A 67-year-old welder, Jimoh Ayinla, on Wednesday filed an application at an Igando Customary Court in Lagos to divorce his 59-year-old wife, Anike, for alleged adultery.
Ayinla told the court that his wife, whom he had married for 38 years with seven children, was adulterous, which led to her being impregnated by another man in his matrimonial home.
“My wife left my house to an unknown destination and I did not know that she was pregnant until she gave birth later in her new man’s house,” he said.
Jimoh told the court that 14 years after his wife had left her matrimonial home and refused to return, he had to marry another wife in 2013.
He said: “I married another wife because our children that used to cook for me had all married and I was getting older to cook for myself.
“It was after I had remarried that my wife returned to our home and I had to accommodate her.
“But I rejected the child she bore for another man, asking her to send the child back to her father.”
The petitioner said Anike had been fighting him and his second wife since she returned to her matrimonial home.
He said: “Anike was always engaging my younger wife in physical fight on daily basis and I am afraid she might kill her one day.
“She always slaps me whenever we have heated argument.”
Jimoh alleged that Anike would leave the house for weeks without his consent and that he was tired of having to repay her indebtedness to people she borrowed money from.
The petitioner, therefore, pleaded with the court for the dissolution of his 38-year-old marriage, saying there was no more love in the relationship.
However, Anike, who did not deny the allegations, said she was pushed into the act because her husband was in the habit of constantly assaulting her.
“It was my husband that pushed me to finding solace and comfort in another man because he was always beating me,” she said.
She, however, begged the court not to grant her husband’s application for divorce saying she was still in love with him.
The President, Adegboyega Omilola, adjourned the case to December 7 for further hearing.
NAN.
