At 49, Jubril was thought to have an enviable marriage by his married friends – a 22-year partnership with beautiful Tumi who bore him three lovely children. They met in college and were almost inseparable.
Then she became a mother of three, and gradually her appearance at parties
with him began to fade. “When Jubril started staying out late and at most weekends, I warned my daughter of its implications”, Miriam, Tumi’s mother said. “As a Muslim, Jubril could be polygamous if he desired, but Tumi seemed to trust him not to take another wife. Well, he did. Not only that, he had said that since they lived in a sprawling accommodation, the new wife could have one of the chalets. At his age and with his position, Jubril said he wouldn’t want to be running from one woman’s house to the other if his new wife were to live on a different premises. Tumi was devastated to say the least. She’d invested so much into her marriage, and to be replaced with a new model in her life as if she was an old car, was too hard for her to take.
“I had to counsel her all of the time, to tell her that she too was a product of polygamy, but she believed her husband was throwing away all they’d both worked for, all the investments in emotions and their home for a gold-digger. She was sure her husband would soon regret his decision. When I eventually met Yosola, the new wife, I was a bit taken aback by her simplicity. She was young and fresh-faced all right, but you could hardly call her a gold-digger. She came from a very strict Muslim background. Her parents were rich and she turned out to be a successful business woman.
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