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For several years, she searched unsuccessfully for a man to call her own amid pressure from her mother to get married because age was not on her side. Her desperation heightened when her bosom friend, Veronica, kissed goodbye to spinsterhood in an elaborate ceremony that remained fresh in her memory. On a business trip sometime in February 2011, she encountered an alluring young man with whom she later fell in love. A reserved, handsome stranger who exuded a romantic charm that was shrouded in mystery swept her off her feet. Beginning of trouble
Expectedly, her parents were full of joy when she arrived her village on a Saturday evening to commence the traditional marriage rites, but payment of the bride price was defered because she was already pregnant and the tradition forbade such. Notwithstanding, they returned to Lafia, where they settled down and cohabited as a couple for over five years. A few months after presenting her heartthrob to her parents at Lokobo village in Keana Local Government Area of Nasarawa State where she hails from, she was delivered of a baby boy, a development that further lifted her soul and strengthened their bond. Within a period of five years, she also had two miscarriages, which she believed, was an act of God.
Unraveling the mystery man
Suddenly, in March, this year, she discovered that for almost six years, she had been living with a dead man who she called her husband, the father of her child. It sounds like a fairy tale, but it’s true. This is the story of 39-year-old Angela Tyoor Agber, a boisterous woman of Tiv extraction resident in Lafia, until the macabre encounter turned around her life. She is yet to recover from the shock, after an unscheduled visit by two guests to their home on Obi road, on the outskirts of Lafia, blew the veil off her ghost marriage. He disappeared since that day with her four-year- old son, Joseph Jnr., to a world unknown, leaving her in sorrow and fear.
The bubble burst when Angela, who sells oranges, wanted to rent a shop at a plaza located close to the Lafia-Makurdi Roundabout to expand her business. As part of the conditions, the property owner, Alhaji Musa Usman, requested to meet her husband ostensibly to ensure she was a responsible woman. Unfortunately, her supposed 42-year-old husband, “Barrister” Tyopenda Joseph, was too busy to meet Usman, who decided to visit the couple at home on the fateful day.
He was accompanied by a mason, Mr.Targba Iortim, whom Usman had contracted for a building project. Iortim, also a Tiv from Taraba State, had joined Usman in Lafia for a trip to Abuja. But Usman decided to meet Angela’s husband before embarking on the journey. He drove to the couple’s home without prior notice in company with the mason, unknown to him that Iortim was acquainted with Angela’s husband at Andole village in Kashak Local Government Area of Taraba State, a Tiv community where he hailed from. Angela had barely ushered the visitors into the sitting room when the unexpected happened.
Iortim was jolted when her husband emerged from the bedroom to meet his guests. There was pin-drop silence as Joseph, popularly known as Big Joe while alive, seemed to have frozen on seeing one of his visitors. Moments later, Iortim reportedly summoned courage and hailed him by his nickname, and then, added a shocker: “Big Joe, but you are no more, why are you here”? The response was a thunderous sound; when Angela and her guests recovered from the shock, her husband and child had vanished.
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