A Lady Before Me

Ebere sells food in a Lagos slum. Thugs sent by Spider demand money, and when she refuses, Spider destroys her stall and dumps sauce on her. Her landlord threatens eviction over unpaid rent. Jade, a lawyer, rejects his ex-girlfriend Rosie, who keeps entering his house to ask for reconciliation. He visits Chief Cosmas, an elderly patron who is like a father to him. Cosmas, whose wife is dying of cancer, asks Jade to find his daughter Beatrice, kidnapped from school years ago. Jade takes the girl's photograph and searches orphanages. Jade's car knocks down Ebere. She refuses hospital care and demands money, which he pays. Later he finds her injured on the street and takes her to a clinic, where doctors find old rib fractures and order rest. He brings her home, and she slowly opens up to him. She tells him she lost her parents at ten and grew up alone. She angrily rejects his suggestion that they might be alive, so he sends her toothbrush for a DNA test. The result proves she is Beatrice, and he takes her to Chief Cosmas. Ebere screams that he abandoned her, but Cosmas weeps and says he searched for years. She learns her mother is alive but critically ill in the United States. Ebere accepts her father and moves into the Cosmas home. Jade arranges her trip to America to meet her sick mother. She makes him promise to wait for her, and they confess their love. In America, her mother recovers, and the couple keep in touch by phone. She returns, and Jade proposes with a ring, and she accepts.