A herbalist at Malaka village in Owode-Obafemi Local Government Area of Ogun State, Lamidi Ifaloba has confessed that he made love to a housewife, Shadiat Sikiru Olaleye because she begged him to do so, and he had no choice than to comply.
According to him, Shadiat lured him to bed on a day her husband chased her out of their apartment during a quarrel and she rushed to his house around 1 am.
The herbalist, who is claiming the paternity of a male child the housewife had, against the claim by her husband, said: “Actually, his wife ran to my house in the night and accused her husband of beating her over a disagreement.
“The weather was actually cold that night and I asked her to stay till next morning while I was busy fixing some things. But she told me that she suspected her husband’s sperm was not fertile enough to get her pregnant.
“As I tried to step out of the room, she pulled me to herself and asked me to make love to her, saying that she wanted to test her fertility.
“I was shocked and didn’t want to raise the alarm because I didn’t want the neighbours to know about what was going on between us, since I had once been falsely accused by some residents of doing something similar. So I made love to her that night.”
However, Shadiat’s husband, of the same Malaka village in Owode-Obafemi Local Government Area, Sikiru Olaleye, said that he was shocked to learn that the baby he thought was his was actually fathered by the herbalist who lives in the neighbourhood.
Olaleye, a 42, said: “I had never seen anything like this before except in a movie. It happened that my wife Shadiat and I had a disagreement and she left for her hometown in Iwo, Osun State, with our son.
“I visited her hometown and tried in vain to persuade her parents to reconcile us. I even gave Shadiat’s parents N12,000 for her transportation back to my house, but she refused.
“So, I gave up on the possibility of her returning to my home and took solace in the belief that when the time is ripe, my son would come back to me since I had tried my possible best to make her return home.
“It was a shock when some people in our neighbourhood started mocking me that my son belongs to a herbalist in the nearby village called Malaka.
“His name is Lamidi Ifaloba, a herbalist whom my wife patronised and he actually made some fertility concoctions for my wife when she could not get pregnant for about six years.
“Ignorant of what was going on, I even took the baby to him for spiritual guidance on his (baby’s) future; a custom known in Yoruba culture as akosejaye, three days after my wife was delivered of the baby.
“Ifaloba would later reveal to one of my brothers in the community, Ismaila Jinadu popularly called Erosion, that he is the father of Korede, my three-year-old son.
“I was shocked and devastated and I could not pull myself together for a long time, especially when I learnt that a lot of people in the community already knew about the matter.
“I learnt that Ifaloba claimed to have named the boy Junior and even boasted that the matter would unsettle the community.”
Asked whether there was a quarrel between him and his wife on the day she left home, Olaleye said: “We did not have any quarrel on the day she left my house. I only returned from work and found that she had left with all her belongings.
“Even our neighbours did not know when she moved all her belongings out of our apartment.”
Olaleye said that his wife could not have accused him of being impotent or use that as an excuse to engage in extra-marital affairs with Ifaloba which resulted in the controversial pregnancy and child.
He said: “I have had three children from my previous marriage to another woman and my first child currently attends Abeokuta Grammar School.
“I am no longer interested in taking back my wife, but I want to have custody of my son, hence I am crying out to the public to dissuade Ifaloba from taking what truly belongs to me after his escapades with my wife. He cannot take my wife and also take my son.”
Source: The Nation.
