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Court dissolve man’s marriage for chaining wife at herbalist’s home

By Sunmola Olowookere

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“Despite her protest that she was not mentally unstable as claimed by her husband, she was chained down among other mentally challenged people at the herbalist’s house.”

A civil servant has approached an Akure High Court seeking the dissolution of his 10-year-old marriage on the ground that his wife was mentally unstable and quarrelsome among other factors.

The man, Ganiyu informed the court that there was no love again between him and his wife, Ganiyu Fadeke while stating that the marriage has broken down irretrievably and he could no longer live with her in order to assure of his own safety.

In his petition filed in December 2019, he stated further that his wife had only one issue for him and that she was morally bankrupt.

However, the wife while reacting to the claims of her husband, told the court that all the allegations  in his petition before the court were false.

She stated that she did not deliberately leave her matrimonial home but was frustrated out of the relationship by her husband.

According to her, some years into their union, her husband took her to a herbalist’s house by a trick and told him that she was mentally unstable.

Despite her protest that she was not mentally unstable as claimed by her husband, she was chained down among other mentally challenged people at the herbalist’s house.

She narrated how she wept and begged her husband that she was not mad but he was deaf to her pleas and left her with strange men that she had never met.

Mrs Fadeke Ganiyu the court that she suspected her husband of making good his threat that he wanted to marry another wife which was the reason why he hatched the plot of sending her away to a lunatics’ home.

After some days there, she told the court how she managed to escape the men that were put in charge of taking care of her and ran back home.

On getting home, she said that she discovered that her husband had changed the key to the door of their house and  later called her husband that she was home.

The man had assured her that he was coming home to meet her but after a while, she was surprised to see the herbalist she ran away from coming towards her with two hefty men.

She said that was when she realized that she would continue to be in danger if she stayed around her husband and ran to her parents’s home in Lagos.

For a long while, she testified that she was not allowed to see her son who was at a tender age until she sought the intervention of the Office of Citizens Right in Ibadan, Oyo state.

She said that she was not happy when she saw her son who was placed in her mother-In-Iaw’s care because the boy was not looking well cared for and was poor academically.

While delivering his judgement on the divorce suit, Justice Ade Fasanmi noted that the mental state of the woman was examined due to the claims of the petitioner, her husband and it was proven that she was stable.

He wondered why the husband felt that his wife was not stable and he also stated that he had no plans to marry another wife as claimed  by the respondent.

He declared that from the evidence before him, the claims of the petitioner that his wife was mentally unstable was a lie and a blackmail.

He stated that from the inferences drawn from the submissions of both parties, the husband eased the wife out of the relationship and she did not leave him after she recovered from an illness in 2016 as he claimed.

He inferred that cohabitation stopped between the duo when the wife was locked out of their matrimonial home and she went back to her parents.

He stated that he was more impressed with the testimony of the wife unlike the husband whom he said “struggled with the truth”

Justice Adeyemi Fasanmi noted that the law provides that the couple must live apart for a period of two years before a marriage could be deemed to have broken down.

He decided that the couple has lived apart since 2016 which is more than two years .

He therefore ordered that the marriage be dissolved since it has broken down irretrievably.

He ordered that the respondent who is the wife shall have the custody of the only child of the marriage because she has a more stable schedule than her husband.

Fasanmi observed that the husband had not been truthful when he told the court that he was a civil servant with a schedule of Monday to Wednesday saying all civil servants work from Monday to Friday.

He also said that the welfare of the child was most paramount as the father work in Lagos and only comes to Ibadan on weekends and noted that it was not appropriate for the child who was just 10 year old to be living with the grandmother when his mother is alive.

He therefore ordered  that the husband must pay the sum of twenty thousand naira per month to the mother for the child’s upkeep and would have visitation rights as would be agreed upon by both parties.

 

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