A Nigerian lawyer, First Baba Isa, has debunked the ‘lie’ about Abuja divorce figure spreading on the internet.
Recently, a lawyer attached to the Corporate Affairs Commission (in her own words), Sandra Orokodo, took to Twitter to alarm the public of the increasing divorce rate in Abuja.
According to her, barely 2 months into the year, there are 4000 divorce applicants in Abuja. She also talked about how young many of those marriages are, with some less than a year old.
Her tweet immediately went viral, garnering thousands of likes and retweets.
However, another Abuja-based lawyer, Firsts Baba Isa, has now come out to debunk those figures. He added an image of the tweet and titled his post “This is a lie.”
According to him, he doubted the credibility of the post from the outset. Notwithstanding, he went on to verify from the horse’s mouth.
“I don’t know why anyone will put up such a lie out there. But if the purpose is to get people to bash marriage and lose faith in the institution, I think they have succeeded, a lot; see how a massive lie has gone viral. Even those who should know better have been broadcasting this falsehood,” Firsts Baba Isa said.
He continued, “The total number of cases (all cases o, not just divorce) filed at the FCT High Court since the beginning of 2020 is not even up to 2000, yet. So where did she get her figures from? And note that the High Court is the Court that has jurisdiction to entertain divorce proceedings for marriages contracted under the Act (Court Marriage).
He also brought out a point that totally nullifies the post Sandra Orokodo shared on Twitter. According to Firsts Baba Isa, it’s hard to get a divorce if a marriage is less than 2 years old.
“Another crazy angle of this lie is that some of these marriages are less than a year old. In law, you can’t bring a divorce proceeding to dissolve a marriage that is less than 2 years old, unless you satisfy some stringent conditions to get the permission of the court, He added.
