Ibadan housewife does U-turn in court and asks husband who she sought to divorce to take her back

IBADAN housewife Beauty Odinye created a scene at the Mapo Customary Court yesterday when she went down on her knees and begged her husband who she had filed divorce proceedings against to forgive her and accept her back.

Mrs Odinye, a housewife and mother of two,  asked the court to disregard her prayer for divorce and also a testimony in which she alleged that her husband, Nathaniel, was impotent. In July, she had, while testifying in a divorce suit before the court, requested the dissolution of her 12-year-old marriage to Nathaniel over alleged impotence and a lack of care.

At the time, Beauty had told the court that the two children she had were products extra-marital affairs and that the father of her children was one Adedeji Ishola. Nathaniel, a businessman had denied that he was impotent and not swayed by Beauty’s evidence, the court had ordered her to produce the alleged father of her two children on the next date of adjournment.

After the case had suffered a series of adjournments due to Beauty’s inability to produce her secret lover in court, Nathaniel sought the order of the court for custody of the children. At the resumed hearing yesterday, Beauty dramatically knelt down and clung to Nathaniel’s legs, pleading for forgiveness.

She said: “I want to use this opportunity to plead with this honourable court to disregard all the statements that I earlier made. I lied when I said that my husband was not the father of my two children, I do not know what came over me when I said those things."

However, Nathaniel vehemently rejected his wife’s plea for mercy, adding that she had done an irreparable damage to his name and reputation. Court president, Chief Ademola Odunade, subsequently invited the parties and their relatives to his chamber for an out-of-court settlement.

Nathaniel said that Beauty had broken his heart and dented his name in public, so he could not accept her plea as she had brought so much shame to him. Beauty’s father, who had all along supported Nathaniel, joined his daughter to plead with his son-in-law for forgiveness.