LAGOS cleric Pastor Onyekwere Osondu has asked an Ojo customary court in Lagos State to dissolve his 10-year-old marriage because he can no longer bear living alone following a decision by his wife to travel to Liberia. 

Pastor Osondu, 48, asked to court to declare the marriage over as his wife, Ogechi, took off a year ago and despite pleas for her to return, she has not. As happens in many Nigerian marriages, when the family income is under stress, one of the spouses travels to greener pastures. 

Especially among the members of the diaspora community, it is not unusual for husband and wife to be living in different countries. Many Nigerian men, when confronted with this scenario, decide to take another wife but it appears Pastor Osondu is reluctant to go down this path and would rather get a divorce..

Pastor Osondu said: “Prolonging this matter is not pleasing to me. Although the court made several efforts to get my wife or someone from her family to appear before the court, yet there was no positive response." 

Nigerian Christian clergymen generally only marry one wife unlike their Muslim counterparts who can cite a Koranic injunction allowing them to take as many as four. Although members of the Christian flock are permitted to marry more than one wife, their clergymen are not.