"Yes I have killed the woman that messed
up my life; the woman that has destroyed
me. I am at Shalom West. My name is
David and I am all yours.”
Those were David Ochola’s words during
his 911 (U.S. Emergency Number) call to
authorities after shooting dead his 28
years old wife, Priscilla Ochola, in
Hennepin, Minnesota. The 50-years old
husband was tired of being “disrespected”
by his wife, a Registered Nurse (RN)
whom he had brought from Nigeria and
sponsored through nursing school only to
have her make much more than him in
salary - a situation which led to Mrs. Ochola “coming and
going as she chose without regard for her husband.” The
couple had two children – four years old boy and a three
years old girl.
In Texas, Babajide Okeowo had been separated from his wife,
Funke Okeowo, with whom he resided at their Dallas home.
Upon the divorce, the husband lost the house to his wife,
along with most of the contents therein, as is usually the
tradition in U.S. divorces where the couple still has underage
children. Mr. Okeowo, 48, divorced his wife because not long
after she became a RN and made more money than him, she
“took control” of the family finances and “controlled” her
husband’s expenditure and movement. The husband could no
longer make any meaningful contribution to his family back in
Nigeria unless the wife “approved” it. He could not go out
without her permission. Frustrated that his formerly
malleable wife had suddenly become such a “terror” to him to
the point of asking for in court and getting virtually
everything for which he had worked since coming to the US
thirty years prior, the husband got in his vehicle and drove a
few hundred miles to Dallas to settle the scores. He found
her in her SUV, adorned in full Nigerian attire on her way to
the birthday bash organized in her honor. She had turned 46
on that day. Mr. Okeowo fired several rounds into his wife’s
torso while she sat at the steering wheel, mercilessly killing
her in broad daylight.
Also in Dallas (they sure need anger management classes in
Dallas), Moses Egharevba, 45, did not even bother to get a
gun. The husband of Grace Egharevba, 35, bludgeoned her to
death with a sledge hammer while their seven years old
daughter watched and screamed for peace. Mrs. Egharevba’s
“sin” was that she became a RN and started to make more
money than her husband. This led to her “financial
liberation” from a supposedly tight-fisted husband who had
not only brought her from Nigeria, but had also funded her
nursing school education.
Like Moses Egharevba, Christopher Ndubuisi of Garland,
Texas, (these Texas people!) also did not bother to get a gun.
He crept into the bedroom where his wife, Christiana, was
sleeping and, with several blows of the sledge hammer,
crushed her head. Two years before Christiana was killed,
her mother, who had been visiting from Nigeria, was found
dead in the bathtub under circumstances believed to be
suspicious. Of course, Christiana was a RN whose income
dwarfed that of her husband as soon as she graduated from
nursing school. The husband believed that his role as a
husband and head of the household had been usurped by his
wife. Mr. Ndubuisi’s several entreaties to his wife’s family to
intercede and bring Christiana back under his control had all
failed.
If circumstances surrounding the death of Christiana’s
mother were suspicious, those surrounding the death of a
Tennessee woman’s mother were not. Agnes Nwodo, a RN,
lived in squalor before her husband, Godfrey Nwodo, rescued
her and brought her to the US. He enrolled her in nursing
school right away. Upon qualifying as a RN, Mrs. Nwodo
assumed “full control” of the household. She brought her
mother to live with them against her husband’s wishes. Mrs.
Nwodo quickly familiarized herself with US Family Laws and
took full advantage of them. Each time the couple argued,
the police forced the husband to leave the house whether he
had a place to sleep or not. On many occasions, Mr. Nwodo
spent days in police cells. Upon divorcing his wife, Mr. Nwodo
lost to his wife the house he had owned for almost 20 years
before he married her. He also lost custody of their three
children to her, with the court awarding him only periodic
visitation rights. Even seeing the children during visitation
was always a hassle as the wife would “arrive late to the
neutral meeting place and leave early with impunity.” Mr.
Nwodo endured so many embarrassing moments from his wife
and her mother until he could take it no more. One day, he
bought himself a shotgun and killed both his wife and her
mother.
Caleb Onwudike’s wife, Chinyere Onwudike, 36, became a RN
and no longer saw the need to be controlled by her husband.
Mr. Onwudike, 41, worked two jobs to send his wife to her
dream school upon bringing her to the US from Nigeria. After
four years, she qualified as RN. Once she started to make
more money than her husband, she began to “call the shots”
at home. She “overruled” her husband on the size and cost
of the house they purchased in Burtonsville, Maryland. She
began to build a house solely in her name in their native
Umuahia town of Abia State, Nigeria, without her husband’s
input whatsoever. Mrs. Onwudike came and went “as she
liked,” within the US and outside the US. In fact, she once
travelled to Nigeria for three weeks “without her husband’s
permission” to lavishly bury her father despite her husband’s
protestations that they had better things to do with money.
Mrs. Onwudike let her husband know that this was mostly her
money and she would spend it however she wanted. Through
her hard work, she had risen to a managerial position at the
medical center where she worked. Upon her return from
burying her father, her husband got one of her kitchen
knives and carved her up like Thanksgiving turkey inside their
home on New Year’s Day.
Death is death no matter how it comes. But the goriest of
these maniacal killings is probably the one that happened
here in Los Angeles, California. Joseph Mbu, 50, was tired of
his RN wife’s “serial disrespect” of him. The disrespect
began as soon as she became a RN. Gloria Mbu, 40, had once
told her husband he must be “smoking crack cocaine” if he
thought he could tell her what to do with her money now that
she made more money than him. Before she became a RN,
Mr. Mbu had been very strict with family finances and was
borderline dictatorial in his dealings with Mrs. Mbu. However,
Mrs. Mbu learned the American system and would no longer
allow any man to “put her down.” When Joseph Mbu could not
take it anymore, he subdued his wife one day, tied her to his
vehicle and dragged her on paved roads all around Los
Angeles until her head split in many pieces.
[Author’s note: Although these are true stories, all the names
and some of the details of the incidents have been altered as
a mark of respect to the families involved. All of the killer
husbands noted in these stories were found guilty. Most of
them received the death sentence. Only the California and
Maryland culprits received life sentences without the
possibility of parole.]
It often comes to Nigerian men living in the US as a rude
shock when their wives become the household’s bread winner.
Having been accustomed to the docility, domestication,
subjugation and outright terrorization of women back home in
Nigeria, many Nigerian men are astounded when their wives
assert their financial, behavioral and social independence. It
is commonplace for Nigerian men to take important family
decisions without consulting their wives; to travel out of town
and indeed out of country without consulting their wives.
Some do not even bother to inform their wives! It is not a
big deal for Nigerian husbands to answer phone calls from
their girlfriends while lying in bed with their wives; to buy
expensive gifts for their girlfriends and making only
perfunctory, casual attempt to conceal such gifts. It is
nothing strange for Nigerian men to, in fact, bring those
girlfriends to their matrimonial homes while their wives are
home! Some Nigerian men think they have the carte blanche
to do what they want because they are the bread winners.
What’s the wife going to do to them? Beat them? Leave
them? Leave them after one, two or three children? Who’s
going to marry her? So Nigerian men think.
This cruel and phenomenal hostage-taking by Nigerian men in
Nigeria is what Nigerian women in America are trying to
stop. And they figured out the easiest way to begin
curtailing these bullish husbands’ wings is to improve their own
potential to earn more. A good way to earn a decent pay in
the US (unlike in Nigeria) is to become a Registered Nurse.
According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the
median annual salaries of RNs, based on information from
May 2012, is $68,000, while the mean annual salary is
$69,000. The middle 50% of RNs earns between $54,000 and
$78,000. Only 10% of RNs earns less than $44,000, while
some 10% earns more than $97,000. The BLS also reports
average hourly wages: The median hourly wage of a RN is
$32.00 and the mean hourly wage is $33.00. The middle 50%
of RNs earns wages of $27.00 to $40.00, with 10% of them
earning less than $22.00 while 10% earns more than $48.00
an hour.
Nigerian men in the US are quick to send their “newly-
imported” wives to these nursing schools in the hope that once
the women graduate, they (the husbands) could take control
of their finances and continue their enslavement. You can
imagine a man who was probably a menial worker earning less
than $30,000 annually in an expensive place like California or
New York going back to Nigeria to “oppress” the village with
dollars. He finds a “village girl,” brings her to the US and
sends her to nursing school. When she graduates and makes
twice his salary, he begins to feel inferior to her and his
macho instincts take control of him, catapulting his emotions
over his sense of reason. If the RN wife decides to take a
second or third job, she can easily triple or quadruple the gap
between her earnings and those of her menial job husband’s.
Working long hours takes the wife away from home and
because nurses are expected to work overnight shifts, you end
up with a husband who is usually home alone at night with
just the children. Since even “normal” marriages can be
potentially stressful endeavors, adding spousal jealousy and a
husband who sleeps alone half of the time to the equation will
certainly test the limits of the marriage. It is the reason
why even when such husbands do not go over the hill to kill
their wives, they divorce them in epidemic numbers. A friend
in New York told me that RN women there are being divorced
in droves as if they are plagues.
What is the big deal in a RN wife making more money than
her husband? There are several other professions in which
wives make more money than their husbands. In fact, I know
of a few military couples with the wives senior in rank to
their husbands even though they joined the military at the
same time. Yet, nobody is killing or divorcing anybody. Is
this strictly a RN thing?
My hope is that some of these RN wives learn from the many
other RN wives who successfully manage their homes in spite
of making more money than their husbands. My hope is also
that the husbands of these RNs learn from husbands of the
many RNs who successfully cope with a wife who makes more
than they do. I don’t know how they do it, but for every RN
who is killed or divorced by her husband, there are hundreds,
if not thousands more who proudly respect their husbands
and submit to their husbands’ authority – yes, their husbands’
authority (NOT control and NOT abuse) even here in the US.
By Abiodun Ladepo
www.nigeriansinamerica.com
