Igbo Ukwu, Anambra State, Nigeria – By Sunny Ojeihomon.
A customary court sitting in Igbo Ukwu, Aguata Judicial Division, Anambra state has dissolved a 16 year-old marriage between His Royal Highness Eze Samuel Ezekwo and Lolo Chizoba Ezekwo over allegation of infidelity and neglect on the part of the wife.
The marriage, which was contracted in 1995, after Chizoba’s National Youth Service, produces five children aged between seven and 16 years.
The President of the court, Mrs. Chinelo Egili while reading the judgment in the suit, which was brought to the court by Samuel Ezekwo, a chartered Accountant and the traditional ruler of Igbo people resident in Yaba, Lagos State said that from all the court gathered, the marriage had broken down irretrievably, and that there was need to dissolve it to enable the couple go their individual ways.
Ezekwo had in the case filed in October 2012 accused his wife, Chizoba, a staff of Bank of Agriculture, of infidelity.
He accused Chizoba of bringing different men to their matrimonial home, gallivanting with them in hotels and beer parlors and neglecting their five children.
He told the court that, “I once saw her with a man in a beer parlor as late as 11pm; she told me she was there to retrieve a loan from the operator of the beer parlor. I started wondering because her bank only gives loan to farmers and other agriculture related issues. And besides, which bank will send a married woman out by 11pm to retrieve debt?”
In his prayer, Ezekwo called on the court to dissolve the marriage, order his father in-law, Levi Azubuike, who is also the second respondent in the matter, to refund him the sum of N60 being the bride price paid on the first respondent, and also to award the custody of the five children produced by the marriage to him.
The court in its judgment granted all the reliefs sought by the petitioner by dissolving the marriage, ordering the second respondent to pay the sum of N60 to the petitioner and also awarding him custody of the children, but granting the first respondent unlimited access to the children.
The court rejected a plea by counsel to the first respondent, who called on it to award financial cost to the petitioner as maintenance cost, saying that the first respondent is a banker who is gainfully employed and can fend for herself.
In dissolving the marriage, the court said that since the first respondent had been proven to be unfaithful to her husband by following other lovers, especially Mr. Lawrence Umeakuka, whom she described as a distant cousin, and that since the petitioner had confirmed that the first respondent had not been performing her conjugal duties, what it meant was that the marriage had broken down irretrievably.
“The children of the marriage are tendrils and need proper guide. Considering the job of the first respondent as a banker, who leaves home in the morning and returns in night as against the petitioner who has his own company and goes home when he likes, he is most available to take care of them.”
“He will place the children in a conducive environment for their moral upbringing and happy life; he is in the best position to finance the education of the children. The first respondent appears tele-guided by his lover and may not have the urge to hold the children; so the petitioner is here awarded custody of the children.”
An elated Ezekwo, who spoke with journals, said he was happy that the reliefs he sought were all granted.
He stated that he had suffered untold hardship in the hands of his former wife.
