‘I impregnated another woman to test my fertility’

Mrs. Regina Onuoha, a 40 year old former banker, has filed for divorce from Mr Paulinus Onuoha her husband of twelve years due to infidelity. The couple has been married for over a decade without a child.
The wife’s claim in court was that there was no more love in their marriage as her husband had become so irresponsible and uncaring.

Regina told the court that since she got married to her husband, she had been the one taking care of the house as the husband had been jobless.

She said she rented the apartment they both live in, but with all that, her husband was still cheating on her.

She said the worst of all he did was the fact that he impregnated a woman twice while she (the wife) was still praying for the fruit of the womb.

“I was hopeful after the marriage that I was going to have my own child. I spent all my money on the efforts to have a child, but my husband never cared.

“Four years into our marriage, my husband impregnated a woman and then four years later, he impregnated her again, making two children while I was hoping to have one,” she said.

She added that when her father-in-law died, her husband asked her to give him N300,000, but she told him she didn’t have so much, that she could only afford N120,000.

“I couldn’t afford the N300,000 my husband asked me to give him but I gave him N120,000 for his father’s burial, but he asked me not to follow him to the burial, saying I didn’t need to be there.

“He did this just to prevent me from running into his other wife and children because he took them to the village for the occasion and he thought I wouldn’t know, but I gathered the information from someone in his village,” she said.

She asked the court to tell her husband to come and pack his things away from her house as she was tired of the marriage because she didn’t have any love for him again.

Her husband, Onuoha, who claimed to be a trader, told the court that all that his wife said was true, and that he was very guilty, but he didn’t mean to hurt her. He prostrated to seek her forgiveness in court.

“I didn’t mean to impregnate the other woman, it was just that I needed to have a child with my wife and we couldn’t produce one, so I went out to test my fertility, to know whether I was or was not fertile enough to have a child,” he said.

He added that he was ready to change his behaviour and take care of his wife as he would assist her spiritually, financially and even physically in her effort to have her own children.

“I cannot even be sure or say that the other woman’s children are mine because in my tradition, if a woman is not married to a man and she has children for him, the children are not considered his until a proper traditional marriage is done. It is my wife I love, she’s the one I want to have a child with, please help me to beg her,” he said.

The court president, Mr. Godwin Awosola, told the man to seek God’s intervention over his home.

He also told them to maintain the peace and stop abusing each other.

He adjourned the case till August 17, 2013.