Violet Ivie Inemesit, a young woman in her early thirties has narrated her ugly experience in the hands of her in-laws after the demise of her husband, Mr. Inemesit.
Explaining her ordeal in an interview she granted from her hideout, Mrs. Inemesit summarised her suffering as stemming from the historically poor treatment of widows in Africa and the peculiar fetish inclinations of her in-laws, which are quite strange in these modern times, according to her.
Tracing the origin of her ordeal to mid-June, 2020 immediately after her husband, who was diagnosed with kidney failure, eventually died a day after the diagnosis and before he could commence any treatment on June 1, 2020.
“My husband died with no sign of kidney or liver complications whatsoever. No swollen legs or stomach,” she explained.
But according to her, her late mother-in-law (name withheld), before her demise, was an Igbe dancer in Warri, Delta State.
She said further: “My late mother-in-law was into a lot of fetish things, she has plenty of juju, most of which are Idols. A lot of other women come together to worship them and she had a group which she leads.
“After my husband’s death, the family accused me of killing their brother, they summoned me before the elders and as God would have it they also called a prophetess to find out the cause of their brother’s death.
“I left Lagos to Akwa Ibom by road to go and answer the query with my two kids, a journey of about 17 hours on the road.
“It was God that saved me from their hands because I was innocent,” she lamented.
She further alleged that, “When they saw that I kept on saying that I knew nothing about my husband’s death, they turned to my physically challenged little son and called him terrible names that he must have used evil spirit to kill his dad, their brother “.
“They swore that I will die the same way their brother died, that it’s not only their family that will be at a loss of a son, that my family must lose me too,” she added.
She stated that she has since given her life to God. She added further that her husband’s relatives came for their properties. Specifically, her late husband’s brother, one Mr. George Ebong, came and forcefully took her late husband’s car and his personal belongings like clothes, shoes, and jewelry, after physically adulting and dehumanising her which left her with broken ankle, insisting that he wanted to marry her as his second wife if she must have parts of the properties.
According to the brother-in-law, her late husband had promised to buy him and his wife a car and now that he is dead he wanted to carry his car.
“I then asked him what will I use to take care of the kids his brother left behind considering the fact that there is no money in his account.
“He answered saying that he doesn’t care if his brother left money for us or not and that his concern is that he wants the car and he must carry the car.
“As I resisted he kicked me and physically assaulted me and of course over powered me with the boys he came with”.
By right, all my late husband’s properties should go to my sons,” she added. It was further revealed to that her late husband’s brother wanted Mrs Inemesit and her sons bring the properties down to Akwa Ibom to him but she refused hence he came to Lagos to forcefully take them away.
“I told him I can’t bring the car for him in Akwa Ibom, he then said since I didn’t do as he said, I’m no longer a part of their family,” she said. “My brother-in-law Mr. George Ebong who on several occasions sexually harassed me, and his sister kept troubling me since my husband’s demise,” she alleged.
She continues: “Before I could understand what was happening George and some boys came to my house on a Sunday morning as I was preparing to go to church and forcefully took the car and everything away from me and left me and my sons, one of them with physical disabilities with nothing, stranded and frustrated.”
According to her, since they couldn’t have her husband till his death worship their deity or juju, they said it’s now the turn of the son who is even sick of autism to take over and become a priest to the deity, but it was all a ploy to take us to their village and kill me and my children, as we later found out when we got there.
“This is my reason for taking my family and running away from Akwa Ibom in the middle of the night,” she narrated. Inemesit has since been calling out for help from well-meaning Nigerians and human rights groups to come to her aide and rescue on the matter.”
She showed our correspondent a video of how they were hiding in inside a bush in Akwa-Ibom when she went with a friend to rescue the son from where his father’s brothers were keeping him in a shrine for rituals saying the little boy was an evil child who killed their brother, his dad.
She said: “They kept him inside one shrine while I was locked up inside an empty dark room asking me remain there until I agree confess having hands in my husband’s death and also accused my physically challenged son of being the evil behind his death at the same time”.
“One of the ladies there who later became my friends and sympathetic with me came to my rescue at midnight and took me to the shrine where my son was held sick, convulsing and dying, that’s how we rescued him and ran out of that village that night with my other little son that night through the buses