There was confusion in the Area Court in Ilorin when the judge sentenced a divorce-seeking woman, Adenike Aliyu, to three weeks community service for admitting that she committed adultery while her marriage to her husband was legal.

While delivering his ruling, the presiding judge, Hammad Ajumonbi, said the punishment would serve as a lesson to others and the respondent.

“I am not inclined to discharge the respondent just like that. The respondent having conceded to be impregnated by one Abdulazeez Asikolaye to produce another child while the marriage between her and the petitioner still subsisted.

“The respondent is hereby sentenced to three weeks’ community service with effect from today,” the judge ruled.

On February 10, 2023, the respondent filed for divorce, custody and maintenance of three children.

She told the court that she gave birth to three children for a man, Abdulfatai Ahmed, left him in 2021 and later gave birth to a fourth child to another man.

The marriage was ended by mutual agreement, but the ex-husband filed another case on March 27, 2023, for custody of the four children.

The estranged husband told the court that he named the fourth child.

”We still had sex after she left my house. “I have a witness who will testify that the fourth child is mine,” he said.

He later told the court that, in the interest of justice and his children, he withdrew the complaint and agreed to keep the three children in the custody of their maternal grandmother. 

(NAN)