An Ibadan-based cleric, Raifu Tirimisiyu, has told a Mapo Grade A Customary Court in Ibadan to grant him a divorce from his estranged wife, Blessing, because she is disrespectful and humiliates him publicly. He said: “Blessing has no regard for me. She comes to my place of work to challenge and subject me to public embarrassment for no reason.

“I have no peace in my home due to her troublesome character,” Tirimisiyu said. He pleaded with the court to give him the custody of their child.

Blessing was nowhere to be found when she was to open her defence, although she was around when the case began. The court’s bailiff said he served several hearing notices on her, but she declined to appear.

Delivering judgment, the court’s President, Mrs S.M. Akintayo, said that there was nothing to be dissolved between Tirimisiyu and Blessing because there was no valid marriage between them in the first place due to the absence of the payment of a bride price.

Akintayo stated that the fact that a man and a woman were living and having children together did not mean they were married. She ordered them to go their separate ways since the petitioner was no longer interested in the relationship. Akintayo awarded custody of the child to Blessing because the child needs motherly care.
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