Pastor loses 18-year marriage after ‘impregnating church members’

A Mapo customary court in Ibadan has dissolved an 18 year-old marriage between one Grace Adekunle and Adeyemi Adekunle, a pastor, over abandonment, irresponsibility and impregnating church members.

NAN reports that Ademola Odunade, president of the court, held that the dissolution became necessary because there was no more love between the two.

In his judgement on Thursday, he said: “In the interest of peaceful coexistence, the union between Grace and Adeyemi has ceased to be.

“Custody of the first four children produced by the union is granted to Adeyemi while Grace is allowed to take the last because of his age.

“The respondent shall pay a monthly allowance of N5,000 in addition to being responsible for his education and other welfare”.

In her petition, Grace, a school teacher, had informed the court that her ex-husband, a pastor, “abandoned her and fornicated with his female church followers”.

“Firstly, Adeyemi has shown no form of responsibility on any of the five children and me since he became a pastor a number of years ago,” she said.

“Adeyemi neither makes provision for their feeding nor sends them to school. One message Adeyemi has repeatedly passed to me is that I shouldn’t expect him to send the children to school because he is a poor man of God.

“He also said that I saw him as a pastor before I willfully married him. As a result, none of our children whose ages range between 8 and 16 is currently in school. I have spent all I have on the children with little or no success so far.

“Worst still, Adeyemi has been sleeping with the female worshippers in his church and has even impregnated two of them.”

Adeyemi, the respondent, was absent in court when he was summoned to respond to the allegations.

The court’s bailiff informed the arbitrators that he had served several hearing notices on the respondent without any response.