A couple who were reportedly joined as husband and wife at a Redeemed Christian Church of God, RCCG, in Uyo, have been separated.
The wife was said to have been engaging in an extramarital affair with another pastor from one of the new generational churches in Akwa Ibom state.
It was learnt that the petitioner and the respondent got married on November 28, 2009, at a marriage registrar in Uyo and were celebrated at an RCCG in the area.
However, their union which is now a decade has come to an abrupt end after the husband reported that his wife was sleeping with a pastor.
An Akwa Ibom State High Court sitting in the Eket Local Government Area ruled on the marriage during the weekend, Naija News learnt.
The petitioner had told the court that his 36-year-old wife slept with a pastor of one of the new generational churches in the state.
The presiding judge, Justice Pius Idiong, who dissolved the marriage, lamented the growing cases of divorce and separation as a result of the activities of some churches and their pastors.
Idiong said, “It is a great pain that the church and its ministers, who are supposed to be 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 said it was more worrisome that the said man of God was alleged to have given the pastor’s wife some substance to administer to her husband, which prompted the 42-year-old husband to approach the court to seek dissolution of the marriage.
Idiong upholds that the couple can no longer live together considering the era where domestic violence has become a norm.
The judge stressed that it would be good to have them separated than to allow them to stay as such has resulted in married couples taking the lives of each other.
Idiong said: “The couple should be alive apart, than for any of them to be lost on account of matrimonial disagreement.”
The court also gave custody of the two children of the marriage, between the ages of eight and 10, to their father, “subject to the condition that their mother shall not be denied access to her children.”
