Full story: It will shock you why this lady rejected a public marriage proposal

Everybody was surprised when, at my boyfriend’s birthday party, I rejected his engagement ring. There was disbelief on the faces of many people.

Someone screamed: “Babe, na your village people dey do you sooo!”

“See yeye girl dey reject fine guy wey get money. Who lose?” another fellow jabbed.

“Chai, this one na witch tie her destiny so,” mumbled yet another.I stared at Mike who was still kneeling before me. I hadn’t expected him to propose that night and, even at that, I was not prepared to settle down with him for so many reasons, none of which his friends and other invited guests knew anything about.He was begging as he held the ring before me. There were a few eyes regarding me, urging me to accept the offer. I simply told him that I would have to think about it.But in my heart and head, I had made my decision. When the commotion amplified, I decided to slip away.

An Uber driver took me to his flat in Trade More Estate where I had moved in with him. That night, I packed all my belongings and returned to my own apartment. I left the spare key he gave me under the foot mat and sent him a message to notify him.

Never in my entire life had I felt so relieved as I felt that night. The relationship had become like a fish bone trapped in my throat, a fish bone I could not cough out or swallow.

Days after that rather ignominious outing, I began to hear rumours that I was a gold-digger who used my boyfriend and dumped him. I had prepared myself for the backlash, including the trash-talking. People would always talk and I didn’t give a hoot about what anyone said.

What most people didn’t know was that he had nothing when we met. Shortly after we met, he won a major contract and made a whooping fourteen million naira as profit. At the time, I was working as a graphics designer at a printing press somewhere around UTC at Area 10, Abuja.

It was I who designed his letterhead, typed and edited all his proposals for him. We worked most times into the night. Most often he would come to my workplace without money and I would feed him and pay his fare back to Nyanya where he stayed with a friend.

Three weeks into meeting him saw the two of us starting a relationship. I lived in a one-room apartment in Lugbe. No sooner had we met than Mike had an accommodation crisis because his friend sent him packing. That day, he called me on the phone almost in tears. I remember that Sunday morning very well. I was in church when my phone persistently buzzed. Although the ring volume was turned off, I could hear the phone vibrating in my purse.

I had to leave my seat and dash out of the church building to take the call. Mike never called me whenever I was in church. There must be a situation which required urgent attention, I surmised.

“Hello,” I muttered when I was far from other ears.

“NK, where are you? I am in your area.” I could sense the urgency in his tone.I had to go back into the church to pick up my things and go receive him. From that day, we began to live together.

The contract came through an older cousin of his who was a politician. When the money eventually came, Mike bought two flashy cars and rented an apartment, a two-bedroom flat at Trade More Estate. I pleaded with him to rent a shop at Morg Plaza so that we would start our own business. The money was available but he kept dragging his feet until all the shops at the plaza were occupied.

I brought many business proposals to him but he kept postponing taking action on any of them.

“We need to invest this money because your cousin may not be in a position to help you next time,” I warned continually. “I am not saying this because I wish to have a stake in the business. I am only looking at the future. Your rent here will expire and your cars don’t run on water but on petrol.”

“Honey, don’t worry, I know what I am doing,” he kept reassuring me. But Mike did nothing. Instead, he continued to lavish the money. He spent money on everything with the imprint of liability on it. He suddenly knew all the clubs in Abuja and wouldn’t take my advice because he believed he knew everything.

One Sunday evening, while on our way home from an event, he ran into a commercial motorcyclist mistakenly. The cyclist rode out from a road to our right and said later on that he thought we were just trying to park our vehicle. My hands were already on my head when Mike ran him over. I thought that the man was dead. Fear permeated my entire system. I just sat on the passenger’s seat and waited like a terrified kitten as Mike stepped out of the car.

It was when I saw Mike screaming at the top of his voice that I sensed that he hadn’t killed the rider.

“You are a very stupid man. Didn’t you see me coming? Are you blind?” he ranted insanely. He vituperated even the more when everyone began to blame him for the accident. There were some onlookers who tried to make him understand why it was he who was at fault because he was driving against traffic and had sent the flash of his car’s headlight into the young man’s eyes, blinding him. But for that night, I hadn’t known that the road was designated a one-way road. An old man drew him aside and advised him to accept that he was at fault and give the motorcycle rider the sum of six thousand naira to fix his damaged machine.I was shocked when Mike spat out in disgust: “Over my dead body! Over my dead body. I will make sure he goes to jail and suffer in the hands of the police.”

The old man just sighed and walked away. I got down and tried to talk to Mike to help the poor Okada rider who was still on the ground and wincing in pain from the impact of his fall and a minor cut he sustained on his left knee. All the things I told him that night to give the rider the six thousand naira didn’t make sense to him. I was shocked when he called his police officer friend over to arrest the poor boy.

A Hillux van appeared in no time with six armed policemen in it. Mike gave the policemen the sum of thirty thousand naira to arrest the man and make sure he spent the night in a cell. I just couldn’t rationalize why he did that.

“Mike,” I held his hand and tried to talk to him calmly but he snatched his hand from my grip.The policemen took the injured young man with his motorcycle away. In solidarity, all the other commercial motorcyclists who had witnessed what happened followed behind. Mike climbed into the SUV and beckoned on me to join him.

He was screaming in the car as he drove home. “That is how these Okada riders behave like fools! I have been praying for the day one of them will fall into my trap. Stupid Aboki.”

I didn’t say a word as he talked endlessly. There was nothing more to say to him. He had become all-knowing and was not ready to take any advice. I decided to remain calm to avoid saying something that would hurt his feeling.

I was preparing to go to work on Tuesday morning when he got a call from a lawyer. The lawyer introduced himself as the attorney representing the motorcyclist he’d hit on Sunday. I stood by the door when Mike began to say something about going to court. When he was through with the call, he clapped his palms together and clenched his teeth. He was panting in terrible anger.

“What happened, Honey?” I asked him.

With a scowl on his face, he got up from the bed and began to murmur. Then, he pointed towards the window and chuckled mirthlessly. “Do you know that that Aboki got himself a lawyer and they are now threatening me with a lawsuit except I agree to pay him twenty-five thousand naira! Aboki, common Aboki! We go meet for court.”

That night, when I returned from work, I talked to him to jettison the idea of going to court. My eyes widened when he said he’d already contacted his lawyer and that he’d rather jump into the lagoon than give the motorcyclist a kobo.

“Those guys are very crazy. Can you even imagine the insolence?”

I decided to let him be. Before he left for the club that night, his police officer friends came around. It was they who told us that a young lawyer, fresh out of law school, had taken up the case for free to help the Okada rider get justice.

“We will shock them in court,” Mike bragged. “Imagine a baby lawyer wanting to show himself,” he added, shaking his head at the very insolence of it all. “My lawyer has been practicing for thirteen years now. He’s not a baby lawyer.”

The police officers guffawed and muttered some things to eulogize him. He gave them cash when they were leaving. It made me wonder how one could be so foolish with money. All that was demanded by the lawyer for the motorcyclist was twenty-five thousand naira only. It would have been less than that if he’d let the drama end on the first night. How could he choose to go to court and waste more money instead? Did he not have any plans for the future? It was from that moment that I began to plan my exit from his life. I cut down on my already modest spending and began to save as much money as I could. When I had saved up a good amount, I rented a shop at Area 10. Gradually, my business kicked off. It was the following year that he heard about my shop and gave me two hundred thousand naira to support my business.

The case in court went on for two and a half years. Mike was shocked to his bone marrow when the court ruled against him. The Okada rider testified in court that he had not used his motorcycle since the accident occurred and claimed that he usually made at least five thousand naira per day! The court ruled that the plaintiff didn’t deserve to suffer as much as he had. The defendant was asked to pay the Okada rider his daily earning for the two and a half years he’d lost use of his motorcycle. The court ruled that Mike pay the rider the sum of four million two hundred and fifty thousand naira – which is what five thousand naira per day for eight hundred and fifty days amounts to!

It was a week after the court ruling that Mike took me to his birthday party and proposed to me. He was acting as if all was well with him but I knew that he had lots of regrets nestled inside his head like cobwebs.

Nevertheless, he was still bragging that he would appeal the judgment.

If you were in my shoes, would you accept a proposal from Mike? He’s planning to sell his second car in order to pay his rent of eight hundred and fifty thousand naira out of the proceeds. Even though he is pretending that all is well, I know that he’s not finding things funny anymore. All that money is gone! I hear different people from many places including bars calling him over unpaid debts.

With all that, he now wants me as wife. Valuable advice, he won’t take. He is arrogant and wasteful. He has no plans for the future. I can manage as his girlfriend but I can’t have him as the father of my children. God forbid! I love my peace of mind.

For those who were at the party that day and might stumble on this story, now you know why I rejected Mike’s ring.

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THE REJECTED RING by Japheth Prosper Jan. 2022

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(a true story)