Understanding Mrs. MohBad

I must apologise to any moralist, sentimentalist, or ’emotionallist’ whose public or private sensibilities may be offended by this piece because this is a period of acute display of fleeting emotions.

Let me take you back to an incident in the early ’80s when Major General Muhammadu Buhari was in charge of the country with his sidekick, Major General Tunde Idiagbon.

I went to visit a friend at their home one early morning. I had just one friend my parents ‘approved’ for me to visit, and he could enter our home as well. If you are the child of two teachers, you’ll understand what I mean. So, school was on holiday, and one had the liberty to kill time by visiting friends and playing football.

I was shocked to see my friend’s mother, also a teacher, weeping profusely. At first, I thought they had lost a loved one. Because I couldn’t ask the mother directly what happened, I turned to my friend, who was standing aloof in their big living room. He was reluctant to tell me, but after two stuttering attempts, he gave up. So, there I was, standing and watching the then-middle-aged woman weep. In fact, till date, I believe she increased the tempo of her weeping to wailing because of my presence.

After about three awkward minutes, I summoned the courage to ask her, “Mummy, what happened? Her eyes filled with tears, she replied sharply, as if to chastise me for taking too long to ask, “Ask your friend!”

Because I was a year older than my friend, I decided to invoke the seniority clause and asked with some degree of authority what had transpired between him and his mother that led to the early morning lamentations. “She said that I accused her of infidelity”, my friend struggled to let out. My confusion increased. Infidelity? Why would a son make such a grave allegation against his mother? What led to that?

And then, the mother seemed to have gained a new energy now that I knew why she was crying and how serious the situation was. She turned to me and decided to play on my emotional side. “See me, oh! Since I knew my husband (that is the father of my friend), no man has seen even my knees (then, women, especially primary school teachers, wore long gowns and tied double wrappers, if they are Urhobo), let alone my laps. But your friend here is accusing me of infidelity”!

I was still processing how and why a son would make such a grievous allegation against a mother when my friend cut in sharply. “Nor mind my mama, nor be so e happen“. The woman, bless her soul, didn’t wait for my friend to finish. “Nor be so e happen abi? Nor be your fault”, she retorted in pidgin English to match my friend.

Before long, family members began to troop in, elderly men and women numbering about seven. I can’t recall exactly how many there were that day. And the father of my friend, who was also a teacher, came back home. Then I knew it was a serious matter, and my friend, and, by extension, I, were in trouble. Because back in the days, if your friend got into trouble at home, the trouble always found a way to get to your side, and vice versa. That was the time when the adage “show me your company, and I will tell you who you are” worked effectively. Not anymore.

I desperately wanted to sneak away, but my friend’s mum was a step ahead of me. She commanded me to stay back and witness the sacrilegious ‘crime’ my friend had committed. I later found out that my friend, out of anger and frustration, told his mum to ‘show him his father’ because he felt he was not getting a ‘better deal’ like his other siblings in terms of small favours children get from parents. He was obviously not the most favoured among the seven children in the home, even though he was the fifth in ranking. So, he became angry that morning after he was refused petty cash that we would both spend on our outing that day as children of ‘middle-class’ families. I had already found a way to squeeze it out of my mum before leaving home that morning. So, he angrily said perhaps his mum should show him his dad since most times he asked for little things, the requests were not granted, unlike his other siblings. And that, to the mum, was an affront and a question mark on her fidelity.

The entire family agreed with the mother. In my youthful mind, I saw nothing wrong with what my friend said. He was angry, yes, so? For the over three hours, the family court sat, my friend had to kneel down on the hard cement floor. I think about two hours into his kneeling, I was ordered to join him on the floor. That was the old days when, if your friend was guilty, you were guilty of the same ‘crime’, by association.’

One aspect of the issue that stayed on my mind until today – about our decades later – was the insistence of the mother to go to a powerful and dreaded deity to swear if she did not have my friend for the dad. She said that was the only thing that would prove her innocence. That was the traditional DNA then. DNA technology came into existence in the mid 80s but the DNA Identification Act came into being in the United States in 1994, So, nobody in that parlour that morning knew anything about DNA. The family elders pleaded with my friend’s mum and told her they believed her, and there was no need to go to that deity. The husband, my friend’s father, was profusely pleading with his wife. The odds were stacked so high against my friend – and, by extension, me – that he had to burst into tears and beg for forgiveness for his infantile outburst. What perhaps stopped me from joining him in his teary expedition was because I was still amused by the way they all took what ordinarily I viewed as nothing really serious because of my age then.

Now, fast forward to 2023. A young artiste died tragically in a mysterious circumstance. The entire nation is still trying to grapple with the tragedy, and boom, an accusation of infidelity that the five-month-old son he left behind does not belong to him. The person who made the accusation would not back down. The person, widely believed to be of unstable mind, would not let go. The person is challenging the wife (or is it a girlfriend) to confirm or deny what he/she is alleging. Yes, this is a trying time for the young mother. She just lost her childhood love prematurely to the cold hands of death, and the poor soul is not being allowed to rest; what with the exhumation of his body for autopsy by the police and the controversies still flying around surrounding his death. But there is an Urhobo saying that “the crying eyes still can see clearly”. So, is it civilisation that is making this young mother not seem to bother that her fidelity is being questioned seriously and brutally? And someone has even made an open challenge that she takes the little child for a DNA test to ascertain if truly Ilerioluwa Aloba (also known as MohBad), was the true father and he is ready to cough out N10 million, if she takes up the challenge!

And instead of accepting the challenge of a DNA test for her child, she is currently engaging a sentimental and emotional mob to plead her case. Trust the ever-sentimental and emotional Nigerians, the battle cry now is: “Did MohBad deny the child’s paternity before he passed away”? “Only the family can authorise the DNA test, not anyone else”. “Stop meddling in a family affair”. But I must ask, if MohBad’s case were solely a family matter, why is everyone so impassioned about seeking justice for him due to the circumstances surrounding his demise?

By the way, in case the young woman is unaware, the sympathy and goodwill she’s receiving, totaling millions in cash donations, largely stem from the child she claims belongs to the late artiste. So, it’s only fair and just for the world to determine if the child truly belongs to MohBad, and there’s only one reliable means of doing so – a DNA test. If we were in 2023 when the incident involving my friend and his mother transpired, she would not have suggested going to a powerful deity to swear her innocence; she would have readily opted for a DNA test. So, the question I pose here is, why is the young mother hesitant to have a DNA test conducted on her son to confirm if he is indeed the late MohBad’s child?

I came across a ‘leaked’ chat supposedly between her and someone (in this age of the Internet, one cannot independently verify such information). In the chat, she claimed she was willing to consent to a DNA test for her son, but people  should plead with her sister to allow it to happen, stating that the sister is now in control since her husband passed away. If this ‘leaked’ chat is authentic, then she’s not taking the matter seriously. She should ideally be taking the lead and proposing the hospital for the test, and if the accusers are hesitant, she should have taken legal action against them for libel and defamation by now.

She cannot claim to be in mourning and use it as an excuse to avoid a DNA test, yet she and her family are collecting millions in donations for the child’s upkeep, while the child’s paternity is being questioned! It is inconceivable that any mother – and I say this with confidence – whose fidelity is being challenged to the extent that some allege the child she claims belongs to the known father actually belongs to someone else unknown, would feel at ease amid such a turbulent storm.

To conclude, I will share a well-known Urhobo proverb/adage: “One does not need to go into a room before revealing their knees, if someone accuses them of having a scar there”. What does it truly take for someone to roll up their trousers to knee level when accused of having a scar on their knees? But insisting that everyone must enter a room before they reveal their knees implies there’s something they are attempting to hide.

Let me be clear; I am not suggesting that Mrs. MohBad has something to hide. Perhaps she is just uncomfortable revealing the metaphorical scar on her knees in public.

Akpovi-Esade is a journalist, public commentator, and media lobbyist