A mild drama ensued, yesterday, in a Mapo Customary Court in Ibadan, when a housewife and mother of two, Mrs Beauty Odinye, prayed the court to disregard her prayer for divorce and also a testimony in which she alleged that her husband, Nathaniel, was impotent.

Beauty had earlier in July, while testifying in a divorce suit before the court, requested the dissolution of her 12-year-old marriage to Nathaniel over alleged impotence and lack of care.

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. 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 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. His words: “My lord, Beauty has ruined my heart and dented my name in public and in the news. I cannot accept her plea; not this time. It is too late; she has brought so much shame to me.”

Beauty’s father, who had all along supported Nathaniel, joined his daughter to plead with his son in-law for forgiveness.

The court’s President, Chief Ademola Odunade, subsequently invited the parties and their relatives to his chamber for out of court settlement. (Vanguard)

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