An 8-month-old marriage between one Mr. John Obah, 37 and his 21 year
old wife, Gift, was dissolved yesterday at the Ikorodu customary court,
Lagos, over the constant harassment from the husband’s mother-in-law.
John Obah, a trader, reportedly approached the court asking to
divorce his wife over allegations that his mother in-law always came
with dangerous weapons to fight him each time they had misunderstanding.
“My wife often goes to her parents’ house and stay overnight for
three times in a week. Anytime I have a misunderstanding with my wife,
my mother in-law usually comes to fight me with dangerous weapons. I
will be physically abused and my clothes torn by both of them; my mother
in-law usually curses me that I will die like a fowl. Upon the
incessant threat from my mother in-law, I changed the padlock to the
house but they still came to burgle it. Anytime she demands for money
and I don’t give it to her, her mother will come to insult me. Although
our disputes were later settled by my father in-law but I don’t think I
can cope with their continuous troublemaking.”
The estranged wife, and a mother of one, said her husband battered
her so much that she usually runs to her parents’ house for safety.
She said, “He doesn’t even respect my parents and he has not been
taking good care of me. I am no more interested in the marriage; I want
to go back to school.”
Presiding over the case, the court’s President, Mr. Olu Adebiyi, in
his judgment, granted the couple divorce and warned them to refrain from
harassing and molesting each other.
He also said the petitioner should pay N5, 000 to the respondent for
the monthly upkeep of their only six-month child and that the child
should be in the custody of the mother. He also ordered the mother
in-law to steer clear of the petitioner’s ways.
