A Customary Court in Ikole-Ekiti on Tuesday dissolved a 17-year-old marriage between one Yusuf Segun and his wife, Jumoke.
The President of the court, Mrs Yemisi Ojo, dissolved the union on grounds of adultery, threat to life, stubbornness and covetousness.
Ojo ordered both parties to go their separate ways except when there was a consent to do so from both of them.
The president awarded the custody of the two children of the marriage to Segun for proper care, overall well-being and educational development.
Ojo also ruled that the children could spend holidays with their mother and on no account should the petitioner restrict the children from visiting their mother.
The president of the court said that any of the parties who neglected the order of the court would be punished by the law.
She said that the prayer of Jumoke to the court to order her ex-husband to refund her the sum of N300,000 should be brought as a separate suit of debt recovery and not on a divorce suit.
Earlier, Segun, 41 and a carpenter had told the court that he was not customarily married to Jumoke but they lived together and had two children.
He, however, said that they stopped living together sometime in August, 2019 because of the adultery committed by his ex-wife.
Segun told the court that the respondent committed adultery with one Akin Ajayi and she had refused to stop the illicit affairs with him.
The petitioner explained that pastors in their church and some community elders cautioned her against the illicit affairs but she refused.
He noted that Jumoke always disclose their personal secret to the man and all efforts to correct her wrong actions always resulted to threat to his life by the said Ajayi.
Segun urged the court to award the custody of his two children to him and to restraint the respondent from coming to his house uninvited.
Responding, Jumoke, 38, a hairdresser, denied all the allegations leveled against her by the petitioner.
She told the court that the cause of the problems with her ex-husband was his mother, who hated her shortly after she gave birth to her first child.
Jumoke said that the petitioner stopped loving her and became aggressive and unforgiving.
She denied having secret affairs with one Akin Ajayi, adding that Segun never supported her progress.
She said when she was building her house she gave the project to Ajayi to supervise for her.
Jumoke said that she was not interested in dissolving her union with the petitioner but if the petitioner insisted, she would agree with his demand.
She asked the court to order the petitioner to refund the sum of N300,000 to her being the amount she expended on the building of the petitioner’s house.
Jumoke also pleaded that the custody of the children should be awarded to her because Segun was a busy man and that he often transferred his aggression to the children whenever he was angry.
