Before a decision of great moment on her five-year-old loveless marriage, an estranged wife, Mautin, stunned the court on Wednesday that she did not know that her husband had two wives and six children before marrying him.
“I was seven months pregnant when I discovered that my husband already had two wives and six children which he hid from me
during our courtship.
“He lied to me, my world collapsed but I survived the trauma,” she told a Badagry Customary Court sitting in Topo, Lagos State,
asking it to dissolve the union between her and Michael Idowu.
Consequently, the court’s President, Mr Sakirudeen Adekola, granted the request, saying “I cannot give a willing husband to
an unwilling wife.”
He granted the custody of the only child of the marriage to the petitioner who is the biological mother until the child
attains adulthood.
Adekola said the former husband shall be responsible for the child’s education and medical bills and also ordered Michael to be
paying N15,000 monthly through the court as feeding allowance for the child.
In addition, he said the respondent should be allowed unfettered access to the child and that the child should also allowed to
spend his holidays with him.
Earlier, the estranged wife, Mautin, had accused the husband of infidelity and untruthfulness.
The petitioner, Mautin, had threatened to jump into a river in the coastal city if the court declined to grant her request.
Mautin, a teacher in a public school, said she was tired of her husband’s disrespect for her family, irresponsible behaviour
and lack of love.
“Michael told me that his wife divorced him with two sons and out of pity, I fell in love with him.
“Few months later, he took me to his family. When I got pregnant in 2013, we got married and he paid my dowry.”
She told the court that her husband abandoned her and the baby and also disrespected her parents by shouting at his mother-in-law and hanging up the phone on her father.
Micheal, however, objected to the dissolution of the marriage, saying she is the only woman he married and paid her dowry.
“I went fort a seminar only to come back to discover that my wife had packed out of my house.” (NAN)