A Saudi Arabia-based Nigerian, Yakubu Yunusa, popularly known as Dogo Mai Nama, has dragged his wife, Zulaiha Hussaini, to a Shariah court for marrying another man and prayed the court to dissolve the latest marriage.
Presenting his claim before the court at the Filin Hockey in Kano through his lawyer, Wada Bashir Isyaku, Mai Nama said, “I met Zulaiha in Saudi Arabia in 2019. After I expressed intention to marry her, I asked her if I could send my people to her family in Nigeria to seek permission to marry her, but she told me she would contact her family first.
“Afterwards, on a Friday in 2019, she told me she had contacted her only guardian in Nigeria, her uncle, who lived in Maiduguri. She said her uncle told her that there was no need for me to send my own witness for the wedding that would take place the following day because of the present insecurity in Maiduguri. She said her uncle said he would ask a friend to represent my family.
“The following day she called and told me her uncle contacted her that he had held the nikka’i the same day after Zuhr prayers and that we were now wedded.
“To celebrate this, I shared kola nuts and sweets, paid her 1,000 Saudi riyal (SAR) as dowry and held a wedding reception in Saudi, after which she moved to my house in Saudi.
“When she was eight months pregnant, she pleaded with me to allow her come back to Nigeria to have the baby because she wanted her mother to take care of her. I agreed and she stayed together with my first wife in my residence in Hotoro, Kano. She gave birth to our baby girl, Hajara, in 2020.
“I have always catered for her needs, including buying ram for her every Eid el-Kabir, even when she went back to her hometown in 2022.
“One night in 2022, I called her number several times but she didn’t pick, only for a man to call me the next day and warn me against calling his wife late in the night. That was when I found out she had married one Ibrahim in Katsina five days earlier.
“I am pleading with the court to dissolve this marriage and return my wife and daughter to me.”
However, Zulaiha, speaking through her lawyer, Nura Aminu Hausa, denied ever getting married to the plaintiff. The lawyer argued that she had never been pregnant and never had any relative in Maiduguri as the plaintiff claimed.
When asked by the khadi if he had witnesses, the plaintiff replied, “Yes.”
The Khadi, Abdullahi Halliru, ordered the plaintiff to present his witnesses at the court’s next sitting.