If your father is deceased and your stepmother is now single, you can marry her. Bigamy is legal in some African countries.
A man who goes by the name “John” (real name withheld), has brought himself out to the media to disclose how he got married to his father’s wife.
According to him, he said it all started some years ago when he returned from the city to visit home. His dad who was married to three wives already at that time, was planning to still take in a Fourth wife.
He said he came from a polygamous family in the southern part of Nigeria as his mother is the second wife because his dad is a Chief.
So the life of polygamy wasn’t something rare or abnormal to his people. But to him, he was never cool with it.
In his own words, read his story.
“Coming from a polygamous family was never something to be proud of for me. In fact, as a child, I detested my father so much for marrying my mother as a second wife. My whole family as at that time knew how angry being in the family made me feel. But nothing changed.
When I was 18, now my dad was already in his late 50s, and the news of him wanting to take in a 3rd wife started spreading. I remember walking to my father angrily and threatening him (lol), well nothing changed. It didn’t stop him. He finally took in a very young lady in her 20s.
I was so badly hurt by that new addition that I had to leave home. I traveled out to another state entirely to stay with my mum’s family.
I didn’t go home for years because I wanted nothing to do with my dad and his polygamist personality.
10 years later, my step mum who was my dad’s first wife died so I had to come in for the burial.
Just after a week she was buried, my dad and his people decided it was time to marry another wife, that’s the fourth one now.
I went straight into the meeting of my dad and his elders and gave a warning that my dad shouldn’t think of it because I would not sit still and watch that happen.
Well, I guess they thought I was joking until I did what I did.
Three days after their meeting, a very beautiful young girl in her mid-20s was brought home to be my father’s wife.
At first, all I wanted to do was cause trouble by chasing her back and upsetting my father and his kinsmen. But when I saw how beautiful, calm, and humble the lady was, I had to think of another strategy.
Now before you think I just dived in straight to take her from my father, noooo there was more to that.
By tradition, she was supposed to move into my father’s chambers one month after my stepmum’s burial. But she has to be in the household before then to learn certain things from the other wives. So I had to use that period to plan something different.
I started by confronting her the next day after she came. I got her into an interrogative discussion, and yes I was so rude to her. But after asking her so many questions as to why she would want to succumb to marrying someone old enough to be her dad, I found out that she was a very brilliant person with great dreams who was only trying to take care of her family and do their wish by marrying my dad because her family wouldn’t have it another way.
From that day, we got into more conversations, and I started seeing more to her than just a naive girl trying to obey her family.
Well, the truth is, when you keep getting closer to people or knowing them more, there’s every tendency to start liking them. And that was what happened.
I started liking her, well, even though nobody in the family noticed at the time, but I started hanging out with her and we started going deep with our friendship.
And finally, the both of us fell in love within three weeks she came into our household.
I had to confide in my mum about the recent development, but she wouldn’t hear of it. But that didn’t stop me anyway.
I told myself, if I waited one more week, my beautiful found love would be married to my dad, and no one would back me to stop it.
So I did just one thing, some days to their marriage, after speaking to her with much assurance of a better life with me, The both of us eloped.
I already had money to start a new life, so it was all a little easy.
I dropped a letter behind for my mum and the family, and changed my phone number I went into ghost mode after running away with my father’s to-be wife.
We started of in another state, we started of a business together, I pushed her to school and we really built ourselves for 5 years. Even though we stayed far and away from both our families as that was the sacrifice we had to pay, but in the end, it was worth it.
The message got to me in that 5th year that my dad was So sick and needed to see me as he might not make it.
I was scared but also desperate to fix things now by seeing him.
I went home finally, and to my surprise, instead of the hostile welcome I was expecting to meet, the whole family welcomed me.
My dad and I spoke about everything that had happened, I apologized and he said he was okay as long as I loved her. He told me how being a polygamist wasn’t his personality but he was not too bold to fight against tradition like I could.
Before my dad passed, I brought her home immediately and both her family and mine united together to get us married properly.
Today, we are doing incredibly okay with our lives and our kids.
And that was the end of the forceful polygamy struggle in my family. It is now a matter of choice and not a force for those who don’t want it.
So, this is the story of how I ended up marrying my father’s wife (almost to be wife anyway).
