Nigerian man living in Italy, Olusola Omololu Wiwoloku has accused his estranged wife, Veronica Bolaji Wiwoloku of planning to kill him and take over all his properties in Italy and Nigeria.
Veronica was said to have during an interview with a media organisation asked the husband’s place of work, Pellegrino Della Terra and the Italian government to investigate him and make sure he was deported to Nigeria.
She accused Olusola of abandoning her to marry another woman in Nigeria, whilst still legally married to her.
Speaking to SaharaReporters, the Italian businessman said he moved out of their home in Italy in 2019 when it became obvious that he was about to succumb to depression as a result of the alleged maltreatment being meted out to him by his wife.
He said he stayed for long under her servitude because of his children whom he wishes to see grow up with a father figure in their lives.
“Please, I need Nigerians to help me, firstly I’m someone that doesn’t like publicity. But I’m helpless currently and don’t know where my helpers could come from. I have left the home that I have paid the mortgage for over twenty years and which I’m still paying till today for Veronica Bolaji because my home is one uncomfortable place where she shouts at me, slaps me and gives me a ‘washdown’ in the presence of the children at the slightest provocations. I could beg Bolaji when she was my wife for sex for weeks, which is supposed to be one of my conjugal rights and even sometimes when she was travelling to Nigeria, where she sometimes stayed for three months, she would knowingly deny me of sex for weeks before travelling and go away for three months. It hurts to talk about this, but we have once had a reason to table this her attitude before one of my elder sisters and her husband, the man told her that no woman can do that in Nigeria,” he told SaharaReporters.
“She arrogantly responded that she knew that her husband could not even eat outside let alone see another woman. I have been on anti-hypertension medications for a while. I was forced to leave home when I began to notice certain symptoms of the onset of depression in order to seek peace of mind and recovery. All this time, after I left the home, members of the church attempted to convene a reconciliation meeting between us, but she rebuffed all the efforts stating that she was okay on her own without the burden of any man. I sincerely regret meeting a person called Bolaji Veronica and bringing her to Italy. It is clear that she grew up doing as she pleased. She cannot take instructions or corrections from anyone. She completely turned me against my family members and friends. My aged mother who died at the age of ninety was her sworn enemy. For twenty-five years before my mother’s death, she refused to set eyes on my mother. She prevented my mother from visiting us in Italy despite my mother’s wish to meet and be acquainted with my children.
“She insisted that Mama could not stay under the same roof with her and since my mother refused to put up in a hotel or my family friend’s, we couldn’t resolve this issue of Mama’s visit to Italy forever; now, that mama has gone to rest.”
On how they met, he said, “I met Veronica sometime in 1988 when I came on a brief visit to Nigeria from Italy where I had been residing for some years. I had earlier gone to Italy for further studies. On this fateful visit, one of my elder sisters who have since regretted the action, called my attention to a person whom she jokingly described on that day as an ‘old maid’, who worked in the clinic nearby. When I met her, I asked for her hand in a relationship and without knowing much about her, we approached the marriage registry for marriage registration, though she declined the offer by my parents and family members to go pay her dowry. I was a bit surprised at that decision then, but she pleaded that her father had so much hurt her mother and her that he didn’t deserve the honour of collecting her dowry.
“My family members were all taken aback at this stance. I however waived it and returned to my base in Italy and began to make preparations for her to come over to join me. After a while, she was opportune to come over to me in Italy. I tried to get her a job related to her training as a dentist, but she couldn’t stay on the job for long. She found it difficult to get along with the others at the place, partly because she didn’t speak the language at all yet, and mainly because she was a short-tempered person. After discussing, we agreed to start a business outfit to balance the economy of the family, since I couldn’t think of how we would cope as a family just on my income alone. To realise this vision, I had to attend commerce school and obtain a certificate which was one of the strict requirements of starting a business in Italy. This I had to sacrifice the time to attend, despite my work schedule at the time. I believed it was my responsibility as she didn’t speak Italian at the time.
“Bola had hardly stayed a month under my roof in Italy when she conceived our first child, while I was thinking we needed a bit more time to know each other and to settle down well. I expressed the concern and she pleaded with me and said I should kindly rejoice with her rather than being worried about how we would cope, this she said was because she had been earlier married for some years but the marriage crashed because she couldn’t conceive at all, and one day she got home and discovered that her then-husband had disappeared with everything in their apartment. I was infuriated by this piece of information, wondering how she could keep such important information from me. She pleaded with me and after a while, I considered her current state of early pregnancy and let the matter be. After this, we had our three children in quick succession. I noticed that after the birth of our third child, the marriage practically ended. After achieving her desire of bearing children, I became a non-entity to her.
“By this time, we had registered and established the family business, the supermarket which I earlier went to commerce school for in order to meet the requirements. When the company was registered, we shared the shares 50/50. My decision was founded on my view of the relationship which we witnessed between my late father and mother. In their lifetime, none of them had anything that was not jointly owned. In fact, my mother used to buy her farmlands in my father’s name. I also provided the majority of the funds to start the business. Bola had only tried working for a short period then, so she can’t claim to have any money then; such claims would be a falsehood. At the beginning of our business arrangements, we had good synergy, while she stayed at the shop, I used the advantage of my years of stay in Europe and relationships to forage for goods and business contacts. I used to go as far as London and also Nigeria to bring in goods, having created relationships with some companies and individuals too. However, with time, Bola began to claim that in as much as she was the one who physically stayed at the shop, the business belonged to her alone.
“We had a profoundly lousy marriage that was hanging in place by my desire to be there while my children were growing up. As a person, I’m naturally an easygoing and peace-loving person. I was shocked to find out that I married a rude, callous and loud woman. The attitude came out in full force after the arrival of the three children. Months after we were married, I got to realise that the man she told me was her father wasn’t her biological father as claimed. I got to realise the mother married the man after divorcing her father but she kept it away from me. Though I reconciled her and the biological father before his death, my wife refused to attend his burial despite giving her money to do so.
“I had bought landed properties in different places over there in Nigeria before meeting her at all. But it was when we got married that we started construction on some of these landed properties. There was a time I reported her to her mother over some of her actions in Italy. Like I said earlier, I realised my wife suddenly changed towards me and the children. She was averse to going to church, she only went when she so wished. She also later influenced the children too. The mother apologised to me, so I let it go, but on the issue of church attendance, the mother said the attendance of church is not a must, as they didn’t have an agreement that Bolaji would attend church with me. Bolaji so hates the things of God that members of my church can’t even visit our home, despite being a pastor of a church. And whenever we argued, she usually taunted me by saying that all the time I had been serving God, what did I have to show for it.
“But I was surprised when my wife told me she was behaving like that after her mother spoke to her because I kept using my name alone on all the properties I bought years before meeting her. She claimed I ought to have changed them to our names. For peace to reign, I told her no problem and I did that immediately.
“Later, I realised my wife would come home late, she would leave the children at home and arrive home late. This led to another round of argument. So I reported her again to the mother but she made a statement that baffled me, she said she was tired of me and her daughter. She said it was better we divorced and divided all properties into two. I was shocked, a mother-in-law advising her daughter to leave her husband’s house. My mother-in-law narrated how she sent his son’s wife away, that it would not cost her anything to initiate the separation. Not wanting to be separated from my children, I decided to endure till my children were all grown.
“However after this, I realised things changed for me financially. I also found out that my dreams changed to bad. All my business endeavours started crumbling, all my earlier prospering projects in Nigeria were not paid for, which has been a pending issue before a state government in Nigeria since 2012.
“I established an NGO called Pilgrim on the Earth, with a mission to rehabilitate returnee prostitutes in Nigeria. This NGO was doing so well that we started receiving support from the Italian government and big organisations. At the last count, the NGO had rescued more than 5,000 prostitutes of African, especially Nigerian descent.
“Part of rehabilitating the ladies who we successfully win over from the roadside is teaching them a form of vocation, it was in this process that an African kitchen was established by the NGO where the young people were taught how to cook and serve at the kitchen. Bolaji was one of the volunteers who helped to teach these ladies how to cook some basic African meals. I’m surprised when Bolaji stated in her interview with the press that she was the one who ran the African kitchen. She is used to claiming everything that is mine as hers alone, not even ours. But I have not allowed this to bother me until she went to the press with all those untruthful stories.
“But guess what, Bolaji soon started feeling insecure. She started accusing me falsely of sleeping with those girls we were helping. Any lady she saw with me automatically became my girlfriend.
“It is needless to say that I haven’t had joy in the 33 years of our marriage, I don’t even know what people refer to as joy in marriage at all. Rather I have been under the heavy servitude of threats by Bolaji and her mother who kept threatening me with witchcraft and juju at all times. She arrogantly brags that her hands are overall my business endeavours and that anywhere I go to, I would meet her hand and that moreover, she was the one who blocked the payment of the money due to my company in Ekiti State from being paid despite all efforts on my part. My people can’t even come and visit me, I can’t even bring my church members home. I say again, it’s difficult to say that I have known joy in the marriage, which was why I left the house. It was a house, not a home. I was prevented from praying in our room. Because of this, I moved to the living room, which was where I was able to pray. I slept and woke there. I ate and watched television on the same sofa that served as my bed for the last five years of my stay in that house for which I still pay the mortgage till today.
“The houses and other properties in Nigeria, which we built together from the joint business of the supermarket has long been taken over by her already. She changed the name on one of the houses to her own. I do not have the documents of any of the properties, nor do I have a single key to the houses in my possession. It is only the industrial land that was ever registered in my name, and it was never an issue before now. As we speak, Bolaji is the one who employed people to farm vegetables on it for her. Though this is shameful to say, I have never slept in any of the houses before because I know that it is not safe to do so because of the evil activities of Bolaji and her mother. I am not complaining, I only wish to regain my joyful and progressive life which I regret bringing Bolaji into. Perhaps if I begin again, my destiny could be salvaged.
“I have been poisoned on two different occasions by Bolaji because of some properties in Nigeria that still have our names on them. See, there are so many things I can’t say here, which is the reason I said I need help from Nigerians. I can’t continue in this captivity called marriage. I’m depressed already.
“The house in Ondo is now in her name, the one in Lagos is also in her name. She should please give me peace of mind and stop petitioning where I work and the Italian government to deport me. Even my children are in support of me leaving her.”
Olusola also denied the allegation of currently being married to another woman.
He said, “I’m not married to another woman. So far, in my harrowing time, I met a Christian woman whose beliefs are similar to mine on the things of God. Knowing that I was legally married to Bolaji, and considering that I wish this lady to wait for me till I succeeded in the dissolution of my extant marriage, I got introduced to the lady and her immediate family members in our customary living room meeting. However, after a year, when she realised that my efforts to achieve the dissolution of my marriage with Bolaji as agreed was too slow, she applied for an annulment. I’m not married to another woman.
“I must mention that we also have another property in Sango, near Lagos, which she flagrantly registered in her name even though the money was from me. I actually gave her the money to buy that land and expected her to register it in the children’s name, but I have never cared so much about material things. Even when I found out, I didn’t worry about that.”
The Nigerian-Italian businessman also sent voice notes to SaharaReporters in which Veronica allegedly threatened to kill or disable him.
“Don’t delete all the voice notes I’m sending to you, you can send it to Italian policemen so that they can do the translation.
“I’m ready for you, Sola. Like I was saying, I’m ready to go to prison because of you, even if I won’t kill you here in Italy, I will disable you. To God who made me, If I don’t kill you, again, I will disable you,” a woman said to be Veronica was heard saying in the audio.