Bobola Richard<\/p>\n
A Customary Court in Akure, Ondo State, has officially dissolved a 23-year marriage between Prophet Obayan, the founder of the Divine Prophetic Solutions Prayers Ministry located in Ladipo, Lagos, and his wife, Prophetess Chibuzor Obayan. The court ruling also addressed the paternity of their four children.<\/p>\n
The divorce proceedings arose when Chibuzor, the estranged wife, altered the children’s names to match those of her new partner, who was previously a member of her husband’s church.<\/p>\n
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Prophet Obayan initiated the legal action in Akure, accusing his wife of “snatching his four children” and challenging her right to change the children’s surnames to that of her lover. His legal suit called for both the dissolution of their long-standing marriage and the return of the paternity of their four children.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Obayan, who hails from the Yoruba ethnic group, cited disobedience, misunderstandings, lies, manipulation, abuse, hate, and rage as the reasons behind the dissolution of their union. His legal representative, Bosun Otitoju, referenced the importance of having the family head’s evidence in customary marriage cases, emphasizing the need for an eyewitness account of the transaction, as demonstrated in the case of Agbeja (1985) 3 NWLR (Pt.11) 19.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Magistrate Segun Stephen Rotiba, in his judgment, dissolved the marriage on the grounds that both parties had lost interest in maintaining the union. The court further declared that the children mentioned in the petition had already reached adulthood, rendering certain relief requests moot.<\/p>\n
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Prophet Obayan had also requested custody of his four children, whose surnames his wife had changed to Obi. During the hearing, the petitioner called three witnesses, including himself, while the respondent and five others testified for the defense.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The respondent’s lawyer, T. B. Odudu, argued that all six witnesses confirmed the absence of a valid marriage between the petitioner and the respondent. Odudu contended that the plaintiff failed to meet the five essential elements of a customary marriage in Ibo culture, which include a treaty, parental agreement, bride handover, and bride price payment.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The court noted the respondent’s assertion that, since the petitioner had not paid her bride price, her new husband, who had made the payment, possessed the right to have the children bear his name in accordance with Ibo customs.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Addressing the change of the children’s names, the court criticized the Ibo custom as outdated, barbaric, evil, irrational, discriminatory, and insensitive. The court further condemned the change in the children’s surnames as subjudice since the matter was pending before the court.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Bobola Richard A Customary Court in Akure, Ondo State, has officially dissolved a 23-year marriage between Prophet Obayan, the founder of the Divine Prophetic Solutions Prayers Ministry located in Ladipo, Lagos, and his wife, Prophetess Chibuzor Obayan. The court ruling also addressed the paternity of their four children. The divorce proceedings arose when Chibuzor, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1259,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3160"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3160\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3161,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3160\/revisions\/3161"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}