After opening her home to a young person in need, Martha* (43) never imagined the decision would lead to a series of disturbing events, or that the person responsible would be living under her roof.  

In this story, she shares how an act of kindness turned into a shocking betrayal.

This is Martha’s story as told to Mofiyinfoluwa

Like most afternoons, I had just dropped the children at the door after the day’s school run and was about to drive back to work when my youngest came running towards me, breathless. He begged me to come quickly and see what had happened to the house. 

I stepped inside and froze.

The sitting room was a mess. Chairs lay overturned, the centre table had snapped in half, and items were scattered everywhere. I rushed straight to my bedroom and saw the door wide ajar. As I stepped closer to the safe, my hands began to shake. I prayed silently that whoever had done this might somehow have missed it. 

They hadn’t. The gold my friends had entrusted to me to buy was gone.

I turned my gaze to the wardrobe. Clothes were flung across the floor, and my jewellery case lay empty. As I took stock of my friends’ gold alongside my own missing jewellery, the figure stalled somewhere around ₦8 million. I sank onto the bed, clutching my head. Outside, I could hear them alerting the neighbours that thieves had entered the house.  All I could think was how strange it was that things had started going wrong not long after I got a domestic help.

***

It all started in September 2023. 

I was heading into church to see my pastor when a teenage girl hurried over to help me with my bags. I hadn’t seen her before, but she spoke politely and seemed respectful. When I asked why she was in the premises on a weekday, she scratched her head and explained that the church security guard was her uncle and that she had been sleeping there for the past month.

After my meeting, I went to speak with the man, fully prepared to challenge him. His own children were in school, so why wasn’t she? 

At the small portion of the premises assigned to him, he broke into a rather moving story about his sister, who could no longer afford her daughter’s education after JSS3. Without any warning, she had sent the girl from Ogbomosho to Abuja, hoping he could somehow give her a better life. But he was already struggling. He had five children and lived with his family in a cramped, self-contained room. With no money to send her back, he had kept her in the church, pending the time when he could afford the fare back home.

As he spoke, I felt pity for the girl. Then he called her Odun*, my late mother’s name. The coincidence stopped me short; it felt too pointed to ignore. In that moment, I felt compelled to help her.

I told him I was willing to support her schooling and begged him not to send her back home. Instead, he suggested something else. If I didn’t mind, I could take her in. She could help with chores while I sent her back to school. He admitted he felt uneasy watching her sleep alone in the church and wanted her somewhere safer.

It didn’t sound like a bad idea. My three children were quite young, and the extra help would make a difference. I agreed to take her in, and the relief on both their faces convinced me that I’d made the right decision. She thanked me over and over. Within minutes, she packed her few belongings and followed me home.

***

Odun’s presence was a relief. She worked hard and settled into the house. More importantly, she was friendly with my children. She bonded with them and brought a liveliness into our home.

As promised, I enrolled her in a nearby private secondary school close to where my children studied. She seemed genuinely happy, and I quickly grew fond of her. By her second month with us, I gave her the small Android device I used as my second phone so I could reach her whenever she was home alone. Two weeks later, she woke the entire house screaming that the phone had gone missing. She pointed to a small tear in the window net, and suggested the gateman might have slipped his hand through to steal it.

The explanation didn’t add up. The windows had burglary-proof bars, and the gateman had never given us reason to doubt him. Still, with little else to solve the puzzle at hand, I confronted him. He denied it vehemently. In the end, I warned him that if anything else went missing, I would hold him responsible.

After that, small amounts of cash began to disappear— ₦100 here, ₦200 there. I blamed my forgetfulness until one afternoon when I was certain I had left ₦500 in my dresser, only to return and find it gone.

I immediately suspected my older son, who had a history of mischief. He denied taking it, but his siblings were too young, and Odun rarely entered my room. Convinced he must have spent it at school, I punished him and even alerted his teacher to watch for signs that he was bringing money from home. 

As the Christmas holidays approached, my mother-in-law came to visit. A few hours after her arrival, while we were catching up, he mentioned she had kept a torn ₦1,000 note inside her Bible after a fuel attendant refused to accept it. She asked if I could try using it instead. But when she went back to retrieve it, the money was gone.

She searched thoroughly before turning to me and saying she suspected Odun.

I defended her immediately, insisting the money must have been misplaced. Besides, Odun had only gone in to clean her room. I recounted several times she had found and returned money without hesitation.

But my mother-in-law remained unconvinced. She warned that she had seen that pattern before: small acts of honesty could be easily used to gain trust. When she realised I wasn’t persuaded, she suggested a test.

The next time we were home alone, she placed ₦200 in three different spots: inside the kitchen cabinet, on her dressing table, and beneath a vase along the passage leading to Odun’s room. Then we waited.

On the sixth day, Odun returned the note from the kitchen cabinet. When I checked the two spots, the money was gone. For the first time, suspicion crept in, but without clear proof, I told my mother-in-law I couldn’t send her away over what still looked like petty theft. Instead, I became more careful and began locking my bedroom door whenever I went out.

***

One evening, I had just ended a call with my mother-in-law when my son asked for help sorting his uniforms. I placed my iPhone on the centre table and went into the children’s room. When I returned minutes later, the phone was gone.

I searched the parlour, overturning the throw pillows and checking every surface, but it was gone. I immediately called for Odun. She came out of her room, rubbing her eyes as though she had been asleep. When I asked if she had taken the phone, she denied it.

We searched the house together, but the phone was nowhere to be found. By the time my neighbour tried calling it, it was already switched off. I  reported it at the police station and discreetly checked her belongings afterwards. There was no trace of it. 

By then, my trust had begun to waver.

Soon after, two friends abroad sent me  ₦6 million to purchase gold on their behalf. I had done this successfully before and encouraged others to see it as a worthwhile investment. Knowing the value, I was careful about where I kept it. I locked it inside a box and secured it with a padlock.

About a week later, the burglary happened. 

What confused me most was that aside from the gold, most of our belongings remained untouched.  Still, I couldn’t accuse Odun. She had been at school when it happened, and because our flat sat close to a bushy stretch with low fence, it was easy to assume thieves had slipped through. 

The gateman denied seeing any suspicious activity around the house, but my husband was convinced he was involved. He pressured our landlord until the man was dismissed.

The weeks that followed were some of the darkest I’ve known, both financially and emotionally. By April, my friends began asking about their gold, and I stalled.   I claimed market prices had surged and asked for more time while I quietly tried to arrange a loan.

In the midst of everything, Odun said she wanted to leave. She explained that she needed to return to her village because of a recurring eye irritation that usually came with the start of the rainy season. One she claimed only a local doctor could treat.

I offered to take her to a hospital, but she refused. She insisted it had to be the native doctor in her village and added that her mother had no phone, so sending medicine wouldn’t be possible.

It sounded like a fabricated tale, so I called her uncle. He said he wasn’t aware of any such condition and insisted she remain with us until the irritation appeared and could be properly assessed. After that call, her attitude changed. She withdrew almost completely, stopped speaking to me, and refused both food and housework. 

This continued until the Easter holiday. That Sunday, after church, I planned to cook in bulk for the compound. Left to handle the chores alone, I went into the store where we kept our bulk food items. As I scooped rice from a sack, my hand struck something solid beneath the grains.

I reached in and pulled out my missing iPhone. 

I had to hold myself from screaming in excitement. I ran to the room and showed my husband. We looked at each other and understood what the discovery meant.

We said nothing to her. Since she was already eager to leave, I told her I had heard her request and would take her the following day.

The next morning, as she dragged her bags out, I asked her to bring the two Ghana Must Go bags so I could look through them. She didn’t protest. I took my time rummaging through the bags and found some of my clothes, foodstuffs, and even my family photo frame. When I asked what she needed the items for, she lowered her eyes and said nothing.

When we arrived at the bus park, she urged me to drop her off quickly so she could unload her things before I even had the chance to park properly. Through my rearview mirror, I noticed her take out a green box I didn’t recognise.

When I asked about it, she tried to blend it into the other passengers’ luggage and claimed it wasn’t hers. People nearby spoke up at once, saying they had seen her bring it down from the car.

The box was padlocked. When we asked for the key, she initially claimed she couldn’t find it, then pulled it from her bra as I caused a scene.  Her fingers trembled as she unlocked the box. 

Inside were my shoes, our electric iron, bundles of cash, the old decoder, the phone I had lent her, and beneath them, the stolen gold. In that moment, all I could think about was the innocent man who had lost his job while the real thief lived under my roof. A surge of anger rose so quickly that my first instinct was to grab her and give her a knock. But I held myself.

When I asked why she had done it, she said nothing. She only stood there sobbing, and I just watched because there was nothing more to say. I paid for her transport and left.

On the drive home, I replayed everything in my mind, and relief washed over me.  We recovered what was taken, and my family was safe. Trust hasn’t come easily to me since then. These days, I give it more carefully.

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