A trader, Blessing Oziomela, residing at No 11, Don Linus Street, Ajao Estate, Lagos, has pleaded with a customary court sitting at the Agege Local Government Council to dissolve her five-year-old marriage to her husband, Emmanuel Oziomela.
Blessing yesterday told the court that Oziomela had maltreated and threatened her life on many occasions.
The petitioner said, “When I realised I couldn’t continue living with him that way, and I also realised my daughter was already imitating her father’s behaviour, I had to pack out of the house in June 2018.
After I left, he sent me a text message saying he only did me a favour by marrying me.
“It is better I am alive to take care of my children than to be in this abusive marriage. He has not even been supporting in the upbringing of the children.”
Oziomela, a 34-year-old trader residing at No 413, George Crescent, Ogba, told the court that it was the pastor of the church they attend who bewitched his wife.
“The problem started on the day I decided to stop attending the church. Anytime I mention the pastor as the cause of our problem, my wife will attack me and start her trouble again. When she packed away from my house, she sent the bills of the children’s school fees to me and I sent money into her bank account. Early October, my wife came with eight people who beat me up and broke my door,” he said.
He pleaded innocent to all his wife’s allegations against him and begged the court not to dissolve the marriage.
The court president, Mrs Patricia Adeyanju, adjourned the case till December 4, 2018 for a possible alternative dispute resolution.
