OPINION: A Tale of Two Sides of Chidinma

By Mojeed Ajibola Adeyinka

While the news of Baba Ijesha, a Nollywood actor who was accused of molesting a minor, was rending the air, another melancholic incident seized the Nigerian space.

It’s about Chidinma Ojukwu, a 300level Mass Communication student of the University of Lagos (UNILAG), who stabbed his Sugar Daddy, Usifo Ataga, the CEO of Super TV, to death.

That Chidinma publicly confessed she was guilty of the offence made the killing incredible because no one could ever imagine that the exquisite lady, 21 years old, could slaughter a hen let alone commit such a horrendous crime. She looks calm and appears responsible -the reason, I think, her father resisted her arrest by the police before he was apprehended together with her mischievous daughter.

Riding on the crest of gaining admission into a University, most students see education as a license to unruly behaviours and atrocities. Just last week, I was in the admission office of one of the reputable federal universities in the South West when a 100 level female student, who had been requested to submit a portrait picture of herself as one of the requirements for clearance, came with a weird picture; turning back to the camera and turning her head in a seductive manner.

The woman in charge of her clearance was bewildered as she compared the passport the lady took from home where the lady had dressed like ‘the first daughter of Jesus’ in that portrait.

The woman said what I like. She pilloried the lady,  telling her that she left home, she had, almost, turned to something else. A 100 level student for that matter, who has not known where her neck is taking her head to!

At the breaking of Chidinma Ojukwu’s murder case, not only her mates were said to be dumbfounded but also her lecturers. One of the lecturers who pleaded anonymity was reported to say he was flabbergasted at the incident because Chidinma was a gentle lady that rarely talked in class. But, seeing a plethora of her past videos on social media, we know that Chidinma is just a chameleon who does not show her true colour to many people.

For her parents not to be aware of her antiquities means she presents a good girl at home, the other side of who she truly is. Society, particularly, school, must have corrupted her. She had so perfected her odious way that some of her mates and lecturers did not know about her inactions.

Parents and every member of our society are then beseeched to invest more time in child-upbringing and inculcating of moral values. It is a collective effort, not only the parents.

Had Chidinma’s father  visited her in the school, preferably unannounced, there would have been a day he would ran into  her in one of her truest state.

Pathetically enough, most parents believe that after the chameleon has given birth to offsprings, the offsprings should find ways for themselves.

Ataga, a 50 year old who, also, slept with a young girl of 21 is a simulacrum of our rotten society.  Why would a man be having carnal knowledge of a girl who is young enough to be his daughter? Anyway, he’s no more. Yoruba will say: Teni o ku titan which loosely means: he who dies is he who loses, there’s still hope for the living.

As for the culprit, there is no justification for crime anywhere in the world no matter how logical it appears. Chidinma will have been regretting being double-faced; a saint at home and a sinner in school. We await the pronouncement of court of law on her. Nonetheless, when a sin is pregnant, they say, it delivers death.

Mojeed writes in from the University of Ibadan.