Emeka Offor, the controversial Nigerian government contractor from Anambra State, has secretly taken another wife. On Saturday, October 12, he performed the traditional rite for the marriage of a 24-year old girl as the fourth wife.
The ceremony took place at the residence of the father of the bride, Alexander Okey Ufondu, at Umuezeopi in Oraifite, Ekwusigo Local Government Area of Anambra State. The bride named Adaora, who was rusticated in 2009 from the Law Faculty of the University of Nigeria, Enugu Campus, on grounds of poor academic performance and fraud, has for the past two years been living with Mr Offor in the highbrow district of Maitama in Nigeria’s Federal Capital Territory of Abuja. Therefore, the traditional wedding ceremony of October 12 was a mere formality.
The wedding has already been generating ripples in the religious communities of Oraifite, the hometown of both Mr Offor and his new father in law, Mr Ufondu, an Onitsha-based trader.
“As a knight of the Anglican Church,” said Lazurus Nwakaibeya, a former catechist in the town who is leading a group of church members to write a strongly worded petition to the church authorities in Nigeria, “Offor cannot possibly be allowed to be a polygamist and still be a knight”. But Offor has been a polygamist since 2003 without the senior local clerics raising eyebrows for fear of Mr Offor using the police against them, as he has been wont to do to those who disagree with him in the community in over 10 years.
“Besides,” observed Jonathan Mgbenwelu, a prominent member of St Luke’s Anglican Church at Ibolo Oraifite, “Offor is one of the major donors to the church, so the ecclesiastical leaders have all along turned a blind eye to his numerous infractions, including his refusal to attend church services on Sundays unless there is a major ceremony”. He was one of the sponsors of a retreat for Anglican knights in Nnewi Diocese held a week to his wedding at the All Saints Church at Irefi, which is a few poles away from his residence.
The wedding is also the subject of serious controversy among Catholics in the town. Both Offor’s new wife and her parents belong to the Catholic Church which is diametrically opposed to polygamy. Mr Offodum, better known as Casca, is reported to be preparing an elaborate defence anytime he is summoned by the Catholic Church hierarchy to explain why he should allow the daughter to be someone’s third wife. The kernel of his argument, it is gathered from his family, will be that since Offor has never wedded in the Catholic Church none of his previous marriages will be regarded as valid in the eyes of the church,making eligible to marry another person as long as he is willing to wed in the Catholic Church.
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