Suzanne Emma, Emeka Ike's ex-wife, has revealed why she divorced her husband.
Suzanne filed for divorce from her husband in 2015, citing charges of physical and verbal abuse throughout their marriage. A Customary Court in Lagos Island, South-west Nigeria, dissolved their 14-year marriage in March 2017. The couple is the parents of four children.
Suzanne, who has remained mute since the contentious divorce, spoke up for the first time in the public in a recent interview with media personality Chude Jideonwo.
Her decision to address the difficulties surrounding her marriage to the ace actor follows the actor's earlier interview with Channels, in which he claimed to have lost everything he possessed due to allegations of domestic abuse.
The mother of four said she was awakened by Emeka's recent charges in an interview.
"I woke up, and my sister sent me a message that he (Emeka) is at it again," she explained. Going into the message, it was the same as it had been for the previous ten years. So I chose to terminate it because I felt like I had gotten out of an abusive relationship, but I was still being abused. In the last ten years, I've attempted to move on with my life and start over."
"This person (Emeka Ike) continues to go to the media to bash and slander me." He makes up lies and states things that never happened or that he made up. I've just decided it's past time for me to speak up. What I've been through is something I'd never want on anyone, but especially the devil."
She filed for divorce at the Lagos Island Customary Court on July 13, 2015. After a two-year battle, the divorce was finalized in 2017.
Emeka previously stated that he knelt in court to urge her not to leave their marriage throughout the nasty divorce proceedings.
Suzanne, on the other hand, said that the actor never knelt in court to beg; instead, she claimed that Emeka committed to do the right thing.
"He never knelt in court; instead, he promised to come to my family and do the right thing, and the case would be adjourned for an out-of-court settlement," she claimed. We came to court on the next delayed date, and the judge inquired, 'Did he come to me?' No, I would say. Because that never occurred.
"In fact, he had said in court, 'Who wants you back?'" I had mentioned it to the judge, who said he had heard him. So it was all a ruse because he just wanted to seem nice and prolong the court procedures longer than necessary."
Abusive marriage
Detailing the abuses she allegedly suffered in her marriage to the actor, she said that it started as verbal, mental and psychological abuse.
She said that her ex-husband didn’t allow her to work, and she suffered financial abuse.
Suzanne, narrating how she met Emeka, said, “I was just 18 years old, I had just finished secondary school, and I was a model. I also wanted to become an actor, so I became his friend. I wanted someone to put me into the industry, but he categorically told me I wouldn’t act because it would destroy our relationship. We had a relationship then, and he said he planned to marry me.
He said that Emeka stopped her modelling career when it peaked. According to her, she was gunning to contest for Miss Nigeria at the time, but her ex-husband deterred her.
Though they met when she was 18, Suzanne said they did not get married until she was 24; she was already pregnant with their second child.
She said she regretted the marriage because even at the wedding, the actor came late from another state where he was shooting a movie.
She said, “My parents never blessed us; the older sister’s husband had stood in, and the wine was exchanged on his behalf. All through the traditional marriage, when we had collected the list, and my family was preparing for the traditional marriage, I had called him. I asked him if his family was in tune with the marriage process, but they came in empty-handed. Even his family would always laugh at me at my back and say I married myself.”
She said she was an enslaved person for the family and marriage. She said that she started fighting back until she was 30 and accused the actor of beating her until she was almost paralysed.
She said, “He hit me in front of his PA Debola, in front of our kids, he beat me, and I could only see the stars; I said, ‘Emeka, If you hit me one more time, I will die’, but he kept me hitting me.
“He is denying it, and there are people I ran to in the middle of the night, people I ran to and I would collapse.”
She said that she had attempted suicide because of Emeka’s torture during the marriage. She noted that Emeka was verbally abusing her, and it was an emotional trauma.
She said she has pictures and evidence she presented to the court during the divorce proceedings. She said that the actor took custody of the child.
“You dared not speak to him when he was at it, and he would say, ‘I made you’, and I grateful, but that does not make you my God,” she said.
Denials
She denied the actor’s claim of building a house for her mother, stating that he only supported renovating her mother’s house.
She also claimed that the actor’s school was not worth N480 million as he had earlier purported. She said the initial worth of the school was N100 million.
She said that she left the school in the middle of October, and the school ran till the completion of the term.
Contrary to the actor’s claim that she shut down the school and left him with nothing, she explained that at the time, the family wasn’t financially buoyant and was thrown out of the house while the actor was away on a trip to America.
She said she was living with Emeka’s mum in Isolo and managing the school. The actor’s ex-wife also denied assaulting Emeka’s mother.
She said that Emeka requested that the entire marriage saga be kept under the carpet to avoid media attention.
She said that the actor had threatened to kill her on several occasions and had almost poured hot oil on her.
She said that her ex-husband had arrested her and her friends. “When my mother died, he arrested me. He accused me of running away with his SARS area F Ikeja properties.”
She accused the actor of being a drug addict who smokes marijuana. “We couldn’t make anything out of life because of his drug use. I didn’t know until my kids came back and told me that their dad takes drugs, meds.”
Suzanne also described her ex-husband as a sociopath; she said that her revelation about his menace in the marriage would be a shocker to him, and she awaits his feedback.
However, Emeka, featured in Toyin Abraham’s new movie, ‘Malaika,’ is married to South African model Yolanda Pfeiffer. The couple live in Germany.