My children are my husband’s source of riches

Marriage Clinic with Agatha Edo, womaneditor@independentngonline.com, gataedo@yahoo.com , 08054500626


Dear Agatha,

I am a passionate reader of your column. I won’t pretend that the problem I am about to share with you is new. I have always suspected it but I am completely helpless.

I am in my 40s and have been married for almost 20 years. My husband is stupendously rich and known in the society. This is why I have been reluctant to discuss this with anybody. To everybody he is a successful businessman and philanthropist but I know the source of his money is behind a closed door he has never allowed me to go into since I married him.

When I gave birth to my first son and he seemed incapable of doing anything by himself, it was given medical reasons. Then I believed the doctors and my husband but I began to suspect something wasn’t right somewhere when certain inexplicable things began to happen in my home.

For instance, my husband is always so generous when the condition of my son worsens. During those times, my husband would be extra nice to him but when he is getting better he becomes so hostile to him to the point of hatred. If you ask him for money at such times, he would snap at you.

Secondly, he has the best houses and cars without his business being visible. He claims to be into body care business but there is really nothing to show from that, although the outside world thinks otherwise.

Why I am writing you is because of what happened some weeks ago. I had gone with my friend to see a pastor over the inability of my second son to move beyond a point in his education and my daughter who at 15 is already sexually active. It is so bad; I caught her with my driver in the car. Although I sacked the driver but something tells me, it is no remedy.

The worst thing is her unrepentant attitude. I know it is more than just the usual teenage rebellion. She was sent abroad but we had to bring her back because of this problem.

The pastor asked me to ask my husband what he was doing with my children and that unless he confesses, the situation of my children would go from bad to worse.

Knowing the erratic nature of my husband, I couldn’t confront him but I know that he is truly responsible. Having lived with him all these years, I know the things my husband has done. Do I report him to the Police? I am a desperate mother who wants the best for her children. What do I do? Please conceal my identity.

Confused Wife.



Dear Confused Wife,

Frankly, this is a choice you have to make on your own. Nobody can make this all important decision for you. You have to make the choice between your children and commitment to your husband. You are the one in the marriage, you know why you have kept quiet all these years as well as why you have supported your husband in his quest to be rich.

Now that you want to open up, you also have a reason for it. What is between you and your husband is very deep for a third party to intervene. Although you presented yourself as the weak party, the helpless one, the fact remains that there is no way you can absolve yourself of complicity in this whole thing.

Having lived with him for the number of years you have, you can’t deny spending the money he got from these rituals. If you have always suspected him of being responsible for your son’s mental condition, accepting money from him, spending it on yourself and children shows support for his ways. In a way too, you encouraged him to feed on the other children. Had you risen to challenge him not minding his temper, daring him to do his worst, there is no way he would have had the boldness to do what he liked with your remaining children.

He may be a hard and ruthless man but, given the possibility of you exposing him to the world, he would have thought twice before using another child in the house.

Chances are he may not even be directly responsible for the plight of your children. They just might be victims of repercussions as a result of the many souls their father destroyed and is still destroying for money. You are witnessing it to feel what the parents of all those innocent souls he used to get rich and keep his family in affluence are going through.

Now, you want to come out in the open because you can no longer endure all that is happening to your children. Would you have considered reporting your husband to the Police if his deeds didn’t catch up with your children, didn’t affect you as a person? Chances are you wouldn’t if your own children weren’t giving you problems.

While you are perfectly within your rights to do as you please, also consider your own contributions to the kind of life your husband is living. Would you have ever considered marrying him if he weren’t rich? You may not be his initial reason for his actions but you and the children eventually became the grounds for keeping at it. You in particular through you silence, gave him all the support to think he is on the right path. A wife is more than a woman who takes care of the home, she is her husband’s support base and his strength. She has the capacity to make him stop so many things she doesn’t want in his life.

What efforts have you made all these years to stop your man from his destructive ways?

Ensure that the step you take is one that you are more than prepared for its consequences. To stay in it is dangerous just as it is to report him to the law enforcement officials. Whatever your choice is at the end of the day, be prepared to fight for your life as well as those of your children if what you say concerning your husband is true. Other members of the cult would definitely fight back because it won’t just be him but all of them that you would be taking on.

You need the presence and strength of God to win this battle. So go first on your knees and beg for this power to not just fight but to win.

Good luck.