as a movie script, for sure. According to her, she was raised by her
father's ghost and was impregnated with her three children by a man
who should have passed away long ago.
The Nigerian Tribune had an opportunity to interview the young woman
and to learn her story:
Before now, chilling stories had been told of individuals who
continued to experience life even after their clear deaths. The Yoruba
call them Akudaaya. To the Hausa, they are Satalwa. Time after time,
there were stories of how the dead, who were supposed to be six feet
under the ground, would still stick around on the surface of the earth
and lead lives as normal, regular human beings albeit in faraway
places where their chances of bumping into either families or
acquaintances who had previously bade them goodbye from this world are
virtually zero.
Many have dismissed such stories as fictions, hallucinations or
fabrications, but the recent experience of a 20-year-old Taiyelolu
Abdulrahman, whose father, who died almost 20 years ago, nurtured till
she was married to another dead or "ghost" husband, is lending
credence to such weird developments.
It was a Herculean task getting Taiyelolu to grant Saturday Tribune an
interview because, according to her, she had already spoken at length
with a popular Yoruba magazine which she claimed only used her story
for economic reasons. "Where is the assistance they promised would
come my way as a result of the interview I granted them?"
Her father-in-law, Mr. Raufu Gbadamosi, also was not favourably
disposed to Taiyelolu granting another press interview. He showed
disapproval when he shook his head, disappeared into his room and then
reappeared with a cap and just exited the house.
When she finally opened up, it turned out that nothing could be more
bizarre than Taiyelolu's story. She and her twin brother, Kehinde,
grew up with their father in a flat at the Ajah area of Lagos. They
led a relatively comfortable life in the house where they only
depended on generator as the only source of electricity. Although
their father was not engaged in any kind of work, he provided for
them.
"My father was not working. He never left the house except on a few
occasions at night. But if I asked for N50, 000, he gave it to me. We
had no visitors and we visited nobody," she said.
All they had to do were sleep, eat and watch home videos.
Asked about her mother, she said she and her twin brother grew up to
know only their father. They did not see any woman with him. To go out
of the house, their father gave the twins a small gourd each which
they simply clasped to their palms and then they burst out on the road
and board vehicles to the market to purchase food items like wheat,
semovita, macaroni, spaghetti and rice. They never consumed amala (yam
flour meal).
On a particular day, however, Taiyelolu forgot to take her gourd and
as she stepped out of the house, what confronted her was a cemetery
with a lot of vaults and a bushy environment.
She screamed and dashed back inside. Then, her father told her to pick
the gourd, atona (guide) as it was called. As she clasped the object
to her palm and then ventured out, this time, she found herself on a
busy tarred road.
Another incident which frightened her happened in the night. "My
father went out whenever he wanted but it was always around 10.00 or
11.00 p.m. He would not take anyone along with him. But there was a
day I begged him to take me out to where he usually went and he
obliged. When we got there, something strange and fearful happened. It
was like a canteen and there, I saw a small cooking stand with a big
pot on it without firewood or fire and the food was boiling. I asked
my father how it was possible for food to cook without firewood and
fire and the woman selling the food became angry and slapped me. She
asked my father who I was; that I was not part of them but only wanted
to expose their secrets. My father begged her and we left the place,"
she remarked.
After the incident, her father refused to take her out again so that
she would not be privy to the secrets and circumstances surrounding
their true identities. Since then, she refused to take food from her
father, but only cooked her own food.
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