—Truth? Which truth?
The guards grabbed Mama Iroko by both arms. Her eyes never left Tade’s face. For a brief moment, the young man looked back at her, confused by the pain in her stare.
Then she said something that made Adekunle stagger backward.
—Ask him why your blood calls me mother.
The market exploded.
Chief Mrs. Morenike slapped her own chest as if something had struck her.
—What did she say?
Adekunle shouted.
—Shut her mouth!
But it was too late. The words had entered the market like fire in dry grass.
That same afternoon, the story traveled from Irele to Akure, from WhatsApp groups to church women’s meetings, from okada parks to the palace compound. By evening, people were saying the chief had stolen a child. Others said Mama Iroko was a spirit sent by the ancestors. Some said Tade was not Morenike’s son at all.
But the truth had begun long before that market day.
25 years earlier, Mama Iroko had been called Sade Ajibola, a quiet young woman from a poor family at the edge of town. She sold pap and akara with her mother near the motor park. She was beautiful in a way that made people look twice, but she was not loud about it. She had bright eyes, a stubborn heart, and the kind of dignity poverty could not remove.
Adekunle was then the only son of Oba Babalola, raised inside a palace where marriage was never about love. He met Sade secretly behind the mission school, then at a small cassava farm, then in a room he rented under another name. He promised her a future.
When Sade told him she was pregnant, he held her hand and said he would fight for her.
He did not fight.
His father had already arranged his marriage to Morenike, daughter of a powerful cocoa merchant whose family controlled money, votes, and land. When Adekunle confessed that there was another woman, the old oba looked at him as if he had brought shame into the room.
—A prince does not marry hunger because hunger smiles at him.
For 3 weeks, Adekunle disappeared from Sade’s life.
Then palace elders came to her father’s compound before dawn and accused her of stealing sacred beads from the shrine. When they searched her room, they found the beads buried under her mat.
Sade screamed until her voice broke. She said she was carrying Adekunle’s child. She begged them to call him. Her mother rolled on the ground. Her father swore on his ancestors.
But no one listened.
By sunset, Sade was banished from Irele with a swollen belly and a curse placed on her name.
From a palace window, Adekunle watched her leave.
He never came out.
Now, 25 years later, the woman he thought the world had swallowed had returned beneath the iroko tree, and the son he had hidden was standing beside him in public.
That night, Tade found his father alone in the inner sitting room, sweating though the air conditioner was on.
—Daddy, who is that woman?
Adekunle stared at the floor.
Before he could answer, a palace guard rushed in, breathing hard.
—Chief, your second son has disappeared.
Part 2
Leave a Comment