Snatched from The Fire 

Snatched from The Fire 

 

His mother arrived home from the office one Monday evening and discovered something quite shocking in her living room. Three sets of pistols, some fetish charms, a letter typed and addressed to a community in Ibadan announcing to them that armed robbers would be coming to attack them, drugs, and bags of money.

 She was a judge, a sitting High Court judge! She saw her son, drunk or stoned and asleep on one of the couches. His son's friends, two young men who also live in their estate were equally asleep in the same room. 

She packed everything she saw into her room, she knew they were evidence of a crime and she knew her son and his friends were armed robbers. She knew the law and she knew she was supposed to call the police and report the case immediately. She didn't, she cried for a while, thinking of a way out of her predicament. She called her son's father and told him everything she saw and the steps she had taken.

Her son's father and she were married for almost twenty years before she filed for a divorce. They were both very successful people who came from very affluent backgrounds but couldn't make the marriage work due to certain reasons.

 He was a very social person with a lot of social habits, these were the things she saw in him when she met him that attracted her to him. She was a recluse, a hermit who rarely leaves her room or have fun. He loves to party and knows where all the shows and events will be going on every weekend. She figured he would rob off on her and drag her out of her room and boredom to the happening places to spice up her life.

 After dating for two years, they got married and she lost interest in becoming more social project. She discovered she had missed the comfort of her room and solitude and began to excuse herself from their social engagements, he never slowed down. 

She stopped, It got to a point that they barely spent any time together anymore because she didn't even want to mingle with friends and family and he seemed not to be able to breathe without people milling about all around him at all times. She realised she ought not to have gotten married to him. It is like a fish becoming friends with a cat, one cannot survive without water, and the other even though can swim when it is forced to naturally hate water.

 It was okay to date him for a while and get dragged off to parties and beaches and clubs at that season of her life. She expected him to outgrow it and settle down into a domestic routine he didn't. Eventually, her absence from his side opened the door to other ladies coming into his life. He warned her several times before it happened she knew it would happen Ladies and gentlemen who frequent clubs, lounges, and social events face sexual temptations every day. It doesn't matter whether they are married or single,  a combination of alcohol, loud music, and sleep deprivation makes for lousy decision-making numbers will be exchanged, lifts will be offered and beds will eventually shake.

 By the time it became common knowledge that her husband was shaking strange beds at will, she filed for divorce, got custody of the children, and tried as much as possible to raise them the right way.

Her husband had four houses, she got two of the houses in the divorce settlement she and the children lived in one while she rented out the other house to raise some income. Her husband was also responsible for the feeding, clothing, school fees, and other financial needs of the children. She was to provide the nurture and care for the children and she believed she had done so to the best of her ability.

Her children attended the best schools in Ibadan she made sure they had a home lesson tutor and a female governess to help with house chores and babysitting duties. She had installed CCTV all over the house but she had never felt the need to check on it because there had been no emergency. 

She had been told that her son was exhibiting certain character changes in school but she had put it down to his way of adjusting to the changes going on in their lives. By the time her ex-husband arrived, she had set up the CCTV and began to watch the recordings backward. From the moment she arrived at the house to the events recorded before then in her compound and her sitting room, there was no volume but she and her ex-husband saw quite a lot.

 She realised that her son does not go to school. He dresses up in the morning, leaves the house as if he was going off to school, then somehow at about 9 am, he returns home from school with cigarettes, marijuana, drinks, and sometimes young ladies in school uniform and some friends. They party all day till about 3 pm when they dress up and leave the house only for her son to return home an hour later as if he was just arriving from school.

 She would get home an hour later and usually meet him in bed observing his siesta. She never suspected a thing. The housemaid knew but dared not report him, the chef knew but didn't say a word. The security man knew but kept mute.

Her first son had evolved into a full-fledged criminal right under her nose. It was the last thing she expected would ever happen to her, her husband had only one solution to the whole scenario, he wanted their son to move away from the mother's house and care for his own.

The mother had claimed for years that if the son was with the father he would become rotten because of the Father's social life. Reality had revealed that being with the mother was a bad idea she couldn't argue to oppose her ex-husband's idea. She was to solely take the blame for whatever becomes of the young man in the future. She had already covered up a crime and could be charged as an accessory to the crime by a judge. She was not willing to do it again. 

The CCTV also revealed many things about her daughters that she did not know. She could still nip those in the bud. They both waited until the four boys in their sitting room roused from sleep. Her police orderly and two security men were with them as they began to question the four teenagers.

 Within an hour, the boys confessed how they got the weapon, where they went for their operation and how they partied at a club after the operations, got stoned and then found their way to the house. The man who supplied them with the guns and the target was a hustler who lived just outside the main gate of their estate. He recruited them at a popular bar while they were gambling. He played against them, won the bets and the boys landed huge debts when they told him they couldn't pay him what they owed, he gave them weapons and a target ask them to rob the target and bring the money to him to pay up their debts.

 The boys gullibly obeyed him at the threat of torture and death. In all, they stole about six million Naira and three hundred thousand dollars plus other currencies. They didn't kill anyone and they didn't injure anyone they gave up the address of the man they robbed willingly.

When they were done with the interrogation, she called the parents of the other three friends of her son and summoned them to her house. She explained what had happened and advised each of the parents to know how to deal with their child.

That same morning, her son packed his bags and went off to Oluyole Estate with his father, the hustler was arrested that same morning by the police. When his car was searched, the police officers mysteriously found four guns, six million naira, and three hundred thousand dollars cash in his car boot. They also found marijuana and other drugs and accused him of being the armed robber who stole from a certain victim. It was not conventional but it was how she decided to deal with the issue, her son was in Nigeria for eleven months before he and his father moved to New York. He was a citizen and he had written and passed his exams, he gained admission to New York State University. His friends also turned out better than they would have if they had stayed on the path of destruction. 

One graduated from UNAD and went into the Real Estate business another Graduated from the University of Ibadan and is working as a Financial Analyst with a Fintech company, the last is a Data Analyst with one of the big banks in Nigeria.

 All four of them are married with Children.

 PS: I met with Pastor B recently in Lagos. His mother was celebrating her 70th birthday.  He wanted her to know he understood how her decision changed the trajectory of not only his life and his friends. He invited his friends and their families to the quiet birthday dinner. They all shared the story of how the timely intervention of his mother changed their lives, he said his mother sacked all the domestic staff they had at home at the time, leased out their house, and rented a small three-bedroom flat close to her office where she and the girls lived without any house help. He said this helped her sister sit up and learn house chores while studying for their future. As for him, he said he never strayed again, it always struck him that his decisions before that day led to the drastic changes experienced by his family. He could have been the only one affected while the others continued to enjoy a life of opulence but it was the other way round. The entire family changed their lifestyle because they wanted to save him from self-destruction. It was a sacrifice he acknowledged and will always be grateful for! I sat at this dinner event and listened to the testimonies of these young men with tears of joy in my eyes. Some of us are not grateful enough for the sacrifices our parents made to correct the course of our lives. If you are one of those whose parents had to take loans, change houses, change lifestyles, fast and pray for years, and go above and beyond to ensure you turn out right, please go ahead and drop a thank you message for your parents or you can share the story with me via DM or Whatsapp or as a quote to this post.
Good parents are rare and we must celebrate them.
May God bless our parents.
 -GSW-