Controversial businessman,
Tunde Ayeni has expressed profound regret at having ever met his estranged side chic, Abuja based lawyer, Adaobi Alagwu.
The former chairman of defunct Skye Bank claims to hate it when people refer to Adaobi as his ex-mistress, insisting that his relationship with her is one of the darkest moments of his life.
He claims that he was initially trying to manage the entire brouhaha that erupted between him and Adaobi in order to protect his family, reputation and his legacy because of the reputational fallout it raises for his local and international business as he did not want anything that could negatively affect his ‘image’ when checks are being cleared out. He however claims that it quickly became obvious to him that he was dealing with a ‘lowlife’ who would go to any length to take advantage of and blackmail him with the support of her family.
“Unfortunately, characters like this lady know this and take advantage of it, believing that people like me cannot come out like them on social media platforms. However, sometimes, it gets to a point where, as a man, you have to come out and fight your battle, and that’s exactly what I had to do, and it’s what I’m still doing. Like I said earlier, it’s a regrettable episode for me, and I never wish such for even my enemy,” he said.
Describing Adaobi and her mother as desperate individuals, he reiterates that he regrets ever having anything to do with her and her entire family.
“Most people don’t understand what actually happened. I can tell you for a fact that I’m not irresponsible; with hindsight, when all this started and I saw all the red flags, I should have just walked away. I mean, people should take it as a lesson from me, once you discover that you are in a circle you shouldn’t be, just cut the line and just move on. Let the heavens fall if it has to fall.
“But I was trying to manage the situation and doing things that ordinarily I shouldn’t have done, like providing maintenance, even helping with accommodation, and so on. Those things that I did out of the goodness of my heart were used to blackmail me, and that was why, at a point, I came out openly to say I did this, it’s all over, and I’m recovering everything that I can recover from her and her mother.”
While Adaobi says she was indeed traditionally married to Ayeni and even welcomed a child by him, he however denies this, insisting that a Magistrate Court in Abuja already ruled to the effect that there was no marital affair between them and that he is not the father of her child.
Ayeni had contended that he never married Adaobi and that any payments (traditional marriage rites or otherwise) made were strictly for the child, following pressure from Adaobi’s father.
But the same court in its records noted that Adaobi had admitted to returning the money paid under customary rites, nullifying any jurisdictional limitation claim. This presupposes that a kind of traditional union did indeed take place.
On the issue of the child, a DNA test conducted by him allegedly put that to rest.
“I was never the father; the child is not mine, and her desperation to pin the child on me goes to show the level of her classlessness. It is, therefore, clear that the episode has ended. Now I’m back in court with her to recover my two houses from her and her mother, which they’re still occupying,” Ayeni added.
