Akwa Ibom State High Court sitting in Eket has dissolved a 13-year-old marriage of a Pastor of a new generation church in the local government over his wife’s amorous relationship with another pastor in the church.
The 36-year-old woman and mother of two was said to be having an illicit affair with the pastor who later gave her a substance to administer to her husband.
The presiding judge, Justice Pius Idiong, dissolved the marriage on Friday on account of the same having broken down irretrievably.
He expressed disappointment that a Pastor, is the instrument through whom the marriage of his colleague and co-founder of a Church is destroyed.
According to the Court “it is a great pain that the Church and its Ministers who are supposed to be the agents and Apostles of sustainability of the family, which the Catholic Pontiff, St. Pope John Paul described as the Domestic Church are the precursors and catalysts of broken marriages and families today.”
He said it is more worrisome that the said man of God is alleged to have given the Pastor’s wife some substance to administer to her husband, which prompted the 42-year-old man, a staff of an oil company to approach the Court to seek the dissolution of marriage for the sake of his life.
The Court held that “the couple can no longer live together in an era when domestic violence is at its peak and has become common, taking dangerous trend, resulting in married couples taking the lives of each other.”
Justice Idiong said, “it is better for the couple to be alive, apart, than for any of them to be lost on account of matrimonial disagreement.”
He declared “the marriage between the petitioner and the respondent dated 28th November 2009 and celebrated in the Redeemed Christian Church of God, Uyo under the watchful eyes of the Marriage Registrar, dissolved forthwith.”
Justice Idiong, who is the Administrative Judge, Eket Judicial Division of the High Court of Akwa Ibom State granted “the custody of the two children of the marriage between the age of eight and 10 to their father, subject to the condition that their mother shall not be denied access to her children.”
