Assuming that my wife, Okemena and I have reached the point of irreconcilable differences, we did not pick ourselves on the streets or social media. It will not be the business of anyone of you on social.

I travelled with my family members to Oyede in Isoko North LGA, 16 years ago to marry her according to all the traditional rites of Isoko people and my own tribe, Bette. After meeting her parents and Isoko people in Lagos several times, I travelled once to Oyede to see the entire Enuto family. Afterwards, I returned for a proper marriage.

On each of these occasions, both in Lagos and Oyede, elderly people suspended what they were doing and broke their busy schedules to come and take us seriously. People returned from markets and farms and businesses to receive us and celebrate with us. I was issued receipts and a certificate by my in-laws as evidence of our union.

If I want to now leave her, the same way I took my family along, I will also take my family members and enter the road and go to Oyede and meet her people who handed her to me and tell them properly that, “I no do again, for so so so and so reason.” As it is the custom of Africans, the family may not immediately accept but will want to intervene and seek to mend fences and so on and so on. What exactly will be the role of social media in this assignment? Even if you want to go to court, get a lawyer and file your divorce process and divorce your divorce and go in peace and leave us alone.

What level of disrespect have we descended to that even after gathering community elders, busy friends and family and even strangers, in the name of a till-death-do-us-part union, once there is a small difference, we undermine all these persons and fiam, we run to social media to write all the crap about, ‘I can’t continue again? As if it’s an award speech.

Some of you, even your parents and in-laws get to read your separation on social media with shock. Don’t you have respect? If you can’t continue again, what is the business of social media with that? Is social media the house of your in-laws or parents? How will social media add or remove from your decision to walk away from your marriage? Don’t you have home training?

Abeg, me I no ready to run leave my own ooooo.

Yours sincerely,
Citizen Agba Jalingo.

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