The Nigerian Tribune had an opportunity to interview the young woman and to learn her story:
Before now, chilling stories had been told of individuals who continued to experience life even after their clear deaths. The Yoruba call them Akudaaya. To the Hausa, they are Satalwa. Time after time, there were stories of how the dead, who were supposed to be six feet under the ground, would still stick around on the surface of the earth and lead lives as normal, regular human beings albeit in faraway places where their chances of bumping into either families or acquaintances who had previously bade them goodbye from this world are virtually zero.
Many have dismissed such stories as fictions, hallucinations or fabrications, but the recent experience of a 20-year-old Taiyelolu Abdulrahman, whose father, who died almost 20 years ago, nurtured till she was married to another dead or “ghost” husband, is lending credence to such weird developments.
It was a Herculean task getting Taiyelolu to grant Saturday Tribune an interview because, according to her, she had already spoken at length with a popular Yoruba magazine which she claimed only used her story for economic reasons. “Where is the assistance they promised would come my way as a result of the interview I granted them?”
Her father-in-law, Mr. Raufu Gbadamosi, also was not favourably disposed to Taiyelolu granting another press interview. He showed disapproval when he shook his head, disappeared into his room and then reappeared with a cap and just exited the house.
When she finally opened up, it turned out that nothing could be more bizarre than Taiyelolu’s story. She and her twin brother, Kehinde, grew up with their father in a flat at the Ajah area of Lagos. They led a relatively comfortable life in the house where they only depended on generator as the only source of electricity. Although their father was not engaged in any kind of work, he provided for them.
“My father was not working. He never left the house except on a few occasions at night. But if I asked for N50, 000, he gave it to me. We had no visitors and we visited nobody,” she said.
All they had to do were sleep, eat and watch home videos.
Asked about her mother, she said she and her twin brother grew up to know only their father. They did not see any woman with him. To go out of the house, their father gave the twins a small gourd each which they simply clasped to their palms and then they burst out on the road and board vehicles to the market to purchase food items like wheat, semovita, macaroni, spaghetti and rice. They never consumed amala (yam flour meal).
On a particular day, however, Taiyelolu forgot to take her gourd and as she stepped out of the house, what confronted her was a cemetery with a lot of vaults and a bushy environment.
She screamed and dashed back inside. Then, her father told her to pick the gourd, atona (guide) as it was called. As she clasped the object to her palm and then ventured out, this time, she found herself on a busy tarred road.
Another incident which frightened her happened in the night. “My father went out whenever he wanted but it was always around 10.00 or 11.00 p.m. He would not take anyone along with him. But there was a day I begged him to take me out to where he usually went and he obliged. When we got there, something strange and fearful happened. It was like a canteen and there, I saw a small cooking stand with a big pot on it without firewood or fire and the food was boiling. I asked my father how it was possible for food to cook without firewood and fire and the woman selling the food became angry and slapped me. She asked my father who I was; that I was not part of them but only wanted to expose their secrets. My father begged her and we left the place,” she remarked.
After the incident, her father refused to take her out again so that she would not be privy to the secrets and circumstances surrounding their true identities. Since then, she refused to take food from her father, but only cooked her own food.
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