I watched young Amanda cry endlessly, as her mom drove out of the premises of the Abuja High court, as the divorce papers had just been finalized, following the annulment of the marriage by the sitting judge. Amanda might never see her dad again after her mom gained full custody of her, said a lawyer who had been present throughout the Macaulays divorce saga.
Mr and Mrs Macaulay moved to Abuja from Lagos, following Mr Johnson Macaulay’s transfer by the company where he worked. Johnson had only just rose to the position of technical adviser in the pharmaceutical company he works and following his outstanding performance in the company headquarters in Lagos, Johnson was promoted to the position of Technical Director and subsequently transferred to Abuja.
Mrs Macaulay loved the prospect of moving to Abuja, as she had often fantasize the feeling of living in the federal capital territory like her younger sister Edit who moved to Abuja after her
marriage two years earlier before the transfer.
Mrs Macaulay welcomed the transfer with open arms, as one time she described the traffic gridlock situation in lagos as “excruciating and annoying”.
From savings and the raise he got following the promotion, Mr Macaulay was able to acquire for his family, a fanciful and comfortable three bedroom flat in Wuse 2, as Mrs Macaulay insisted on living in a commercial but serene neighbourhood.
But just has things began to work out perfectly, life then took an unfortunate turn as Mr Macaulay lost his job in the company barely five months after moving to the FCT, following a total overhauling by the owners and life just went sour.
Living in Abuja can be quite interesting and sweet, but living without a job that’s suicide.
According to young Amanda “Dad really tried to get things going, but it wasn’t just working. I heard my parents most nights arguing over bills and Mom didn’t want to give him a break”.
Unlike most teenagers her age, they would have probably been hanging out with friends or cooling off watching movies at home, but instead Amanda found herself shuffling between her Aunt, Edit house and the Abuja High court.
Eventually at the day of judgment, it was all about who to gain custody of Amanda, with both Mr and Mrs Macaulay having made their submissions known in subsequent sittings.
The sitting judge said “The little child needs her parents, but it appears we are way past solving this matter amicably and both parties have already set out their heart for a divorce.
“But let me add that it would have done this young child more good if you stayed together as a family, nevertheless the child needs to be catered for and it appears the father cannot afford that now, leaving the mother as the obvious choice.
“I believe as a mother too, the child needs her mother”.
Following the judgment an overwhelming smile emerged on former Mrs Macaulay face. She had finally gotten her wish for a divorce and also custody of her daughter, for life would now continue.
After five years, young Amanda now 17 years of age, has seen her mom go through series of emotional trauma following different unsuccessful relationships.
She told this writer “i think she never found that spark she had with my dad. Nothing felt right anymore for her and the worst part, she ruined my childhood just to make herself happy and never found happiness”.
Amanda currently struggling with depression and drug addiction, has now become a shadow of that beautiful young girl with a unique smile.
Like the story of young Amanda, different studies has revealed that the most affected casualties in divorce cases are the children.
In a 1970 study on Divorce by an American based group, it was gathered then that young children might have difficulty falling asleep and older children might have trouble at school. Men and women might become depressed or frenetic, throwing themselves into sexual affairs or immersing themselves in work.
The study further went on to conclude that after a year or two, it is expected, most would get their lives back on track, at least outwardly. Parents and children would get on with new routines, that is, if they remarry, new friends, and new schools, taking full opportunity of the second chances that divorce brings at its wake.
These studies, i have come to realize, were wishful thinking. In 2017, working with a small online group, I began a study of the effects of divorce on middle-class people who continued to function despite the stress of a marriage breakup.
My findings were breathtaking.
First of all, the reasons people ask for divorce are quite interesting. In a recent divorce sitting at a customary court in Benin, a civil servant, identified as Joke, asked the court to dissolve her 26-year-old marriage to her 54-year-old husband, Azeez, over alleged lack of love, laziness, and acts of irresponsibility.
Joke, a civil servant, in her petition for divorce, said that her unemployed husband had refused to seek new employment since he lost his job years ago.
“My husband does not beat me, but i go through psychological and verbal abuse in his hands every day”.
“He is not appreciative of all my endeavours, embarrasses me at will and talks down at me even in public.
”The emotional stress is unbearable, i pray the court to separate us so that I can live comfortably.
“He is lazy and frustrated, thereby transferring his aggression to everybody around him,”she said.
In another separate divorce trial, a trader, Imade, appealed to another Customary Court to dissolve her 24-year-old marriage for alleged fetishness.
“My husband is fetish, he rubs his male organ with a substance
whenever he wanted to make love to me,’’ Imade, 41, said.
“He beats me at will and does not allow me to go out, neither did he allow my family to visit me, it was as if I was in prison while in his house.
“He comes home late at night and would not tell me his where about. I left his house since 2009 and I want a divorce,’’ she said.
Family breakdown poses the single biggest risk to children’s mental health once they reach their teens, research suggests.
An analysis of almost 11,000 families found that having parents who split up was the strongest single influence on girls’ mental health, particularly on emotional problems. It was the joint strongest factor in boys’ mental health, with strong links to behavioural problems.
For girls with cohabiting parents the odds of developing poor mental health were slightly lower, at 1.2 times, but for girls whose parents have separated the effect was larger and they were 1.6 times more likely to exhibit emotional problems, just like the case of Amanda.
According to Suzy Miller, a divorce strategist,she urges parents to remember this, “When children watch their narcissistic mother or father play out their games of mutual destruction, they are learning that relationships are not about love, but about control and winning whatever the cost.
“They learn that a moral misdeed by one parent can be an excuse for a litany of misdeeds by the other, justified as retaliation. They learn that love has no place in their home, and therefore, not trust love from anywhere.”
Divorce is the most difficult phase of a married couple’s life. As adults, they might eventually get over the tough period, but children become a collateral casualty. Their minds are tender and can slip into a state of shock on seeing parents split forever.
The adverse effects of divorce can be long-lasting on children and may negatively affect their own relationships.
Studies have shown that in the US, the daughters of divorced parents have a 60% higher divorce rate than those of the non-divorced parents. The number is 35% for sons.
Children who witness a divorce could be
disturbed by the thought of not seeing their parents together again and therefore develop short-term effects like Anxiety, Mood swings, Intense Sadness, Delusion and even Depression.
A new study concluding that whether parents cooperate or not makes little difference to how children cope with divorce. So “Does divorce always damage children?”
No. Divorce does not always damage
children. In many cases, mainly where there have been high levels of conflict between spouses, both adults and children are better off after the split,
especially in the immediate aftermath. It’s easy to see why. When mom and dad regularly have a go at one another, it creates a toxic environment at home.
Divorce actually brings relief from stress, but it is important to note that children perceive divorce very differently from their parents. To the parents, the reason for the split is obvious. But it may not be to the kids. “One day mom and dad are at home, mostly getting on fine, maybe a bit of bickering or a bit of a sour atmosphere, but not the end of the world. The next day they have split up. What on earth happened? Was it me? Or is that how relationships are? They just go pop for no apparent reason?” .
That kind of thinking can sabotage the way children think about relationships when they become adults themselves.
When parents then get along fine after the divorce, it can become even more confusing for the children.
Why on earth couldn’t you make it work?
That’s why the whole idea of cooperative parenting makes so little difference to children. It’s how they perceive the divorce that matters, not how the parents think they perceive it.
In Nigeria, Divorce is awfully common today, there have been 12,000 cases of divorce since 1975 and the chances that this number may triple before 2020 is very high.
Reports have further shown that the divorce rate in the northern part of Nigeria are much higher. It would seem as though people divorce just for the fun of it these days, but not the story of Maimuna Abdullahi.
At a hospital in one of the commercial areas of kaduna, Maimuna face was battered and swelled so much, that doctors feared her husband had dislocated her jaw. Her back and arms bristled with angry welts from the whipping her father gave her for fleeing to him. She was gaunt from hunger, dressed in filthy rags. And barely a year
after her wedding, she was divorced.
It would be a tragic story for a woman of any age. But for Maimuna Abdullahi, it all happened by the time she was 14.
In an interview she granted MICHELLE FAUL, “I’m too scared to go back home,” she whispers, a frown crinkling her brow as she fiddles nervously with her hands. “I know they will force me to go back to my husband.”
Maimuna is one of thousands of divorced girls in Nigeria, children who were forced into marriage and have since run away or been thrown out by their husbands.
They are victims of a belief that girls should get wed rather than educated, which drew the world’s
attention after Boko Haram terrorists abducted more than 200 schoolgirls more than six years ago and threatened to marry them off. Although some have been reported to be returned, as most are still missing.
Maimuna’s former husband, Mahammadu Saidu, blames her few years of school for her disobedience. A handsome man of 28 who is obviously proud of his ankle-high boots, he does not deny beating his wife.
Nigeria, a country of about 170 million, has one of the highest rates of child marriage in the world. The law of the land states that the age of consent, and thus of marriage, is 18.
However, the custom of child marriage is still ingrained enough that even a middle-aged federal senator has married five child brides and divorced at least one.
Across the country, one in five girls are married before the age of 15, according to the United Nations. In the desperately poor Muslim north, where child marriage is often considered acceptable by shariah or Islamic law, that number goes up to one in two.
There are no official numbers for just how many of these girls get divorced, often ending up destitute and shunned by their families. But they are all too visible. A few miles from where Maimuna lives, children her age and younger sell their bodies to truck drivers, flitting in and out of vehicles.
The tradition of child marriage has been discovered to be rooted partly in poverty. This is an area where most people do not have running water, electricity or indoor toilets, where children get only three or four years of schooling.
A marriageable daughter can bring in a bride price and mean one less mouth to feed.
The link between child marriage and education is clear. Only 2 percent of married girls in Nigeria go to school, compared to 69 percent of unmarried girls, according to the United Nations.
Some 73 percent of married girls received no schooling, and three out of four cannot read at all.
However it has been revealed that some girls are now rebelling in other ways. A 14-year-old forced to marry a
39-year-old, poisoned the groom’s food a week after their wedding, killing him and three of his friends in Kaduna recently.
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Eghosa Adezi is the Assistant Secretary of Sports Writers Association of Nigeria (SWAN), Edo State Chapter.
