The Abuja WhatsApp group that nearly ended my marriage

My husband came home last Tuesday looking like someone killed his dog. I am thinking maybe he lost his job or his mother is sick. I ask him what happened, he just drops his phone on the table and says 'read it yourself'.

I pick the phone and it is our estate WhatsApp group. Somebody had posted a screenshot of a conversation between a woman and a man planning to meet at Transcorp Hilton. The man's profile picture? My husband's face from 2018. Wallahi, my heart stopped. I am looking at him, he is looking at me, we are both confused. I scroll up and see that the person who posted it is our neighbour, Madam Grace. She wrote 'see the married men in our estate'. My husband is a quiet man who comes home straight from work every day. He does not even know how to book a hotel online.

I called Madam Grace and asked her where she got the screenshot. She said her daughter's friend sent it to her. The man in the picture was actually my husband's younger brother who lives in Kaduna and looks exactly like him. The same face, same build, even the same cap. My brother-in-law called me himself to apologise, said he was meeting his wife at the hotel for their anniversary. I laughed so hard I nearly woke my daughter. Now my husband refuses to attend any estate meetings. The system is slow but it moves eventually, I just did not expect it to move against my marriage via WhatsApp gossip.