How I Was Raped And Impregnated By Robbers, Housewife Tells Court

A Lagos housewife has narrated to an Ojo Grade ‘A’ Customary Court, Lagos, Southwest Nigeria how she was raped by armed robbers while travelling to Abuja to process her travelling documents to Italy.

Responding to an application filed by her husband, Mr. Romanus Agu, a Nigerian based in Italy, seeking dissolution of the 10-year old marriage on grounds of infidelity and having a child outside marriage, Mrs. Ugonma Agu described her husband’s accusation that she was impregnated by one of her lovers as untrue.

Narrating how she got pregnant for another man, Ugonma said: “My husband sent me money from Italy to process our travelling papers to join him in Italy and said I have to go to Abuja to do that. I told him I don’t know anybody there and he got angry. He suggested that I go with a night bus and that when I get there in the morning, it will be easy for me. I took the night bus the following day and we were attacked by armed robbers. All the money with me was taken and I was also raped.

“I called my husband and told him all that happened and he yelled at me. A few weeks later he called to apologise and also sent money for me to abort the pregnancy. When I got to the hospital, the doctors told me there was nothing there. But five months later, I realized that I was pregnant and decided to keep it without his knowledge.”

The petitioner had sought to divorce Ugonma on grounds of infidelity, threat to life, lack of love and having a child outside marriage.

According to him, after their marriage on 29 December, 2001 he moved his family to Enugu State and after a few years returned to Italy.

“Not too long after my departure, I started receiving several calls from some of my friends and kinsmen back home about my wife’s infidelity and how she was seen in different hotels with different men. I called her father and told him all I heard and also asked him to caution his daughter.

“Her infidelity was confirmed when she got pregnant for one of her lovers in 2007 and moved to his house in Lagos without my knowledge,” he told the court.

He also accused her of being carefree and unable to feed his children properly. He pleaded with the court to grant him custody of his kids.

The respondent denied the allegations and accused him of neglecting his children. “He insults me whenever I ask him for money,” she added.

After hearing the parties, the president of the court, Mr. T.A. Saheed adjourned the case to 20 September, 2011.

—Francisca Odogun