Crime
Herbalist fights with customer’s husband over baby’s paternity
An herbalist is currently in a row with a man over the paternity of a baby as the herbalist has claimed that he was responsible for impregnating the wife of the man who he claimed was his customer.
The incident occurred at Malaka village in Owode-Obafemi Local Government Area of Ogun State. The distraught husband, Sikiru Olaleye does not now only have to grapple with the fact that his wife and the herbalist cheated on him, he is also at war with the herbalist, Lamidi Ifaloba, over the paternity of the baby boy.
Olaleye, a 42-year-old native of Igbehin, also in Owode-Obafemi Local Government Area, said he was shocked to learn that the baby he thought was his was actually fathered by the herbalist who lives in the neighbourhood.
He said: “I had never seen anything like this before except in a movie. It happened that my wife Shadiat and I had a disagreement and she left for her hometown in Iwo, Osun State, with our son.
“I visited her hometown and tried in vain to persuade her parents to reconcile with us. I even gave Shadiat’s parents N12,000 for her transportation back to my house, but she refused.
“So, I gave up on the possibility of her returning to my home and took solace in the belief that when the time is ripe, my son would come back to me since I had tried my best to make her return home.
“It was a shock when some people in our neighbourhood started mocking me that my son belongs to an herbalist in the nearby village called Malaka.
“His name is Lamidi Ifaloba, an herbalist whom my wife patronised and he actually made some fertility concoctions for my wife when she could not get pregnant for about six years.
“Ifaloba would later reveal to one of my brothers in the community, Ismaila Jinadu popularly called Erosion, that he is the father of Korede, my three-year-old son.
Asked whether there was a conflict between him and his wife on the day she left home, Olaleye said: “We did not have any quarrel on the day she left my house. I only returned from work and found that she had left with all her belongings.
Olaleye said his wife could not have accused him of being impotent or use that as an excuse to engage in extra-marital affairs with Ifaloba which resulted in the controversial pregnancy and child.
Responding, Ifaloba explained that he was lured to bed by Olaleye’s wife on a day her husband chased her out of their apartment during a quarrel and she rushed to his house around 1 am.
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He said: “Actually, his wife ran to my house in the night and accused her husband of beating her over a disagreement.
“As I tried to step out of the room, she pulled me to herself and asked me to make love to her, saying that she wanted to test her fertility.
“She later came back and said the sexual intercourse we had resulted in pregnancy. I told her that I would take custody of the child from the pregnancy.
“I didn’t see her for some time and I started falling on bad times. When I consulted the Ifa oracle, it was revealed to me that the cause of my problem was the love child that was not in my custody.
“Shadiat actually took me to her parents and they told me to calm down. They said that they were aware that I was the one that impregnated their daughter who had battled childlessness for almost eight years.
In her response, Shadiat Akeem, a hairdresser, admitted that she deliberately forced Ifaloba to sleep with her on a night her husband chased her out of the house with a machete in order to prove that she had no fertility problem.
She said: “I didn’t give Olaleye’s son to another man. I was married to him for eight years and he subjected me to constant beating throughout the eight years of our marriage.