On the night of Monday July 24, 2017, she went to bed late, with
full intent to wake up early and prepare her husband’s favourite meal
for breakfast before they would set out to their farm.
About 5.00am, she was awakened by intermittent thunderstorm which
followed a downpour. As she made her way to the rest room to ease
herself, she heard a shrill cry from the room where her husband and
their two-year old son, Jacob slept in their home in Azubi, which is on
the outskirts of Lafia, the state capital. On her return, she dashed
straight to the room to be confronted with a shocker.
Her beloved husband, Clement Adigizi, and the only child whom she
bore 19 years after having eight miscarriages in a 21-year-old marriage,
lay stone dead on the bed. They had been struck by lightning, leaving
her alone in grief and pain.
“I met my husband 21 years ago in 1996, at a market in Nasarawa
Eggon, where he hailed from, when I took some yams there for sale; he
bought from me and our relationship started from there, which later
blossomed to marriage. I had eight miscarriages before 2014 when I got
pregnant and was delivered of a baby boy on May 2, 2015. It was a great
celebration for us to have a child after 19 years of waiting. Then the
unexpected happened in just a flash,” Esther lamented during an interview.
Ironically, her husband was the only male child of his parents who
died 11 years before their marriage. Her five siblings, four males and a
female, had all died one after another, just as her mother and her
father also died barely three years ago; and to make her situation
worse, she lost her husband and her only child.
The sad incident, she said, crashed her world like a pack of cards
and dashed her hopes, leaving her in sorrow and pain. Daily, she takes a
glance at the photographs of her husband and son which hung on the
walls of their home, drenched in tears. Momentarily, she goes blank and
when she regains consciousness, she tells you how her heart bleeds in
her new world of loneliness.
“I’m now a lonely woman who once savoured the care and warmth
of a lovely husband and son. We were preparing to enroll him in a
nursery school this September. Now they are both gone and I’m living in
gloom, waiting for the day death will come for me,” she muttered as she wept inconsolably.
In pains, she narrated how her dream for her two-year-old son
evaporated with the speed of lightning that claimed him and his father.
“My husband was not educated because his parents were peasant farmers
and did not value education; for me, I schooled up to secondary level at
Government Secondary School, Eggon, where I graduated. We loved
ourselves as farmers, and worked hard to secure a plot at Azubi where we
built a three bedroom apartment. We planned big for our only son, and
our dream was that since we were not opportune to be well educated, we
would strive to give our son the best.”
She added, “It is unfortunate that he and his father are no
more; I am finished. My husband used to be my pride; whenever he came
back home from the farm, he was always happy that we were making
progress. His death along with my son is agonizing for me; and I ask God
what I had done to deserve this heavy punishment.
"I ask myself what curse had befallen me and my family; I
believe these deaths must have a cause; my husband and I were good
Christians and God couldn’t have punished me for not worshiping Him.
Though my husband and son have gone six feet under the earth, their
memory remains evergreen till I join them to part no more.”
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