On the morning of February 5, 2016,
36-year-old Janet Tayese, woke up from the bed she shared with her
47-year-old husband, Oladele, as he snored away.
Two hours before her husband woke up,
Janet had cleaned their two-bedroomed apartment, cooked, got her
husband’s clothes ready for work and prepared their son for school.
The night before, everything was normal as they went to bed, Janet said.
No misunderstanding, no hint of anger from either side and no sign of
any impending marital doom.
She said, “My husband was just waking up
when I left the house. I told him I had prepared his food, which I put
in a warmer. I reminded him to help pick up some stocks for my shop from
my supplier and he said okay.
“I dropped my son off at school on the
way to my shop at Ijaiye and at closing time, I went to pick him again
because his school is closer to my shop than home. Around 7.30pm, I
closed my shop that day and we went home together.”
With her son in tow, Janet did not imagine what happened next.
According to her, she was about to insert the key into the padlock on the door when she realised that the lock had been changed.
“I became confused. Who could have
changed the door lock? Could it be the landlord? But I dismissed the
idea because we had just renewed our rent a few months back. I quickly
brought out my phone to call my husband. His number was switched off.
“I went to a friend in whose house we
normally dropped our key and asked if my husband dropped the key there.
Our neighbour said no.
“At that point, I did not know what to
think. I again thought probably my husband had problem with the lock and
decided to change it. But I thought that if anything like that
happened, he should have called to inform me. After trying so many times
to call him and it did not go through, I decided to break the padlock,
since I knew I could buy another one.”
If meeting the door secured with a new
lock left Janet confused, what she discovered when she opened the door
to their apartment nearly knocked her off her feet.
According to her, as soon as she entered the sitting room, she knew something was wrong.
She said, “The few old chairs we had
were still there, but I did not see the television. I noticed that his
photographs hung on the wall were gone also. I ran inside the room and
noticed that all my husband’s things in the room; clothes; shoes,
everything that belonged to him had disappeared.
“I started calling his line again. When
it did not go through, I called some of his relatives. One of his
brothers who finally picked said I should keep trying his line when I
told him I did not understand what was happening. But I realised he knew
something when he said ‘Just keep trying to call him, he will explain
to you himself.’”
Janet said she did not see her husband
throughout that day and could not get any explanation on what was
happening from any of their relations.
She said even though she knew he could
not have packed his belongings without their neighbours seeing him, none
of their neighbours talked to her on the development.
The distraught woman said she even went
to his furniture workshop also at Meiran, Lagos that same day but was
simply told by those he met there that her husband had not been at work
that day.
Janet said nothing could compare to the confusion and panic that engulfed her that day.
After three days of trying to get an
explanation and running up and down to get hold of her husband, Janet
finally spoke with her husband on the phone.
She said despite her frantic demand for explanation, all Bayo kept repeating was: ‘Didn’t I tell you? Why are you surprised?’
“When I realised that he was not ready
to give me any explanation, I pleaded with him to just tell me where he
was so that I could come and see him. After a lot of begging, he finally
told me he was with his friend at Sango.
“I decided to go there very early the
following morning. I was very angry when his friend told me he had left
for an urgent business. Why did he tell me to come then? His friend went
inside the house and brought an envelope, which he handed to me. I
asked him what it was and he said he did not know that all he was told
was to deliver it to me.”
Janet, who cannot read English as such
because of her limited education, did not really understand what the
document she had just been handed meant.
She later learnt that, according to the
document in her hand, she had been taken to court by her husband and
with her consent, a divorce had sailed through.
That was the biggest shock of her life.
She said, “Unless it happened in a
dream, I could not remember ever going to any court for anything in my
life let alone witnessing my own divorce.”
It turned out that she had become a
victim of a racket operating in customary courts in Lagos, which allows a
man to divorce his wife by simply renting another woman to stand in for
his oblivious wife in court.
Legally in Nigeria, a man cannot divorce his wife without the woman’s involvement in the process.
Divorce, like in many countries of the
world, is a lengthy process that seeks to satisfy both parties in
reaching the desired settlement.
But Saturday PUNCH learnt that
through paid assistance by some individuals within some Lagos customary
courts who have mastered the art of deceiving the judges, a man can
simply bypass these process by renting a woman.
Our correspondent gathered that such a
woman stands in as the wife, tells the court she agrees with “her
husband” for a permanent separation, and pronto, they get what is termed
a “Jankara divorce”.
The real woman at home playing the good wife only gets the document later saying that she had been divorced.
It turned out that this was exactly what happened to Janet.
She told our correspondent that when she
took the document her husband left her to one of her younger brothers,
she was told that it was a copy of a divorce certificate.
Janet said when she got family members
involved and both of them were summoned to a meeting, she was surprised
when he began to refer to minor issues they had in the house, which she
did not imagine could warrant a divorce.
“When we met face to face during a
meeting with some of his relations and mine, he said I had neglected him
and that my business was all I cared for. He said I had also become
disrespectful and no longer respected his opinion in the house.
“He was referring to a little quarrel we
had two weeks before the day he left home. He had been complaining that
my shop was too far from home and had been telling me to pack out of
the place for some time. I told him that if I left without finding an
equally good location, my business could crumble because I had become
well known as foodstuff seller in the place. He said I should move
closer to home where he could monitor me.
“We had a little argument like every
other couple. I asked what he expected me to do if my business crumbled
simply because he did not like the location of my shop when he did not
even get me a good location instead.
“I told him this would affect my
business. He slapped me for arguing and said I should not worry that I
would see the result of my stubbornness soon. I did not really take him
seriously. That is what he said anytime we had a disagreement.
“I did not even know anything about how
people get divorce. So, I did not understand if the divorce was obtained
in an illegal way or not. People I talked to were the ones who told me
that the divorce was not proper since I was not invited to the court
hearing. I later heard that he paid for another woman to follow him to
court.”
Janet had no choice but to resort to
begging her husband who has since insisted that his decision was final,
despite getting both their families involved in the case.
Out of all options, she contacted our correspondent about what she could do on her matter. Lagos State Government officials are currently handling her case.
But her case is one out of many, in a
period when many Nigerian men affected by the economic strain of the
present time are looking for different ways to abandon their marital and
domestic duties or dumping their spouses outright.
In October, a non-governmental
organisation, Family Reloaded Organisation, said more than 30,000 failed
marriages were recorded in Badagry area of Lagos State alone between
January and September 2016.
If there is any truth in this statistics, the magnitude of marriage collapse in Lagos can only be imagined.
Another woman, who fell victim of
illegal divorce is 40-year-old Folakemi Salami, who was forced to seek
help from a human rights advocacy group, the Jeshabel Touch-A-Heart
Foundation.
Folakemi explained that her husband of
14 years, 43-year-old Mutiu Salam, had banned her from their bedroom in
the last three years.
When he finally had enough of her, he took their three children to his mother in Ibadan and simply threw her out of the house.
According to Folakemi, on August 9, she got home one day and could not find her children and the husband.
When he called her husband, he told her to “get off my phone, I am driving.” He switched off his phone later.
Having called some of her husband’s relatives, she learnt that he had taken the children to his mother in Ibadan.
Folakemi said, “He did not pick my call
until days later when I used someone else’s phone. As soon as he heard
my voice, he switched off again. I then called his mother but I just
asked after the wellbeing of the children and she said they were doing
fine. After that day, I called her every day just to be able to speak
with the children.”
But shortly after, she learnt through
the calls that her children were falling ill in Ibadan and she decided
to pay them a visit.
That was a visit that nearly led to the lynching of Folakemi.
She said as soon as she saw her children, she knew all was not well as they looked sickly and told her they were hungry.
“I did not get them anything from Lagos
so, I told my mother-in-law that I wanted to go and buy them some food
nearby. As soon as I stepped out with them, she started to scream,
‘Thief, thief! She has come to steal my grand-children.”
“If not because of my children that day,
maybe I would have been beaten to death or burnt alive. They started
crying that ‘No, she is our mother, she is not a thief, she is not
kidnapping us.’ That saved my life as those who had started gathering on
the street did not beat me.”
After the furore of that day was finally
resolved, Folakemi returned to Lagos without her children but by the
time she got home, she had been locked out.
“Till this moment, everything I have apart from the baby things I sell in my shop are locked up in that house.”
Folakemi said she was told that her
husband had gone to court and obtained a “Jankara divorce” but that she
had not seen him nor got a copy of the divorce certificate.
In the detail of the pathetic story
Folakemi told about her marriage, there is no doubt that Mutiu had been
trying to do away with her for a long time.
According to her, when they moved six
years ago from their rented apartment in Ikeja to the two-bedroomed
bungalow Mutiu built in Sango, he did not notify her.
Mutiu, a mechanic who also dabbles in car import, simply packed his things and left.
Folakemi said, “He did not tell me or
the children. I was in the shop one day, when he packed to the new
house. I just went to our rented apartment and realised he had packed
his things alone and left that of my children and mine.
“I reported him to his family and they
resolved the matter. I packed my belongings and that of my children and
moved to the new house with him. But he barred me from the bedroom. I
decided to sleep on the floor of my children’s bedroom while they slept
on the bed.
“His family members heard about this
after two years of packing to the house and they told him to allow me in
the bedroom. He did. After a year, he threw me out of the room again. I
was sleeping on the floor of my children’s room for three years till
this incident happened.”
It was learnt that
divorce in Nigeria can only be premised on the following grounds:
non-consummation of the marriage (when either party rejects sex),
abandonment, separation for two years prior, failure to comply with an
earlier court order on marriage or sexual rights, or privileges of
marriage, adultery and death.
For some victims of the “Jankara
divorce,” they do not even understand that they had simply been duped
into being divorced. They only seem to understand when told that the
divorce paper they have been handed was obtained dubiously since they
were never in the court.
One of such women, Chinasa Obi, a
40-year-old woman from Anambra State, who runs a restaurant at Akowonjo,
but lives in Iyana-Ipaja, explained that she resorted to begging her
husband of seven years when he handed her a copy of a divorce paper from
the Customary Court, Alakuko, with both their names as signatories on
it in October 2015.
According to her, she had always
believed a man could divorce a woman anytime he wanted, which was why
she went down on her knees to beg him.
Obi said it was after she started
running around for help that she was told that the divorce could not
have been obtained in a legal way because she was never invited to the
court.
Like the others, she is seeking redress, but does not know what to do.
This was the question our correspondent posed to human rights activist and lawyer, Mr. Malachy Ugwummadu, on the issue.
According to Ugwummadu, who is the
President, Committee for the Defence of Human Rights, a divorce
obtained in such an illegal way has serious criminal implication in the
eye of the law.
He said, “First of all, we have to
condemn this trend. That courts, even at an inferior level such as the
customary ones, are unwittingly manipulated to give legal endorsement to
such illegality is extremely unfortunate.
“Under the law, marriages contracted
under native laws and customs are subject of litigations under customary
courts. This has become possible because courts of summary jurisdiction
where the proceedings are summarily determined based on the limited
knowledge of the presiding judges.
“That is precisely why these practices
may have become prevalent. But this does not detract from the criminal
elements of the issue. There are issues of conspiracy there which is an
offence under the criminal laws of the country.
“There is also imposition because the
women being used claim to be the wives of men who are not their
husbands. There is the issue of forgery, since they would have signed
one or two documents. They are forging the identities of other people.”
Ugwummadu said it is a trend that urgently needs the attention of the police.
According to him, apart from the
criminal offences mentioned above, the men and others invovled in such
illegal divorces could be charged with conspiracy and obtaining the
judgment of the court by false pretence.
Ugwummadu said, “Customary courts are
presided over by non-lawyers and amenable to the manipulation of these
people, who are bent on perpetrating the criminal acts. In the process,
families get disintergrated. Innocent wives of irresponsible men are
chased out of their homes on account of the clear intended fraud of
irresponsible men.
Howerver, in some cases, some men who
are desperate to dispose of their spouses don’t even bother with going
through this illegal divorce.
They simply wake up and send them packing.
Such was the case of 39-year-old
Pascaline Chigbuogu, whose husband of 13 years, Anthony told her to
leave his house along with their six children.
Pascaline told our correspondent, “We
were so close that since we got married, we had been using the same
tooth brush. One day he just said he could not share a brush with me
anymore. I quarrelled with him because of it because I felt he did not
love me enough anymore. Then, he started misbehaving at home and acting
strange. Afterwards, I caught him sprinkling some strange liquid in our
compound.One day, not long after, he just called me to the sitting room
and told me to sit down.
“He said, ‘See, if I tell you I still
you, I will only be deceiving you and myself. I intend to marry another
woman. You and the children need to move.’ I have never been shocked
like that in my life.
“I asked him where he wanted us to move
to and he said he did not know. We live in a storey building that we
both laboured to build. That night, he moved his things to the ground
floor and left me and the children upstairs.
“I am not sad because he is leaving me. I
am sad because I made him everything he is today. When we married in
2003. I established an olive oil business and because it was profitable,
he then joined me. We built our house from it and built one in the
village. Everything we have was from the village.
“When he finally sent me packing with
the children, he took the vehicle he bought for me. He said all his
property were bought on his name including the car. The only thing I
remember that my name was on was the registration of our company.”
Pascaline said she did not imagine that
his marriage could crumble that way because she had never had any reason
to think her husband would leave her even when he was cheating on her
and even some times physically assault her when they had a disagreement.
In addition to their olive oil business,
the couple also produce a herbal drink in a factory located in their
residential compound at Onipanu area of Ota, along the Ota-Idiroko Road.
On behalf of some victims of this
“Jankara divorce” the coordinator and founder, Jeshabel Touch-A-Heart
Foundation, Mrs. Favour Benson, had approached the Lagos State Public
Advice Centre for assistance as she said their cases were being handled
with dispatch.
According to her, her organisation has over 17 different divorce cases which are undergoing various processes at present.
She said, “I believe this sort of divorce racket is a criminal offence that should land the men concerned behind bars.
“A mother who woke up on the same bed as
her husband was suddenly told that she had to leave with nothing since
she came into the house with nothing. It is terribly bad. For instance,
the woman who was loyal enough to get her husband involved in her
business had been pushed out with nothing. It is cases like this that
make people say women are not humble when they take actions to safeguard
themselves.
“There is an urgent need to beam a
searchlight on the activities of these customary courts. We have a case
where the husband even took the woman to court but she was simply blamed
throughout the hearing. They said she was an ingrate for arguing with
her husband despite everything he had done for her. She was not allowed
to say anything. They called her an ingrate, awarded custody of children
to the husband and she was divorced. The same husband did not allow her
to take anything out of the house. Things like this have to stop.”
