Tuesday, 15 April 2014

“My Husband Wants To Kill Me Two Months After Our Wedding” – Medical Doctor Tells Court

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The rate of domestic violence has been so alarming in recent times. I used to think that this happened only in illiterate homes but this time around, the reverse is the case as a female doctor describes the violence in her young marriage of June 2013 to her doctor husband whom she discovered was in a legal marriage to another woman and had a baby girl already.

Pictured above is Dr. Pamela Iwudiaba who is a staff of the Federal Teaching Hospital, Abakiliki, Ebonyi State. Dr. Pamela who was strangled by her husband to a point of unconsciousness and was flown to London for medical treatment and just returned is calling on human rights organizations to come to her rescue in the hands of her husband.

The medical practitioner stated that her life is now in constant danger owing to threats from some strange faces suspected to be working for her husband. According to her, the husband, Dr. Obeka, had always boasted that with his closeness with Nigeria’s minister of health, he would make her lose her job at the hospital. She said;
“I feel so unsafe here everyday, strange faces are following me around. It took the intervention of the First Lady of Ebonyi State, before he allowed me to collect my personal effects.
“I plead with concerned Nigerians to come to my aid so that I will be transferred to another state before they kill me”
Dr. Pamela dragged the estranged husband, Dr. Ndudim Chukwu Obeka and the commissioner of police in Ebonyi State to court for allegedly infringing upon her fundamental rights.

In a suit, which she filed at the Federal High Court sitting in Abakiliki, Pamela averred that she was arrested and detained by the police on the instance of her husband over matrimonial matters.
She further told the court that while at the police headquarters, Abakiliki, she was subjected to all sorts of inhuman and degrading treatment, adding that the police refused to allow her change her sanitary pad, leaving her body to be soaked with blood.

The plaintiff told the court that after their wedding, she discovered to her shock that the husband has a valid subsisting legal marriage with one Mrs. Ngozi Obeka and the marriage is blessed with a baby girl, Miss Faith Obeka.

In an affidavit of facts the medical doctor swore before the court, she disclosed that:

“I was at Britain working with one United Kingdom hospital as a medical doctor by my virtue of being a British citizen and was not in a position to have known anything about Dr. Obeka’s marital background.
“That at the insistence and persuasion of Dr. Obeka, I relocated to Nigeria where I eventually got married with him on the 14/6/2013 at the Enugu South Local Government marriage registry, Enugu.
“That the marriage was solemnized at the Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church, Independence Layout, Enugu on 26/10/2013. That the said marriage is now in the process of annulment for deceit and misrepresentation.
“That barely two months after I resumed effective cohabitation with the 4th respondent, the said 4th respondent began to taunt me that I had not taken in.
“Thereafter, the 4th respondent became hostile, generally unfriendly and at the same time began to insult me always.
“That I do not have fertility problem.
“That on the 2/12/2013 the 4th respondent in the mid-night came up again complaining that I had not taken in and that if it were a younger lady of 20 years, that she could have taken-in.
“I replied by suggesting that both of us should go for fertility investigation, he immediately pounced on me, strangling me to the point of unconsciousness”.

It was gathered that before the case escalated, both the Catholic Bishop of Abakiliki Diocese, Rt. Rev. Michael Okoro and Pamela’s lawyer, Ojo Ijelekhai have written letters to the minister of health, Prof. Onyebuchi Chukwu seeking his intervention.

However, the minister was yet to intervene on the matter, prompting the court case.
Apart from seeking the enforcement of her fundamental rights and an injunction restraining the husband from further threatening her, Pamela is equally asking the court to order the respondents to pay the sum of N50,000,000 (fifty million) to her as damages and compensation for infringement on her right to dignity of person.

Source: DailyPost

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