The 13-year marriage of a pastor and his 36-year-old wife has been dissolved by an Akwa Ibom State High Court sitting in the Eket Local Government Area over the allegation that she slept with another pastor.
The 36-year-old 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.
This prompted the 42-year-old husband, a staff of an oil company, to approach the Court to seek the dissolution of the marriage for the sake of his life.
The presiding judge, Justice Pius Idiong, dissolved the marriage on Friday, May 20, on account of the union having broken down irretrievably.
The presiding judge, Justice Pius Idiong, who dissolved the marriage, expressed worry over the rising cases of divorce and separation as a result of the activities of some churches and their pastors.
He lamented that a Pastor became the instrument through whom the marriage of his colleague and co-founder of a Church is destroyed.
Justice Idiong said: “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.”
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.”
