I used to think loneliness was my biggest problem.
Now I know there are worse things… like discovering you married a man who was living a double life in two different countries.
My name is Linda. I’m a 38-year-old pharmacist living in Dallas, Texas.
And I thought I had finally found love.
Or maybe… I found an actor.
Three years ago, during Christmas, I travelled to Lagos. My family lives in Festac, but I spent most of my time in Ajegunle doing medical outreach with a church group.
That’s where I met him.
Chibuike.
A fine, humble, soft-spoken electrical technician with dreams bigger than Nigeria’s inflation. He looked so sincere, so hardworking, so desperate for a better life.
He told me, “Aunty Linda, if God bless me with small opportunity, I go shock the world.”
I laughed at the “Aunty” part.
I didn’t know that “opportunity” referred to me.
For months after I returned to the US, we talked every day. Calls. Texts. Video chats. He prayed with me, encouraged me, made me feel seen and loved.
For the first time in years, I allowed myself to hope.
At 38, hope is a dangerous thing.
When he proposed to me over the phone, I said yes.
I sponsored everything — from the paperwork to the flight. Over $12,000 gone.
But I didn’t see it as loss.
I saw it as investment in love.
When he arrived at DFW Airport, he held me like a man who had finally found home. He told me, “You saved my destiny.”
For the first six months, he was perfect.
Too perfect.
He cooked, cleaned, prayed, worked part-time, sent money to his “struggling mother,” and made me feel like the most important woman alive.
Then… little things started feeling strange.
A call he would rush to take outside.
A message he would delete before I looked.
Conversations he switched from Igbo to coded English once I entered the room.I ignored it. Love can blind even an ophthalmologist.
But everything changed the day my friend Anita — a nurse in Maryland — called me.
“Linda… do you know a man named Chibuike Obiakor?” she asked.
My heart stopped.
That was my husband’s full name.
“Why?” I whispered.
She sighed. “There’s a woman here… she came for consultation with her three kids. She mentioned her husband moved to Nigeria years ago and recently came back to the US—but he hasn’t returned home to them yet. She said his name is Chibuike Obiakor.”
I felt ice run down my spine.
Married?
With children?
IN AMERICA?
“No, Anita… it can’t be the same person. My own Chi just came to the US for the first time.”
Anita was quiet for a moment.
Then she said the words that broke my world:
“Linda, the woman showed me his picture.”
I swear the room started spinning.
The same face.
The same smile.
The same man.
I didn’t cry.
Not that day.
My tears were frozen behind shock and humiliation.
I didn’t confront him immediately. I wanted proof.
So I pretended everything was normal.
Two weeks later, he told me he found a job in Maryland doing electrical installations for two weeks
Maryland.
God has a sense of humour.
I contacted Anita.
We planned it perfectly.
He thought he was going to work.
He didn’t know he was going… home.
That Sunday, Anita called me.
Her voice was shaking.
“Linda… he just walked into the clinic with the woman and her children. They ran to him screaming ‘Daddy!’ He held them. He kissed her. Linda… I’m so sorry.”
I felt my soul leave my body.
My husband — the man who knelt down to thank me for “saving his destiny” — already had a full family in the United States.
And I had imported him, fed him, clothed him, sponsored his papers…
so he could reunite with his real family.
The audacity nearly killed me.
When he returned to Dallas two weeks later, smelling of a woman who wasn’t me, he walked into the house smiling.
“Baby, I missed you.”
I didn’t say a word.
I simply placed the documents on the table — printouts of his Maryland residential address, photos of him with the woman and children, and the email I had already sent to USCIS withdrawing my sponsorship.
His face went from brown to grey.
“Linda… please… let me explain.”
“Explain what, Chi? That you used me as a ticket to return to your real family? Or that you lied about everything from day one?”
He fell on his knees.
He touched my legs.
He cried like a toddler.
But I wasn’t God.
Forgiveness was above my pay grade.
Within a week, ICE picked him up.
His Maryland wife blocked me.
His children will grow up knowing their father was deported not because he lacked opportunity…
but because he lacked honour.
Now here I am, sitting in my quiet apartment, eating jollof rice alone, thinking:
Was I wicked for deporting him?
Or did karma simply use me as the delivery agent?
At NaijaSphere, truth is our headline. If this story kept you informed, hit the share button and return daily for fact-checked updates that shape the nation.
