Nigerian batik and Adire textile designer, Chief Nike Davies-Okundaye, has explained the circumstances in which she left her first husband Omoba Taiwo Olaniyi Oyewale-Toyeje Oyelale Osuntoki, better known as Twins Seven Seven.

WuzupNigeria reports that Twins Seven Seven was a painter, sculptor and musician before he died in 2011. At a time, Twins Seven Seven had 15 wives and Chief Nike Davies-Okundaye was one of them. In fact, she was the most senior wife.

Speaking in a The Nation interview, Davies-Okundaye, also known as Nike Davies, Nike Twins Seven Seven and Nike Olaniyi, said she masterminded how she and her 14 co-wives left Twins Seven Seven in one day.

The 68-year-old said,

My first husband was Twin Seven Seven. We were 15 wives. I left Twin Seven Seven after 15 years. I said I had had enough. I had been travelling and I knew how to make money by then. I said I was not giving my money to him again. I organised the other wives.

One day, I asked him why he married 15 of us and he said it was because he just enjoyed seeing two women fighting over him because he was a handsome man. I said oh, you married us just to see us fighting over you? I said I had had enough. The younger wives used to beat us. Whenever they wanted to beat me, I would beg them and bribe them with the money I made from the labourer’s job I used to do and they would leave me alone. That was how I was able to survive.

While I was living there, we went for an exhibition in Kaduna Museum. They wrote in the papers that the sisters are now doing it for themselves. People didn’t understand; they thought we were all sisters, not knowing that we were co-wives but called ourselves sisters. By then, we were no more fighting ourselves because we had left the man.

That was how one white man working for Costain construction company, decided to come and see our exhibition. He said he had been working for 25 years in Africa then and had not seen female artists. By then I had finished building my first house. It took me 15 years to build the house. All of us, the co-wives, moved in there. When he came, he said he liked us and would want to marry the senior sister, which was me. I said no, to marry a white man? I said Twin will kill you. My other co-wives advised me to marry the man. If this man (Twin) wants to cause trouble for us, at least you would have somebody to fight for us. That was how the relationship started. Two years later, we decided to get married.