Nollywood actor Solomon Akiyesi was a viral subject of a multiple
wedding saga that rocks social media like wildfire on April 13th, 2013.
The 'confused' actor allegedly married three different women within the span of 4 years or so.
His jealous second wife Lilian stormed his wedding with some hoodlums on the aforementioned date to disrupt the wedding service.
Solomon
Akiyesi who has kept silent for a while has broken his silence, in this
recent chat with Damiete Braide of Daily Sun, the actor said his own
side of the story.
Hear Solomon Akiyesi in his own words below;
I've
not only suffered verbal attacks, but also vituperations and near
fisticuffs, all because of another futile attempt of mine at my journey
towards achieving that which I honestly and passionately desire – a
peaceful home and family. Social network sites and blogs have been awash
with how I left Lilian, my “pregnant” wife, to marry Uloma, my Lagos
“mistress” whom they also claimed was pregnant for me. Nothing can be
farther from the truth.
Only a mad or cursed man would simply
leave his pregnant wife and elope with another one. And lest I forget, I
urge you, as you read this, to have an open mind to listen to that
which is true instead of taking sides and jumping into wicked
conclusions with its attendant wicked insults and uncouth commentaries
about how Solomon is running his life and how he is not. I'm not asking
for pity or trying to buy anybody's love at this time.
This is
my life. If at my age I don't know what I want, then I may just remain
the dumb ass that I've been called over and over again. I don't think I
need anyone to give me any lecturing on how I should exercise my
privileges.
For the record, I never planned on marrying more
than one wife. And unlike the serial husband I've been labelled, I had
dreamt and planned a lovely home and family.
And my quest for
this dates back to 2003 after I had moved into Port Harcourt. I soon
settled down with Ezinne, my university days girlfriend, whom I ran into
in Port Harcourt during her National Youth Service. As fate had it, we
couldn't help reliving old times and one thing led to another. One
fateful, rainy Thursday evening in October, 2002, Ezinne came to inform
me that she was pregnant.
It was as far as I was concerned, a
devastating blow to the new life I was living; rap music, cars, money
and women. So, I told her the pregnancy was unacceptable to me. Besides,
I only just started working and needed stability. But months later,
Ezinne was to inform me that she was carrying a baby girl.
And
knowing my attachment to baby girls and not wanting to ever have a baby
outside wedlock, I repented and changed my thuggish ways and asked her
to marry me, more so that I was mature enough in every ramification. Or
so I thought.
And so, sometime in April, 2003, I hired a hall
and invited a pastor to come officiate at my marriage with Ezinne and
bless our rings. All done, we went home and started as husband and wife.
God, the creator, knew how glad I was and looked forward to a happy
home. However, five days after that marriage, I called my new wife on my
way from work to ask what was up for dinner and she told me she had
been in the hospital.
I rushed to the hospital and was told by
Ezinne that she lost the baby. I got her discharged and took her home.
But I was completely broken at the loss of a baby I had expected so
much. Four days later, I asked my wife if she actually saw the dead
baby. She responded by saying the doctor brought it but she gave
instruction for it to be buried because she could not behold the sight.
Instinctively, I called the doctor – both to thank him and to confirm
because he wasn't around when I went to pick her home. After thanking
the doctor, I asked of the sex of my dead baby.
The doctor
didn't talk for like six seconds. I asked him the same question again
and he said he's been restless in his spirit and that he could no longer
keep the fact that there was no baby inside Ezinne and that nothing
like miscarriage happened in his hospital. I challenged him again and
asked if he was not the same person, who confirmed her pregnant and that
Ezinne had been attending antenatal in his hospital.
He
responded that he had not set his eyes on Ezinne since October of the
previous year. Meanwhile, Ezinne had always taken money from me for
antenatal and had even shopped for the baby! It then became clear to me
that this was a fluke all together.
Sadly enough, Ezinne denied
any wrongdoing. For three years, I exposed opportunities for Ezinne to
simply tell me the truth but she never took advantage of any of the
opportunities. Alas! She was not pregnant. I decided to investigate
myself and took her for HSG where it was discovered that there were no
fallopian tubes in her and that there was evidence of previous surgery
of the uterus. I independently probed further and found out with
evidence that Ezinne had a life-threatening abortion in 1992 that
resulted in the rupture and subsequent removal of her womb and tubes.
My
biggest pain was not what I found out but the fact that Ezinne hid all
this from me all these years and was still being economical with the
truth even when confronted with hard evidence! In frustration, I moved
out of the house but not before taking her to her mum in search of the
truth.
Even the mum corroborated what Ezinne gave as excuse for
the scar that runs from her navel down to her pubic region, i.e. she was
operated upon due to menstrual irregularities. I then decided to stay
out for good. While I was out, my relationship with Lillian whom I had
known years earlier grew.
I was always going to see her in
Enugu. I then got me another apartment and Lillian came around quite
often too. Gradually Lillian grew from that little girl I was merely
helping in her schooling, into a mature, witty and intelligent young
woman. So, having taken my people to Ezinne's place for the dissolution
of the marriage – since we did only traditional marriage – I proposed to
Lillian.
And, in 2007, we proceeded to the registry for
marriage. And that was the day her father started troubling me. He
insisted Lillian was not supposed to go home with me. For two years, he
cut communication with me. Shortly after the marriage, my businesses ran
into a crises and my entire life nose-dived.
There was
tremendous loss in my finances. In my travail, Lillian's father went to
the police and told them to deal seriously with me because I was an
“irresponsible son-in-law”. When the challenges kept mounting and seeing
my life was at risk after I was badly shot, I left town to sojourn
elsewhere. In 2010, I gradually re-emerged and we started finding our
footing again.
Even though I tried to settle down again, I found
that the centre could no longer hold, as Lillian had metamorphosed into
a nag and had acquired a fire tongue with which she talked me down and
reigned curses on me at any little provocation. There was no week we
didn't have a major fight, whether I was home or not.
At some
point, she became religious. And having found her way into Winners
Chapel, she suggested to me one day that it was necessary we took our
marriage to God since we hadn't a proper wedding. She said her church
pastors were willing to help in blessing our marriage so there could be a
turnaround. To this, I obliged. She said she would love for us to wear
wedding costumes for the purpose of photographs. To this I also
consented. And so, to Winners Chapel we went and were blessed and
certificated.
But it was as if that blessing was what someone
was waiting for before they would blow the whistle that would usher me
into the hall of pain. Lillian became insatiable.
You would see
tiny ingredients of marriage only when I could ensure her comfort. Once
Lillian's comfort was compromised, she would lampoon me and tell me my
life history in graphic details and lecture me on what Mr. A and B have
done for their wives that I'm not able to do.
It's even worse
when I try to remind her of the recent past that I laboured tenaciously
to keep her happy. Once she told me that there was nothing I had done in
the past that anybody couldn't have done. Imagine sacrificing all
you've got, including almost your life, for someone who would tell you
it's no big deal and that any other person could have done what you did.
And then, suddenly, she wanted me to quit my acting career or she would
divorce me. My phones were always her best companions at night. If she
was not reading my texts, she was in my facebook or BBM.
I had
no peace. My best moment was whenever I had to leave home for work. And
after work I never wanted to go back home. On a trip back home sometime
ago, I was praying that my aircraft should crash and I die instead of
going home. Even when I was driving home, I was under strong temptation
to ram into oncoming vehicles instead of going home.
It was
either that a long list of demand would be waiting for me or an equally
longer list of questions about whom I had been online with and whom I
had been calling and not calling.
Then on the side was a
supposed father-in-law, who claimed he regretted the marriage because he
wasn't getting anything from it and that I only came to destroy the
love that existed in their family before the marriage. So, my joy knew
no bounds when Lillian told me last year that she was pregnant. For me,
it was a good thing. Maybe the baby would take her attention away from
me at last. Then the heat started again. I must provide N2 million for
her to deliver her baby, even though she knows my income and its source.
When her pressure got to a head and to avoid the same road I travelled
with Ezinne, I took Lillian to a gynaecologist. A scan was run on her
and the result was declared before the two of us that she was not
pregnant.
This was after she told me that she had done an
independent scan and that she was carrying triplets! Even with the
medical confirmation, Lillian never stopped her push for N2 million and
money for baby shopping. I ended up suffering a partial stroke in
January. Yet she would wake me up at 2am to ask me of my plans to raise
N2 million for her, even while I was bedridden with stroke.
I
knew then that I was going to die in that marriage and had to do
something about it. Ladies and gentlemen, this is about my life. If what
greeted the Internet and press was that I died, trying to please
Lillian and my marriage, people would still insult me and ask why I
didn't take a walk. And taking a walk I tried to do but I did not do it
right.
I tried to skip due process to avoid hurting anyone. More
so, I did not have the political and emotional will to ask for divorce.
Pray, people, divorce is not like going to a grocery store where you go
to pay your money and come back with a bag full. What would have been
my ground for divorce? I should also confess that I could not find an
answer to what would happen to Lillian if I asked her to go because I
was more than a husband to her.
So, I foot-dragged to the point
of taking the easy way out. And the easy way is not usually the best way
as I found out on Saturday, April 13.
Uloma did not just jump
into the picture to “snatch” Solomon from Lillian. Uloma has been my
friend since 2006. We met again in 2009 at the peak of my business
crisis and have been seeing each other afterwards. Candidly, I was swept
away by the love, understanding and the peaceful disposition Uloma
proffered even as a friend, far from the opposites I was getting back
home. The way Uloma treated me was the exact desires any man longed for
in a wife. So, I was always running to her whenever Lillian lit her
fires.
So, I asked myself why I couldn't marry her. Far from the
evil rumour that I wanted to marry Uloma because of her money, I wanted
to marry Uloma to fill a vacuum in her life and make her happy and
fulfilled because this woman with a heart of gold who has impacted many
lives deserved to be happy.
If that was what I could ever do to
plant some comfort in her life. If there was going to be any immediate
gain for me, it would have been peace of mind and its attendant long
life, not her money or any physical or material gains. I'm not a lazy
man.
Apart from being an actor, I have been in business for
almost fifteen years. Years back, when I poured millions of naira on
exotic cars and a posh house in Port Harcourt, Uloma was a seventy
thousand naira recovery staff in Sterling Bank. Today, even if Uloma
gave me all her salary from where she presently works, it won't be
enough to put Internet credit in my tablets and phones. Someone even
posted that I said I would have 'hammered' if I had married Uloma.
What
could I possibly gain? Uloma wasn't frustrated to the point of
desperation to pay a man to marry her. There was no award for anyone who
married her. She does not own an estate or anything willed to her by
anyone that I was running after. Uloma is not the daughter of any rich
man or top politician. She's as much a hustler as I am.
Ok, yes,
sincerely, maybe I actually would have 'hammered' long life, happiness,
inner joy, a sense of being loved and long life. I also would have
'hammered' having her sisters as my sisters because they love me like
their own brother – a far cry from what my own people give me.
If
I had married Uloma, I know I would have had a good burial whenever I
died because I've always been scared that at my level of loneliness,
whenever I die, my corpse would probably have decomposed before my
people would find me. I beg to be loved and appreciated. Nobody to call
my own.
No one ever cared about me. I have always been alone and
hardworking too. From way back, my joys, my sorrows I have always
swallowed alone. But Uloma was the only person who truly listened to my
heart and understood where I was coming from. So to say any of my failed
marriages was for money is simply stupid and unreasonable. The first
car Ezinne ever drove and financing for her first attempt at business
all came from me.
Lillian was not born with a silver spoon. Her
father is only a retired naval officer and the last time I checked he
had no wealth ascribed to his name. On her 18th birthday, I bought
Lillian an exotic Corolla car. At 300 level in school, I gave her a
Mercedes Benz.
Then she graduated with an LS400 Lexus. This is
apart from a lush apartment and school bills that God used me to help
her take care of. So, who amongst these would I have married for money?
Uloma stood out because she's shared my pain even when it was because of
me and that explains why it was a difficult task telling her Lillian
was still in my tracks.
I couldn't have deliberately gone out of
my way to hurt Uloma, because that will be simply committing suicide.
Hurting Uloma is like waging war against a nation. Is it her legion of
admirers I will have to contend with or her nation of die-hard lovers
who will be tumbling over each other to get a pound of flesh?
I
wouldn't give hurt for the love and hope Uloma and her family gave me.
Unfortunately the same scandals I thought I was preventing by not doing
what everyone is saying I would have done is now the same thing staring
me in the face, and everyone is worse hurt.
And above all, my
own life is now seriously at risk because I feared hurting anyone. I ask
all concerned to please sheathe their swords of anger and find it in
their hearts to forgive me. I will make restitution as much as the mercy
of God permits me. It's never too late to begin again as far as God
keeps us all alive.
I'm a man on a mission for a peaceful
marriage, a good home and family life. I guess my desperation took good
reasoning off me. Again, I am humbly and truly sorry. I thank my friends
who have stood by me through this trial. Your comforting words are like
lights on my dark path.
And for the judgmental few, I urge you; work with the truth while the Almighty fixes that which went wrong in my life.
