ω My husband divorced me in court without my knowledge, sold my house – Wife
ω You’re lying. I built the house and our marriage was properly dissolved
– Husband
By VINCENT KALU
Mrs. Faustina Emejo, a mother of four, is crying. Being a helpmate to her husband, Stephen, has ruined her life, she wails, as the man she loved and trusted so much has left her holding the short end of the stick in their relationship, at the end of the day.
According to her, in their 31 years of marriage, she worked hard to build a 14-room apartment on a piece of land that belonged to her father-in-law (Stephen’s dad). But after the death of her father-in-law, Stephen started perfecting plans on how to dispose the property located at Kajola Street, Bariga, Lagos. The first thing he did was to approach a court and divorce her without summons or notice informing her of a pending case in court.
Thereafter, he went ahead to sell the house, even though the matter was in court. Having done so, the buyer allegedly brought in thugs to forcefully eject her and her children from the house.
But her estranged husband, claiming that Faustina is being economical with the truth, stressed that he built the house in question, and that the court properly dissolved their marriage.
The couple from Aboh Mbaise, Imo State wedded on December 31, 1986, at St Agnes Catholic Church, Maryland, Lagos. Then Stephen was working with Nigeria Airways, while his father worked in the same establishment as a security guard.
Narrating her sorrowful story to Saturday Sun, Faustina recalled that before her father-in-law retired he bought a piece of land at Bariga, and built a bungalow at the rear, leaving out the front part for future development. “He moved to Bariga from Shongunle, Oshodi, Lagos, where he was formerly living, with his other children,” she said. “By then his wife had relocated to the village and was only visiting Lagos from time to time.”
Following the downturn in the economy of Nigeria Airways as a result of mismanagement, Stephen’s work was terminated, and the couple moved from Shogunle to the same family house in Bariga, a four-room apartment. “We were sleeping on the floor of the sitting room,” Faustina recalled. “We moved to Bariga in January 1995 and I started food vending business in front of the house, and it was booming. By the time people saw the progress I was making, they came into the business. So I switched over to coaching school, using the shop, for a start. At the same time, I enrolled for the National Teachers Institute (NTI) programme, at Obanikoro. In 2003, I turned this coaching centre to full fledged school, and made my husband the headmaster.
“My father-in-law was excited over the development. He said that as a wife to his son that I had caught his vision because he had a commercial school before the civil war. He asked me to develop the remaining portion of the compound. That was how I erected buildings in the compound. With money coming in, I started building the place. In 2007, my husband went and rented a house for another woman. He told me that he had impregnated a woman. As the headmaster of the school whenever money entered his hand, it fizzled out.
“I was the one taking care of my father-in-law, even though he has three female and four male children. My children and I were the ones who made the old man feel that he has loved ones on earth. Because of this, their father loved me so much and was happy with the progress I was making, and in the presence of his children, he asked me to develop the remaining portion of the land for the school.
“My father-in-law died six years ago. Before his death, he was the oldest landlord on the street. The street was bearing his name until authorities changed it to Kajola. I built 11-room apartment, and other rooms in the compound apart from the school. My husband and his siblings didn’t lay any block there. The eleven-room apartment isn’t part of the school. We had tenants and he ordered them to be paying the rents into his bank account.”
As if she knew what was coming, she had placed a caveat emptor on the wall of the compound informing the public that the house was not for sale. According to her, this was after some strangers came to measure the land, one day while she was at home and she told them to keep off. Later, she contacted their kinsmen and they advised her to report the matter to the police.
Consequently, her husband was summoned. He came with his sister, and told the police that it was their father’s property, and they have decided to sell it. But Faustina countered their submissions by telling the police of how their father authorised her in the presence of his children to build the structure on the land. If they wanted to sell it, they should have carried her along and plan how to relocate her school, she argued.
Before this time, she recalled, her husband had gone to court to obtain judgment purportedly divorcing her without following due processes. A dispatch rider, she said, once brought a letter to her, and it turned out to be a court judgment stating that their marriage had been dissolved. “There was no court summons or notices that I had a pending case in the court, but I was shocked to read a court judgment that he has divorced me,” she insists.
At Ilaje Police Station, Bariga, Lagos, where they took the land sale matter to, her husband reportedly wrote an undertaken promising that whenever he sold the house he would give her some money out of the financial proceeds to aid her in relocating to a comfortable place.
“I asked them, what of my business – the school? After so much pressure from my children, I agreed, but wanted to know what would happen if he eventually reneged on the agreement. The police said they would take action, which his lawyer objected to. Not satisfied with the way the matter was being handled, I went to court. The matter was in court while the negotiations continued. It was in the process that he sold the property and refused to settle me as we agreed. Three weeks after, the buyer came with some thugs and policemen and forcefully evicted us.”
But in his response to the issues raised Stephen told Saturday Sun, that his estranged wife was lying. According to him, Faustina didn’t build the house. He (Stephen) was the one who built it while she contributed nothing.
“My father passed on, and I wanted to sell the house, but she blocked it,” he said. “I offered her N500,000, but she rejected and insisted on collecting nothing less than N10 million. How much did we sell the house that would make her demand for such amount to relocate? I wasn’t the one that went to court. It was the person that I sold the house to that went to court to eject her after she refused to take the money I offered her.”
“She dragged me to various police stations, and they advised her to take the offer and give way for the new owner of the house,” he claimed. “But she reneged on the agreement and insisted on getting N10 million. At the point I offered her N500,000, the DPO (Divisional Police Officer) of Bariga came up with a formula to bring the amount up to one million naira. He said that the new owner of the house should bring another N500, 000. But she maintained her N10 million position”.
On the allegation that he went to court to obtain divorce judgment without going through due processes, Stephen said that is not also true. He insists that he went to court and filed for divorce, and had his ex-wife, Faustina, duly served with notices. “But she ignored them. The court didn’t have any other option but to deliver judgment. Everything was documented.”