Marital Tragedy! Obasanjo’s Son’s Marriage to Adebutu’s Daughter in Trouble

• Husband abandons home over alleged wife’s maltreatment

Love comes with a twist. Beneath its syrupy savor lies a bitter, sour tang. Ask Olujuwon Obasanjo. The son of former president Olusegun Obasanjo suffered an abrupt end to his marriage of few months. Bliss deserted their marriage in unexpected hours, like a crushed knight fleeing the gates of a fallen fortress.

To Olujuwon, the love that warmed the inner cockles of his heart soon became the thorn that pierced his lungs while he inhaled the fragrance of passion. As the story goes, sometime last year the wife of former President Olusegun Obasanjo, Mrs Taiwo Obasanjo, filed a suit at an Ikeja High Court, seeking to stop the wedding of her son scheduled for May. She lost the suit. Mrs. Obasanjo’s objection to the timing of the wedding was based on a prophecy that her son’s wedding should be a quiet event. But despite her objection, the wedding went ahead in her absence.

In an interview with a national newspaper, she spoke on her son’s marriage, why he left his matrimonial home and other sundry issues. According to her, she went to Ikoyi, Lagos, to see her son, “She (Her daughter in-law) told me she had not seen my son since November so I started asking people about this. If I don’t know the whereabouts of my son, should I just fold my arms and watch? Does that make me a responsible mother? I don’t stay close to them. Moreover, Abeokuta to Lagos is not one-minute drive and since they got married I have never interfered and I don’t go there.

So the young man has gone into hiding and this is not the first time this is happening. He has been running away from this girl, he would disappear and then when they settle the matter he will come back home. Now everybody said they are tired because every time they are always quarrelling…. Thank you for asking me that question. I have visited daddy Adebutu and I even went with my family so that they won’t think it’s his mother that is causing it all. Like I told you earlier, my son doesn’t call me, he doesn’t visit me. The two of them didn’t acknowledge me as a mother.

She only does that when her husband runs away from the house and she will talk to me as if I am her maid too. Asking me questions like, where is he? When last did you see him? So I went to see daddy Adebutu who is a very good man. The problem of this marriage, which they are trying to heap on me is from that girl, her mother Rosemary Dacosta and daddy OBJ. Tope is like a masquerade she will be crying when you are talking to her but she insults everybody in the family, even the Obasanjo’s family, she rubbishes everybody. He told the boy she wanted hundred thousand naira as allowance.

I told her, this boy doesn’t have money. He works for his father, he is a graduate and he studied International Relations. My son is not idiotic he is just a complete gentleman, very respectful and peaceful.

But this girl is trying to change him. My son is humble and he keeps to himself”, she said. Now more than ever, the rhetoric on the lips of many victims, survivors and spectators of silver spoon marriages is: “Is being gorgeous, wealthy, and famous the kiss of death for lasting love?” Well, sadly it often is. Why? Because most silver spoon kids and partners in celebrity marriages don’t really need each other for survival and even for comfort, oftentimes. At least not to the extent that the average Nigerian depends on his or her spouse. Many a party to such marriages has revealed that they had been victims of forced marriages and inconvenient betrothals that never enjoyed their consent.

After spending so much money, the farce devastatingly ends oftentimes for the two strange bedfellows forcefully united on the altar of their parents’ vanities and egotism. It’s indeed a pitiful world for these scions of the rich. Thus having married young, they keep on marrying, springing from bride to bride or groom to groom like the chamois of the Alps undeniably adept at leaping from crag to crag.