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, 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, 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 the 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 if a RN wife makes 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.
