate at my marriage with Ezinne and bless
our rings. All done, we went home and started as husband and wife. God, the
creator, knew how glad I was and looked forward to a happy home. However, five
days after that marriage, I called my new wife on my way from work to ask what
was up for dinner and she told me she had been in the hospital.
I rushed
to the hospital and was told by Ezinne that she lost the baby. I got her
discharged and took her home. But I was completely broken at the loss of a baby
I had expected so much. Four days later, I asked my wife if she actually saw the
dead baby. She responded by saying the doctor brought it but she gave
instruction for it to be buried because she could not behold the sight.
Instinctively, I called the doctor – both to thank him and to confirm because he
wasn’t around when I went to pick her home. After thanking the doctor, I asked
of the sex of my dead baby.
The doctor didn’t talk for like six seconds.
I asked him the same question again and he said he’s been restless in his spirit
and that he could no longer keep the fact that there was no baby inside Ezinne
and that nothing like miscarriage happened in his hospital. I challenged him
again and asked if he was not the same person, who confirmed her pregnant and
that Ezinne had been attending antenatal in his hospital.
He responded
that he had not set his eyes on Ezinne since October of the previous year.
Meanwhile, Ezinne had always taken money from me for antenatal and had even
shopped for the baby! It then became clear to me that this was a fluke all
together.
Sadly enough, Ezinne denied any wrongdoing. For three years, I
exposed opportunities for Ezinne to simply tell me the truth but she never took
advantage of any of the opportunities. Alas! She was not pregnant. I decided to
investigate myself and took her for HSG where it was discovered that there were
no fallopian tubes in her and that there was evidence of previous surgery of the
uterus. I independently probed further and found out with evidence that Ezinne
had a life-threatening abortion in 1992 that resulted in the rupture and
subsequent removal of her womb and tubes.
My biggest pain was not what I
found out but the fact that Ezinne hid all this from me all these years and was
still being economical with the truth even when confronted with hard evidence!
In frustration, I moved out of the house but not before taking her to her mum in
search of the truth.
Even the mum corroborated what Ezinne gave as excuse
for the scar that runs from her navel down to her pubic region, i.e. she was
operated upon due to menstrual irregularities. I then decided to stay out for
good. While I was out, my relationship with Lillian whom I had known years
earlier grew.
I was always going to see her in Enugu. I then got me
another apartment and Lillian came around quite often too. Gradually Lillian
grew from that little girl I was merely helping in her schooling, into a mature,
witty and intelligent young woman. So, having taken my people to Ezinne’s place
for the dissolution of the marriage – since we did only traditional marriage – I
proposed to Lillian.
And, in 2007, we proceeded to the registry for
marriage. And that was the day her father started troubling me. He insisted
Lillian was not supposed to go home with me. For two years, he cut communication
with me. Shortly after the marriage, my businesses ran into a crises and my
entire life nose-dived.
There was tremendous loss in my finances. In my
travail, Lillian’s father went to the police and told them to deal seriously
with me because I was an “irresponsible son-in-law”. When the challenges kept
mounting and seeing my life was at risk after I was badly shot, I left town to
sojourn elsewhere. In 2010, I gradually re-emerged and we started finding our
footing again.
Even though I tried to settle down again, I found that the
centre could no longer hold, as Lillian had metamorphosed into a nag and had
acquired a fire tongue with which she talked me down and reigned curses on me at
any little provocation. There was no week we didn’t have a major fight, whether
I was home or not.
At some point, she became religious. And having found
her way into Winners Chapel, she suggested to me one day that it was necessary
we took our marriage to God since we hadn’t a proper wedding. She said her
church pastors were willing to help in blessing our marriage so there could be a
turnaround. To this, I obliged. She said she would love for us to wear wedding
costumes for the purpose of photographs. To this I also consented. And so, to
Winners Chapel we went and were blessed and certificated.
But it was as
if that blessing was what someone was waiting for before they would blow the
whistle that would usher me into the hall of pain. Lillian became
insatiable.
You would see tiny ingredients of marriage only when I could
ensure her comfort. Once Lillian’s comfort was compromised, she would lampoon me
and tell me my life history in graphic details and lecture me on what Mr. A and
B have done for their wives that I’m not able to do.
It’s even worse when
I try to remind her of the recent past that I laboured tenaciously to keep her
happy. Once she told me that there was nothing I had done in the past that
anybody couldn’t have done. Imagine sacrificing all you’ve got, including almost
your life, for someone who would tell you it’s no big deal and that any other
person could have done what you did. And then, suddenly, she wanted me to quit
my acting career or she would divorce me. My phones were always her best
companions at night. If she was not reading my texts, she was in my facebook or
BBM.
I had no peace. My best moment was whenever I had to leave home for
work. And after work I never wanted to go back home. On a trip back home
sometime ago, I was praying that my aircraft should crash and I die instead of
going home. Even when I was driving home, I was under strong temptation to ram
into oncoming vehicles instead of going home.
It was either that a long
list of demand would be waiting for me or an equally longer list of questions
about whom I had been online with and whom I had been calling and not
calling.
Then on the side was a supposed father-in-law, who claimed he
regretted the marriage because he wasn’t getting anything from it and that I
only came to destroy the love that existed in their family before the marriage.
So, my joy knew no bounds when Lillian told me last year that she was pregnant.
For me, it was a good thing. Maybe the baby would take her attention away from
me at last. Then the heat started again. I must provide N2 million for her to
deliver her baby, even though she knows my income and its source. When her
pressure got to a head and to avoid the same road I travelled with Ezinne, I
took Lillian to a gynaecologist. A scan was run on her and the result was
declared before the two of us that she was not pregnant.
This was after
she told me that she had done an independent scan and that she was carrying
triplets! Even with the medical confirmation, Lillian never stopped her push for
N2 million and money for baby shopping. I ended up suffering a partial stroke in
January. Yet she would wake me up at 2am to ask me of my plans to raise N2
million for her, even while I was bedridden with stroke.
I knew then that
I was going to die in that marriage and had to do something about it. Ladies and
gentlemen, this is about my life. If what greeted the Internet and press was
that I died, trying to please Lillian and my marriage, people would still insult
me and ask why I didn’t take a walk. And taking a walk I tried to do but I did
not do it right.
I tried to skip due process to avoid hurting anyone.
More so, I did not have the political and emotional will to ask for divorce.
Pray, people, divorce is not like going to a grocery store where you go to pay
your money and come back with a bag full. What would have been my ground for
divorce? I should also confess that I could not find an answer to what would
happen to Lillian if I asked her to go because I was more than a husband to
her.
So, I foot-dragged to the point of taking the easy way out. And the
easy way is not usually the best way as I found out on Saturday, April
13.
Uloma did not just jump into the picture to “snatch” Solomon from
Lillian. Uloma has been my friend since 2006. We met again in 2009 at the peak
of my business crisis and have been seeing each other afterwards. Candidly, I
was swept away by the love, understanding and the peaceful disposition Uloma
proffered even as a friend, far from the opposites I was getting back home. The
way Uloma treated me was the exact desires any man longed for in a wife. So, I
was always running to her whenever Lillian lit her fires.
So, I asked
myself why I couldn’t marry her. Far from the evil rumour that I wanted to marry
Uloma because of her money, I wanted to marry Uloma to fill a vacuum in her life
and make her happy and fulfilled because this woman with a heart of gold who has
impacted many lives deserved to be happy.
If that was what I could ever
do to plant some comfort in her life. If there was going to be any immediate
gain for me, it would have been peace of mind and its attendant long life, not
her money or any physical or material gains. I’m not a lazy man.
Apart
from being an actor, I have been in business for almost fifteen years. Years
back, when I poured millions of naira on exotic cars and a posh house in Port
Harcourt, Uloma was a seventy thousand naira recovery staff in Sterling Bank.
Today, even if Uloma gave me all her salary from where she presently works, it
won’t be enough to put Internet credit in my tablets and phones. Someone even
posted that I said I would have ‘hammered’ if I had married Uloma.
What
could I possibly gain? Uloma wasn’t frustrated to the point of desperation to
pay a man to marry her. There was no award for anyone who married her. She does
not own an estate or anything willed to her by anyone that I was running after.
Uloma is not the daughter of any rich man or top politician. She’s as much a
hustler as I am.
Ok, yes, sincerely, maybe I actually would have
‘hammered’ long life, happiness, inner joy, a sense of being loved and long
life. I also would have ‘hammered’ having her sisters as my sisters because they
love me like their own brother – a far cry from what my own people give
me.
If I had married Uloma, I know I would have had a good burial
whenever I died because I’ve always been scared that at my level of loneliness,
whenever I die, my corpse would probably have decomposed before my people would
find me. I beg to be loved and appreciated. Nobody to call my own.
No one
ever cared about me. I have always been alone and hardworking too. From way
back, my joys, my sorrows I have always swallowed alone. But Uloma was the only
person who truly listened to my heart and understood where I was coming from. So
to say any of my failed marriages was for money is simply stupid and
unreasonable. The first car Ezinne ever drove and financing for her first
attempt at business all came from me.
Lillian was not born with a silver
spoon. Her father is only a retired naval officer and the last time I checked he
had no wealth ascribed to his name. On her 18th birthday, I bought Lillian an
exotic Corolla car. At 300 level in school, I gave her a Mercedes
Benz.
Then she graduated with an LS400 Lexus. This is apart from a lush
apartment and school bills that God used me to help her take care of. So, who
amongst these would I have married for money? Uloma stood out because she’s
shared my pain even when it was because of me and that explains why it was a
difficult task telling her Lillian was still in my tracks.
I couldn’t
have deliberately gone out of my way to hurt Uloma, because that will be simply
committing suicide. Hurting Uloma is like waging war against a nation. Is it her
legion of admirers I will have to contend with or her nation of die-hard lovers
who will be tumbling over each other to get a pound of flesh?
I wouldn’t
give hurt for the love and hope Uloma and her family gave me. Unfortunately the
same scandals I thought I was preventing by not doing what everyone is saying I
would have done is now the same thing staring me in the face, and everyone is
worse hurt.
And above all, my own life is now seriously at risk because I
feared hurting anyone. I ask all concerned to please sheathe their swords of
anger and find it in their hearts to forgive me. I will make restitution as much
as the mercy of God permits me. It’s never too late to begin again as far as God
keeps us all alive.
I’m a man on a mission for a peaceful marriage, a
good home and family life. I guess my desperation took good reasoning off me.
Again, I am humbly and truly sorry. I thank my friends who have stood by me
through this trial. Your comforting words are like lights on my dark
path.
And for the judgmental few, I urge you; work with the truth while
the Almighty fixes that which went wrong in my life.
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