Divorce: Court Fixes Judgment For Today

The president of the Agege Grade ‘A’ Customary Court, Lagos, Nigeria, Mr. E. B. Shokunle will this afternoon deliver judgment in the divorce petition filed by a housewife, Madam Mariam Saheed, 28 who is seeking dissolution of her six-year old marriage to her husband, Mallam Mohammed Saheed, due to lack of love.

In her petition, she complained that her husband no longer loves her, doesn’t care for her and her children and that his mother had taken over her matrimonial home.

Mariam explained that she had three children for him, two of whom are with his mother while the last child, who is four weeks old is with her. She disclosed that she had all her three children through caesarean section. “I gave birth to my last child on 6 May and when it was time for him to pay the bill for me to be discharged, he was nowhere to be found. My dad paid the balance of N39,000 before I could leave the hospital,” she disclosed.

She also claimed that her husband’s family and relatives do not like her and no peace whenever she was with him.

“In fact, his driver told me that his mother has been advising him to divorce me,” she added.

Her husband, Mallam Mohammed Saheed, 33, denied all the allegations and offered explanations on the non payment of her hospital bill during the delivery of her last child.

He revealed that before her delivery, he told her to change her hospital because he couldn’t afford the N200,000 hospital bill the doctor at her hospital was demanding but she was adamant.

“I and my mother went in search of a cheaper hospital and we settled for Boluke hospital at Agege where we were told to pay N150,000 for the operation but she refused bluntly. I tried my best to pay the bill when it was time for her delivery by paying almost everything. When I got to the hospital to pay the remaining balance of N39,000, I was told that she had been discharged and the balance paid. So, I decided to use the money to buy a ram for the baby’s naming ceremony.

—Uzebu Christie