By Itse Sagay

As a lawyer, I have watched with initial amusement and now increasing irritation, the portrayals of marriages and divorces in Nollywood Films. Unfortunately, the officials of the Nigerian Bar Association are so busy extracting money from the oppressed members of the association, that they ignore matters that undermine and bring the legal system into ridicule.

Nollywood Films are filled with couples claiming to have contracted “Court Marriages”. THERE IS NOTHING LIKE A COURT MARRIAGE. In other words, you don’t get married in court. Outside customary and Islamic marriages, the only other types of marriages in Nigeria are Registry and Church Marriages.

A registry marriage is one in which one of the intended parties (usually the man) proceeds to the Marriage Registry in the District in which he desires to get married. He will be required to fill out a form, giving notice of his intention, and some vital information regarding himself and his expected bride. These include the names of the parties, their occupations, marital status, etc. This notice is entered into the marriage Notice Book by the registrar.

In the absence of the entry of a caveat against the marriage or of any other impediment, the registrar must issue a certificate to the applicant not earlier than 21 days, but not later than three months after the filing of the Notice, granting the parties permit to marry.

Now, the difference between a Registry Marriage and a Church Marriage is that the party intending to have a Registry Marriage then goes ahead to request this from the registrar who then conducts the marriage in the registry within the above stated period. If the parties intend a church marriage, they will take the Registry Certificate to their Church Authorities, who then conduct a church marriage based on the Certificate.

Therefore, the difference between a Church marriage and a Registry marriage is that in the case of the former, the Registrar’s Certificate is taken to the Church where the formal ceremony would be conducted. Therefore, there is no legal distinction between a Registry marriage and a Church marriage. Both of them have the same legal effect in terms of legal status, including the ingredients of nullity and divorce. THERE IS NOTHING LIKE A COURT MARRIAGE.

The court only comes in when the parties are going through proceedings of nullity, separation, restitution of conjugal rights and divorce. In any case, can any married Nollywood actor or actress who was married in a court place put his or her hand up? If not, why the continued indulgence in the fallacy of “Court Marriage”?

Ironically, Nollywood does not recognise the role of the judicial system in their fairy tale divorces. Apparently, all you need to do in order to obtain a divorce a – la – Nollywood is for the two parties to sign so-called divorce papers. The courts are not involved in Nollywood-style divorces. “You must sign”. “I won’t sign”, they usually scream at each other.

In fact, it is impossible for a couple married under the Marriage Act (Registry or Church Marriages) to obtain a divorce without lengthy, technical and difficult judicial proceedings at the High Court level. Whereas under Nollywood, the parties obtain a divorce by their own mutual consent and signatures, in the real world you can only obtain a divorce after a successful petition presided over by a High Court Judge. The party wishing to obtain a divorce known as the ‘petitioner’ will fill and file a long and complex document known as the ‘petition’.

A few of the numerous pieces of information that must be provided in a petition include: the names of the parties, the date of the marriage, their dates of birth, the domicile of the parties, their place of residence, the number and names of children if they have any, the reason why the divorce is being brought, which are referred to as (facts) in the current Divorce Act.

These include among numerous others:

• Wilful refusal to consummate the marriage;

• Adultery and intolerability, i.e., the Petitioner finding it intolerable to live with the respondent who committed adultery;

• Respondent’s intolerable behaviour;

• Living apart for two years or five years, depending of the circumstances;

• Disappearance of the Respondent for seven years.

Add to these, 14th other grounds or facts that can be assembled from Section 16(1) of the Marriage Act and you have all together 21 facts or grounds on which divorce can be based. The petitioner needs only proof of one of these facts or grounds to succeed.

However, proving any one of them is extremely difficult, technical and demanding and only a divorce lawyer who knows his stuff can successfully bring a divorce petition. On the fact (ground) of adultery, the Petitioner is allowed to find it intolerable to live with the respondent for reasons other than the adultery itself.

In Akwara v. Akwara (unreported) Lagos High Court (22-11-71), the husband committed adultery, but the wife did not find it tolerable to live with the husband for that reason. She found it intolerable to live with the husband because he wanted to bring in the other woman into their home as a co-wife. The court held that her finding it intolerable to live with husband for the second reason was a valid basis for divorce.

Even if a divorce petition is successful, the petitioner is only granted a Decree Nisi, which lasts for three months thus, creating a status of neither being married nor divorced for the parties. This allows the parties to reconcile within the period if they so wish. It also allows any party to expose any important fact that may give rise to divorce which was not known to him or her before the Decree Nisi.

In the absence of any such occurrence, the divorce is made “Absolute” after three months.

All these are a far cry from Nollywood’s “sign the Divorce Papers” in which each party to the marriage becomes a High Court Judge.

Unfortunately, the NBA has been too busy pursuing other interests to put an end to this desecration of our legal language, law and practice.

Sagay is an eminent professor of law and Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN)