SOS: BARRISTER (MRS.) CHRISTIANA OKOH

 

FROM MARRIAGE GONE SOUR TO A LIFE UNDER THREAT

‘As told to NEWSWIRE Law Events Magazine’

For (Barrister) Dr. (Mrs.) Christiana Oyoh Okoh, a legal practitioner based in Jos, Plateau State, what began as a fairy tale over a decade and a half ago has in the last five years or so become a nightmare in broad daylight.

As at the time of this writing, Mrs. Okoh (who shall hereinafter be referred as ‘Christiana’) has been married to Dr. Joseph Onoja Okoh (a medical doctor and surgeon residing in Jos but attached to a medical facility in Makurdi, Benue State), for almost two decades. Their union is blessed with two daughters – who are aged 16 and 13 respectively. The couple are both of the Idoma ethnic nationality in Benue State of Nigeria.

The trauma that has now become a recurring decimal in the marriage between Christiana and Dr. Okoh (who shall hereinafter be referred to as Dr. Joseph) began five years ago – in 2020, to be exact – when Dr. Okoh, seemingly out of the blue, began accusing his wife of adultery, alleging that in his absence (as his work takes him to Makurdi at the beginning of each working week, at the end of which he returns to Jos for the weekend) she had been entertaining men and granting sexual favours.

Nothing could be further from the truth, Christiana says; she has, till date, been sexually intimate with one man only – namely, her husband whom she met as a virgin when she was in the University. She had married at a relatively youthful age, and had had zero sexual experience with anyone else. But undeterred, Dr. Joseph followed up on his allegations by refusing to provide for the family’s upkeep, or to assume any responsibility for his family altogether.

Even though she saw this change of attitude as an anomaly, Christiana did not complain at first; she was a professional, afterall, and was earning enough income to shoulder her responsibilities at the home front. But over time, his verbal attacks began to take on the dimensions of psychological warfare. With his background in Medicine – and psychiatry in particular – Dr. Joseph knew exactly what buttons to press, what words to say, what gestures and insinuations to make, in order to trigger his wife emotionally. Despite all her denials, and in spite of all evidence to the contrary, he dug in on his accusations of adultery day and night, to the point where she became suicidal and sought to end it all.

Strangely, in spite of him being the one making the accusations of adultery, he was also the one who would never let his spouse go near his cell phone – for reasons which, at that time, were best known to him. He always acted paranoid whenever he saw her near his phone – as if afraid she might find out something she shouldn’t. At first, she would make all manner of excuses for him – the pressure of work was telling on him, he was having a mid-life crisis, there was something bothering him, which he would tell her when the time was right, etc., etc., etc. Never mind the fact that, in all the years of their marriage, they never really took time to have a meaningful conversation. He never initiated any conversations – and when she tried to do so, he would rebuff her, saying he was too tired, or change the subject, or say it was not the right time and suggest that they discuss it at a more opportune time, etc. But the opportune time never came, and the conversations never happened – and the matter would die a natural death (But not quite; instead, it would smolder, like a slow-burning fire, as if waiting for the right moment to explode into a mighty conflagration).

One fateful day, Christiana discovered what she thought was the source of her husband’s change in behaviour. A family friend had paid a visit that day, and as Dr. Joseph saw him out, he left his phone behind in the sitting-room. Quick as lightning, she pounced on the phone and scrolled through the WhatsApp and other messages.

What she found was even more damning than what he had been accusing her of!

They were raw, explicit and sexually-charged conversations between her husband and a succession of lady-friends. Obviously, she thought with a sinking feeling as she stared at the evidence of her husband’s repeated infidelities, he was accusing HER of the very things HE was doing! But unwilling to confront him with only circumstantial evidence, Christiana decided to discreetly investigate the ladies in question.

Having gathered all the evidence she needed, she eventually confronted her husband.

To her utter shock, Dr. Joseph did not deny an iota of what she was saying! On the contrary, apart from a mild query as to why she would search his phone in defiance of his orders never to do so, he appeared smug about it, as if proud of his sexual escapades. He kept a straight face, even as his wife agonizingly enumerated what she had found. Dr. Joseph took to claiming that he was Christiana’s Alpha and Omega who paid her school fees from her undergraduate to doctoral degrees, and was responsible for every single accomplishment she had ever recorded in her life and therefore he was entitled to everything she would ever work for. She had nothing of her own, he would say – despite the fact that he had had no property to his name before his marriage to her. She also had no right, he said, to complain about being ill-treated and therefore must endure whatever he did to her. After all, he added, he had done her a great favour by marrying her. Which was not true; he had taken advantage of her naivety, and had gotten her pregnant during their 5 years of dating her before the marriage.

It occurred to Christiana, just then, that her husband no longer cared what happened to their marriage.

But she did care; she had no interest in ending the marriage. She not only cared about the man she had loved and married in her tender years, and about their children, but as someone brought up under traditional cultural values (where marriage was a sacred bond and divorce was a taboo associated with all manner of societal stigmas) she refused to contemplate the thought of leaving her husband. She decided that she would do whatever it took to keep this marriage alive, and bring it back on its former footing.

But the reality of her situation could not be denied for long. As if liberated from having to hide his secrets from his wife, or having to try keep up appearances, Dr. Joseph took his psychological warfare to a new level, making her home a living hell. Every attempt on her part to sit her husband down and have a heart-to-heart conversation about the state of their relationship was met with a cold shoulder. He kept up a steady stream of accusations, not just about her alleged infidelities, but about other incidences dating back from the beginning of their marriage. He enumerated a litany of grievances on matters both serious and trivial. This warfare – coupled with his controlling nature even at the best of times, as well as her hectic work and study schedule – gradually reduced Christiana to an emotional wreck.

Her situation in the family house was clearly untenable, and she felt she was losing her sanity. She certainly was losing weight – at an alarming rate. So, in order to retain her physical and mental health, Christiana decided to rent an apartment not far from the law office where she worked. She wanted peace – and freedom. When she mentioned it to her husband, Dr. Joseph surprisingly agreed – though not out of any concern, she felt, about her wellbeing. He, however, refused to spend more time at their Jos home so as to avoid being with the children on his own.

Matters took a decidedly sinister turn a few days after she had moved a few of her belongings into her new ‘emergency’ abode. In the midst of the turmoil in her home, Christiana had refrained from calling her mother, who resided in their hometown, to tell her what was happening – because the old lady was suffering from an acute case of high blood pressure, and Christiana did not want to aggravate her condition. She was her mother’s favorite child.

Her husband, however, had no such qualms; he called his mother-in-law and told her how terribly her daughter had behaved, and described in lurid detail Christiana’s alleged infidelities. In short, he painted for the old woman a picture of her lawyer-daughter as a shameless, wanton whore. He pulled no punches whatsoever in his condemnation of his wife.

Needless to say, the old lady’s condition went from bad to worse at this news. She had known and trusted her dear daughter all her life as a woman of virtue. To hear things like this about her was simply too much. Her case got so serious that the family was alarmed, and summoned Dr. Joseph Okoh and his wife to Benue State for a family meeting.

When they arrived, each narrated his/her side of the story. Before the family meeting, Dr. Joseph had been threatening to take her to swear to an oath at the shrine of Alekwu (a powerful deity among the Idoma people). The oath entailed the drinking of a particularly potent concoction. The Idoma people believed that anyone who swore falsely before Alekwu, and drank this concoction, would surely die in a matter of days. As a Christian by birth and by conviction, Christiana balked at the idea of swearing before a pagan idol, not because she was guilty, but because it went against her faith. However, she eventually gave in to to swear to Alekwu due to Dr. Joseph’s repeated and baseless accusations, for the purpose of getting vindicated and clearing her name and reputation. No thanks to these accusations, women in the past have had their heads and private parts shaved and made to dance and walk naked through market squares – ostensibly to either prove their innocence or make atonement or cleansing for their adultery.

For the first time since the crisis began, when she saw how insistent they were (especially those on her husband’s side of the family) she released all the pent-up anger and frustrations she felt at her husband’s accusations and repeated humiliations. Tempers flared up all round – and in the end, nothing of substance was addressed, let alone resolved. In the end, she was asked by the family elders to return to her husband’s house and be of good behaviour from thenceforth.

Against her wishes and pleas, her husband refused to come back to the house in Jos – saying he would die if he “cohabited with an adulteress.”

It was at this point that Christiana realised that her marriage was on its last legs – and that divorce might just be an option. As a lawyer, though, she knew that the legal process involved in divorce was usually fraught with all sorts of boobytraps – and it usually took a heavy toll on children in the marriage. She wanted to shield her children from the ordeal of any divorce proceedings. So she tried to avoid a court divorce at all costs.

In a last-ditch effort to save her marriage, Christiana decided to pay her husband a visit at his apartment in Makurdi – where he spends his weekdays because of his work in the Benue State capital. She knew by this time that Dr. Joseph was deeply involved with a particular lady. Before going, she discussed her intention with her mother. The old lady urged her not to visit, to avoid any unpleasantness. But she insisted.

She arrived at her husband’s apartment at 11.00pm – having left Jos only at the close of her work-day. Her husband refused to let her into his apartment, despite the time of day, saying he would not be under the same roof with ‘an adulteress.’ All her entreaties fell on deaf ears; she sensed that her husband’s refusal to let her into the house was not just because of his stated fear of sharing the same roof with an adulteress, but because his lady-friend was in the house at that time.

Instead, he offered to drop her at her mother’s home – at well over midnight – in his car, the car she had contributed the sum of N2.5m to help him purchase. The drive to Mother’s place took place in total silence; not a single word was exchanged between them. They might have passed for two strangers. Barrister (Mrs.) Christiana Okoh knew just then that her marriage to Dr. Joseph Okoh was experiencing its death throes.

So she set about preparing court papers.

She filed for divorce at the High Court in Makurdi – upon which the lawyer her husband hired objected, arguing that the Court had no jurisdiction over the matter, given the circumstances of how the marriage was contracted. The lawyer made much about the relative validities of Native Marriage, Court Marriage and Church Marriage, and questioned the court’s competence to sit on her matter. Even when she filed at the Upper Court II, also in Makurdi, the lawyer objected there also – this time he reversed himself and argued that it was actually the High Court that had the said jurisdiction. He entered preliminary objections with every opportunity he got. Christiana applied for the formal annulment of the church marriage which was rendered null and void – as opposed to the Native Marriage, which, as things stood, was the only valid marriage between her and Dr. Joseph. The opposing lawyer opposed this as well.

In the face of the roadblocks her husband’s lawyer put up, Christiana had no recourse but to contact the local chapter of the International Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA) for legal representation. The young lawyer FIDA assigned to her certainly did her best, but the constant harassment and intimidation by her husband’s (much senior) lawyer clearly rattled the young lady. He even objected to FIDA’s representation in the first place, arguing that FIDA itself was not a legal practitioner – merely an association of female practitioners.

While Christiana was enmeshed in these legal battles, her mother passed on. She was diagnosed with stroke and heart failure. Heartbroken, Christiana attributed old woman’s sudden demise to the intense stress she had gone through as a result of the crisis between her daughter (whom she had trusted with all her heart) and her son-in-law – and especially his cruel accusations. Christiana placed the responsibility for her mother’s death squarely on the shoulders of her husband.

Dr. Joseph’s response to his mother-in-law’s death was cold: it was Alekwu, the deity, he said, that was exacting punishment on Christiana’s family for her offence. He and his family members offered no condolences, neither did he attend his mother-in-law’s funeral rites, nor contributed to it in any way.

Instead, he filed for divorce at another Upper Area Court, too – and sent the court summons to her while she was still mourning her mother’s passing, and had yet to conclude her mother’s funeral rites.

Upon advice, Christiana decided to represent herself in court – partly in order to ensure that her husband’s lawyer, who had been intimidating the young FIDA lawyer, would meet his match in legal expertise, and to counter his shenanigans – in the form of his applications for sine die adjournments, and other tactics. The opposing lawyer was constantly overruled by the Judge as a result of her intervention.

Judges came and went. A female Judge in particular was the no-nonsense type, and under her, the case made a lot of progress. In the course of this back-and-forth, Christiana filed for a court order retraining her husband from evicting her from their matrimonial house. In 2024, Christiana was able to call a witness for the first time since the crisis began in 2020. Unfortunately, the case was interrupted by a strike on the part of the Judiciary Staff Union of Nigeria (JUSUN) Benue State Chapter that year – upon which it was adjourned to the 5th of June, 2025.

Dr. Joseph returned to the matrimonial home in Jos – for the first time in over three years – armed with an annulment certificate. In the course of their argument over his neglect of his marital (and especially parental) responsibilities, he summoned the police to evict her from their home, and to seize her car. She countered by saying she was still his wife by Idoma marriage law and custom, and as for the cars, she needed them to run the affairs of their children. She provided evidence of transfer of the sum of N2.5m from her to him from the proceeds of her hard work to pay for the car he had driven to Jos to harass her. She had documentation to that effect. She reminded him of the N2.5m she had given him for the purchase of his car. Both their home and the cars were subjects for determination at the divorce proceedings which were still pending before the Upper Area Court in Makurdi.

In the course of over three years of his absence, she used the family resources available to her to ensure safety and constant provision for their children – his children. In response, her husband – along with his siblings – came and had her arrested and put in police custody. She was eventually arraigned in court on fabricated charges with the possibility of being remanded in prison upon taking her plea, after which, they hoped, they would take over the house and cars. When she applied for bail on self-recognizance, the prosecutor vehemently opposed it and insisted she be given stringent bail conditions. To which the Judge agreed and, she was ordered to bring both her Ward Chief and Village Head to sign her bail bond. She was able to get her Village Head and Ward Chief to do so. Upon her being granted bail, Dr. Okoh, the prosecutor and watching brief senior counsel continued to work out other schemes to ensure that the court revoked her bail. Among their numerous plots was getting the Judge to sign a threat for commencement of contempt proceedings against her for an alleged disobedience of Court order to maintain status quo over a piece of land (an order which did not exist)

Upon the failure of their plots – Dr. Joseph resorted to physical tactics of intimidation, threatening to harm her if she didn’t vacate their home in Jos. Christiana appealed to the Commissioner of Police in Plateau State for protection, at which the police summoned Dr. Joseph. At a point, while promising her protection if the intimidation – or his agents – continued, the police also asked the couple to settle their differences amicably. However, Christiana insisted that the ‘amicable’ settlement should begin with her husband going to her people, fulfilling his traditional obligations concerning her late mother’s funeral rites, as well as other outstanding family matters. She also asked that he resume his responsibilities towards their two children.

When Dr. Joseph showed no signs of his readiness to do, the Police charged him to court on grounds of abandonment of children and spouse, psychological, mental and emotional abuse, intimidation and stalking under the Violence Against Persons (Prohibition) Law of Plateau State. This began a litany of legal challenges on the part of husband and wife – during which he reiterated his call for the revocation of her bail. She on her part wanted the court to compel him to fulfill his responsibilities, and asked the police to protect her in the face of his constant threats of physical harm, and his relentless attempts to forcibly evict her from the family’s home.

In the course of this back-and-forth, the court where Christiana was charged, appointed the watching-brief senior lawyer and directed him, as well as the prosecutor, Dr. Joseph and Christiana to return to the family house, and for her to cook a sumptuous meal for them as a peace-making gesture. She agreed – but unknown to her, Dr. Joseph had other ideas (in league with both the watching-brief senior lawyer, two other lawyers from his office and the prosecutor, who were obviously sympathetic to his side of the story).

On the drive to the house, Christiana – who was in her own car, while the three men were in the senior lawyer’s car – was going ahead of the other car as directed by the Prosecutor when, as she looked back after a few kilometres, she noticed that the other car was nowhere to be seen. Thinking that they had taken a detour they knew about, she drove on. On getting to her house, parked by one house away, not far from her gate. She went to ease herself and got to the land adjoining her house as she waited for them to arrive. After a while, she returned to the side where her car was parked – only to see the lawyers, who had since arrived, taking photographs and making videos of the vehicle! After having done so, instead of entering the building, they went over to the back of it, taking more pictures and making videos as they went. They made no attempt whatsoever to enter the building itself; apparently, her husband had told them not to, for fear of what Alekwu might do to them if they entered the house of an adulteress.

They then confronted her, accusing her of knowingly plying a ‘bad’ road – a death trap, even – with the intention of slowing them down so that she could get to the house and have enough time to prepare (and perhaps, poison) their meal. They also claimed that she had parked her car to block the road in order to prevent them from driving into the compound – apparently to give herself more time to carry out her nefarious plans, and that she had only come back to shift her car after they had already been forced to park elsewhere.

Shocked, Christiana insisted that they should take her back to the road they had allegedly taken. Instead of the road she had driven on, they took her to a different road full of potholes. Unknown to them, however, this particular road was a dead-end; it was blocked at a point on the road. So, how could she have passed there at all? Did her car fly over the barrier?

Unable to counter that particular argument, they decided to use another tactic of intimidation. At a signal from her husband, one of the lawyers suddenly tried to seize Christiana’s iPad tablet – where much of her work, as well as soft-copy documentations of matters relating to her cases, were stored. When she resisted him, he hit her, and she fell to the ground. In the course of the struggle, the touch-screen of the tablet cracked. The lawyer grabbed the tablet and handed it to Dr. Joseph. When Christiana tried to take it from her husband, he, too, hit her, knocking her back to the ground. When she struggled to her feet, he hit her again – and again, until she began to bleed from a serious wound on her arm. As she lay writhing on the ground in pain, Dr. Joseph passed the tablet to the most senior lawyer in the group, and that one dashed into the car and drove off, taking the tablet with him.

Looking around after they had all gone, Christiana noticed that there was a farm not far from the road, where a woman was working. The woman had been watching the scene in silence and must have seen everything that happened. Hoping she might be an eye-witness, Christiana went over to where the woman was and spoke to her. The woman confirmed that she had witnessed the assault. Are you willing to bear witness if you’re asked to? Christiana asked her. Hearing that question, the woman hesitated. Even when she eventually said yes, her voice lacked conviction; she didn’t want any lawyer, police or court wahala.

Same with a young man, and an okada rider who had seen her park some metres away from her gate earlier. She asked him to bear witness to what he saw. He was willing to do so, but like the woman at the farm, he was afraid of police wahala. But he did not mind giving her his name and phone number.

Upon her reporting of the incident to the Judge handling her matter, His Worship brushed her and the issue of her tablet aside in favour of the watching brief senior lawyer. When it seemed as though His Worship was in collaboration with the prosecution, he decided to recuse himself and sent the file to be assigned to another Judge to start denovo after so many curious adjournments – which she saw as nothing more than another desperate attempt to get her remanded in prison. Not satisfied with the Judge’s attitude to the case, Christiana wrote a petition against him to the Chief Judge of Plateau State, accusing him of bias. She also wrote to the Legal Practitioners’ Disciplinary Committee, accusing the senior lawyer who attacked her and helped her husband seize her tablet of professional misconduct together with the other conspiring lawyers.

But till date, neither petition has been taken seriously – let alone responded to.

Unable to retrieve her tablet for the time being, Christiana reported her injury at the police station. When the police called to summon her husband, they were told he was in Lafia, Nassarawa State – a claim which she knew couldn’t be true, given the distance between Jos and Lafia and the time it would take to get there. When the senior lawyer (the one who had made away with the tablet) was taken to task, he claimed that Christiana’s injury had been self-inflicted. His false story was corroborated by the other lawyers who were present at the scene.

Thinking of the old woman at the farm who had witnessed the incident, Christiana suggested that they go back to the scene, that she had a witness. They refused, saying she must have already manipulated her so-called ‘witnesses.’. Frustrated on that front, Christiana took the matter to the Village Head, and repeated that she had witnesses in respect of both the attack and the claim by the lawyers that she had parked – and then re-parked – her car to frustrate the lawyers who had come to her house. When she called the name of the young man present at the scene and described him, she was surprised when the Village Head said the young man was his son. The Village Head assured her, on behalf of his son, that he would cooperate.

True to his words, both the young man, the farm woman and other witnesses went to the police station and made statements as to what they saw on the two respective occasions. After their initial investigations, however, the police refrained from going forward with the matter. Instead, they referred the matter to their Legal Department – on the grounds that they could not charge a matter to court without legal advice.

So, no action was taken since October 2024 when the matter was sent to the Ministry of Justice for the Attorney General’s legal advice. Christiana also sent words of her predicament to her family members back home. In a bid to ensure her safety, some representatives of her family decided to make a peaceful visit. Dr. Joseph, on learning about the visit of Christiana’s family members, visit took his intimidation of Christiana to getting her relatives who went on a peace mission to his family, arrested in police custody for trespass and other fabricated charges.

The following month (November 2024) the matter against Dr. Joseph for abandonment of children came up in the High Court. But Christiana was disconcerted to find that it was to be prosecuted by the office of the Plateau State Attorney-General and Commissioner for Justice – even before her husband had entered a plea! She later found out that her husband had written a letter to the AG to this effect.

But when she made contact with the AG, to demand that she be shown the Certified True Copy (CTC) of her husband’s letter, the AG flatly denied knowledge of the case. Efforts to get hold of the said CTC proved difficult also, even after the AG had given directives for the CTC to be processed, as the staffers in the AG’s office put all manner of roadblocks in her path.

At first, Christiana could not fathom why they were doing that – until it eventually dawned on her. As lawyers, these staffers were members of the Jos Branch of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) – of which she had only recently served as the Treasurer. The Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Justice and the Counsel he appointed to take over the case from the police were her colleagues in the Executive Council. Both during the Branch elections, and within the Executive, Christiana knew she had a number of political opponents – many of whom worked in the Justice Ministry. Apparently, this was their way of settling scores against her. It was clear to Christiana that they had been compromised; perhaps that was why they didn’t want her to see the contents of her husband’s letter.

But if so, was the AG (who had denied knowledge of the case) compromised also? She wondered.

Seeing no way to extricate himself from the case entirely, the AG decided to take a different tack; he suggested that mediation – rather than litigation – could be a better way forward threatening her to discontinue the case against her husband if she did not tag along. Even as she agreed in principle with the idea of mediation, Christiana named a number of conditions for that to happen – she wanted her tablet back; her husband must identify her alleged lover (or lovers) – or failing that, tender a public apology, both to her and to the memory of her late mother; he must fulfill his obligations in respect of her mother’s funeral rites, and he must resume his responsibility for his children’s welfare and education.

In his response to the suggestion of mediation, however, Dr. Joseph was adamant; he dug in on his allegations of infidelity, and even repeated his numerous grievances dating from the inception of their marriage. He made it clear that he had zero interest in mediation. Which was fine with Christiana; it simply reinforced her conviction that her marriage had broken down irretrievably. Obviously, the other woman in her husband’s life was an important factor in his attitude. But closure between her and Dr. Joseph, she knew, would not come until he had returned her tablet, resumed his duties regarding his children, and stopped making threats against her life.

By this time her health had deteriorated to the point where she was a mere shadow of herself. She was traumatized, to say the least.

She asked the AG to transfer the case to the police for prosecution, which the AG acceded to – or so he said. But curiously, the Director of Public Prosecutions in the Ministry refused to comply with the AG’s order. Instead, the DPP said he had assigned the case to a lawyer, and gave Christiana the lawyer’s name and contact. When she contacted the lawyer, she said she had already referred the case back to the DPP!

Christiana could see the hand of her husband at work in this back-and-forth. If she had ever doubted his influence – and the respect society accorded people of his status (as a medical doctor and surgeon) she had no such doubts now.

But what her traducers did not realize was that she had been recording everything that was being said in her various encounters – especially at the AG’s office.

Because time was of the essence, and her children needed to be catered for, Christiana wanted an Order of Interim Protection from the courts. She had been financially drained because of all she has been put through since the year 2020. On her request that the case be transferred to the police, she was informed by the DPP that, a group of undisclosed persons had deliberated and agreed that the AG could not take over a case either rightly or wrongly – and then hand it back again. She was sidelined, even as the Complainant.

Dr. Joseph was eventually arraigned in court, where he entered his plea. The Presiding Judge elected to remand him on the charges until his bail application was presented – and rejected his lawyer’s attempt to make an oral application for bail, saying as a court of record, only a written application was acceptable. This meant that Dr. Joseph would be detained for the time being.

When the bail application was eventually brought, Christiana demanded to see the bail conditions. She was speechless with dismay when she saw that it contained the simplest of conditions: Dr. Joseph was to bring a priest (a Reverend Father) to sign the bail, and he was to sign an undertaking not to endanger the lives of the Complainant and his children and not to interfere with the prosecution of the case – and that would be it!

Not surprisingly, however, even this simple condition was an uphill task for her husband; because he wasn’t an active member of any church, he wasn’t really known to any Reverend Father he could call on in Jos.

But after some time, a nolle prosequi application was entered, and Dr. Joseph was discharged.

Apparently affronted by his detention – and its cause – the doctor (in the company of his new woman) went to the University of Jos, where his older daughter was now a student, and informed the girl that thenceforth, he was no longer responsible for her welfare or her education! He also made renewed threats against her mother.

Alarmed by these threats, Christiana filed a case of fundamental human rights at the Federal High Court – partly to evade the conspirators arraigned against her at the state level. She named the AG, along with her husband and others, in the suit – accusing the AG in particular of abuse of power. The rights being violated, she made it clear in her suit, was not just hers but those of her children as well. Her 13-year-old second daughter was set to sit for her Junior WAEC exams at the time, and money was hard to come by. On many instances, she had had to divert her daughters’ school fees to finance her medications and therapy sessions as the crisis continues to take a toll on her.

But when it came time to get a lawyer among her colleagues to represent her in court, she found herself unable to. None was willing to do so. Some even advised her not to sue the AG (reason being that he was a man of God and, therefore, a good man).

She also wrote a letter to the National Human Rights Commission on 28th March, 2025, citing threats to her life, and to the welfare of her daughters. In its response, dated the 26th of May, 2025, the Commission not only acknowledged her request, but directed its office in Jos to hold a watching brief, and also assigned a lawyer from the Jos office to look into her claims of violations of her and her daughters’ rights, and the threats against her.

Those threats, she has come to learn in the most frightening manner possible, are not empty ones. Far from it. The threats have come thick and fast in the past few weeks, and have taken on many forms: Their two dogs – a Rottweiler, and a much smaller pet – were poisoned to death, obviously by people who knew how to infiltrate her home in her absence. Perhaps the same people, or others, came and set fire to her home on another occasion. The fire raged, causing extensive damage to the house, until it got to where her car was parked, and then miraculously died out. At one time, these faceless persons even killed a giant snake and deposited it on the lawn of her house. On the outer walls of her fence, people have written dangerous graffiti, threatening doom and gloom on her. She has nowhere to go to with her children, especially now there is no Grandma in the village to visit – which they always looked forward to especially during their holidays. with the death of her mother. She had lost her father during her first year as an undergraduate (a confirmed orphan) – the knowledge and consciousness of which Dr. Joseph had now chosen to weaponize in his arsenal of terror.

Meanwhile, upon resumption of judicial activities after the six month-long JUSUN strike in Makurdi, Dr. Joseph continued with his usual tactics of frustrating the divorce proceedings pending at the Upper Area Court. Instead of proceeding with cross-examining her last witness and opening his case on 5th June, 2025 which was the business of the day, his lawyer set about what he had proven to be adept at – he applied to Court to order Christiana to pack out of their matrimonial house in defiance of the existing Court Order issued on 25th April, 2024 (restraining Dr. Joseph from throwing her out of the house or harassing her and her children). The matter was further adjourned at his instance without any palliative orders for the children who are negatively impacted by the delay, as he insisted that he was not ready to proceed with his case on such flimsy grounds.

It goes on and on, playing havoc with her nerves and giving her sleepless nights – or nightmares, when sleep mercifully comes. Things have come to the point where, as we speak, her house is under constant watch (by day and by night) by hired vigilantes. Okada riders follow her car wherever she drives to – and serve as a lookout for any suspicious vehicular movement on the road. That is how paranoid she has become.

Barrister (Mrs.) Christiana Okoh is hereby calling on the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), its relevant Sections – especially the Section on Public Interest and Development Law (SPIDEL) – and other public-spirited Nigerians to come to her aid, and end this nightmare that is threatening to end her life one way or another.

It is time for the nightmare to end.

See documents below