By Tonye Clinton Jaja
Divorce law and matrimonial causes is an area of law that majority of Nigerian lawyers shy away from because the occupational hazards are twice as high than other areas of law.
In my entire twenty years of law practice and academia, I have only been involved in two matrimonial causes matters!!
The first involvement was when Prof. Nasiru Tijani, former Deputy Director-General of the Nigerian Law School requested me to write a foreword to his book on “Matrimonial Causes in Nigeria: Law and Practice” (2007).
The second time I was involved as a lawyer for a client, a member of our congregation in the United Kingdom around 2010. It almost cost me my life and the police had to be called in to save me.
The said client had filed for divorce on grounds of the husband’s adultery. When it got to the stage of the husband to pay alimony. The said husband had filed for bankruptcy in the United Kingdom. However, as a diligent lawyer and with the help of my client, we traced his assets to Brazil and even got the payslip for the oil company where he just got a job in Brazil and was planning to relocate with the new side chick.
The judge used all the documents to calculate the total amount of alimony that the said former husband was to pay and it was effected by his oil company employer.
The Sunday immediately after this, this enraged ex-husband came to our congregation in broad daylight and pounced on me because I was standing as an usher at the entrance to the place of worship. It took the intervention of my fellow brethrens who phoned the police to free me!!
Ever since then, I vowed never to handle matrimonial lawsuits as a lawyer.
Many Nigerian lawyers also share this view, they would not get involved in handling divorce or matrimonial lawsuits because the emotional entanglements are too much!!!
Apart from having to deal with the husband and wife, other relatives bring along their own drama to the already exploding legal and emotional fireworks!!!
Take the case of the popular musician, Tuface Idibia, who recently announced that he was currently undergoing legal proceedings for divorce from his soon-to-be ex-wife!!!
“The ink on his divorce papers have not even dried” (to borrow a phrase from the movie: “The Godfather”) and two additional dramas:
- He has proposed and engaged another woman; and
- And his mother has made a video to beg the soon-to-be new wife to “release her son” from the spell that she has cast on Tuface Idibia.
For those lawyers who are into the practice of divorce and matrimonial law, please kindly educate the rest of us: what is the effect of this plea of allocutus (“I know my son, this is not the real Tuface, he is not acting like himself, he is not in 100% possession of his senses/mental faculty”), on the on-going divorce proceedings?
Can the judge decline to grant Tuface Idibia the divorce that he is seeking on the grounds that his mother has admitted that Tuface Idibia is currently not mentally alright?
Or would the judge order a mental health assessment of Tuface Idibia before the said judge continues with the divorce proceedings?
Just asking for Annie Macaulay!!!
Dr. Tonye Clinton Jaja,
Executive Director,
Nigerian Law Society (NLS)
