Nigeria’s former Minister of Aviation, Femi Fani-Kayode, and his ex-beauty queen wife, Precious Chikwendu, have separated.
Though a family member told PREMIUM TIMES that the marriage broke down irretrievably due to a health challenge, which Precious had been trying to manage since they became a couple, SaharaReporters reliably gathered that the woman left the marriage over domestic violence.
Fani-Kayode, who had had a hat-trick of marriages before meeting Precious with whom he has four sons, including a set of two-year-old triplets, accused her of infidelity.
Sources told SaharaReporters that the former minister started physically abusing Precious from the first year of their marriage — the same fate that befell her three predecessors.
The violence, it was gathered, increased as the years went by.
FFK as the ex-minister is often reffered to, was said to have ordered Precious to abort her last pregnancy, claiming it did not belong to him.
The sources said Precious ignored him but got savage beating, including on her belly for the recalcitrance.
A source said Fani-Kayode always hit the woman violently in presence of their homehelps and sometimes threatened her with a gun by sticking the weapon in her mouth to warn her against squealing.
He sometimes instructed his bodyguard to hit the ex-beauty queen.
Fani-Kayode’s first wife, Saratu Attah, whom he married when he was 22, was also regularly pummeled by him.
Sources said the woman, daughter of the late Adamu Attah, was viciously beaten for requesting a swimming pool in their home on Marine Road in Apapa, Lagos.
FFK’s next marriage was to Yemisi Odesanya, daughter of a judge.
She is now known as Yemisi Wada after remarrying.
In newspaper interviews, the woman told stories of Fani-Kayode’s viciousness and lack of care for their daughters, the reason for which he was excluded from the marriage of one of them, Temitope, in 2014.
Despite the disconnect between him and the children, FFK never fails to advertise his “love” for them on Facebook on their birthdays.
Under to hide his ‘spot’ like the Leopard, FFK soon displayed his ugly part when in August he attacked Eyo Charles, a journalist with Daily Trust, for asking him a question during a press conference in Calabar, Cross River State.
Apart from describing Charles as “stupid”, FFK used other derogatory words on the journalist, drawing criticisms from far and near.
The former minister eventually bowed to public pressure and apologised for his conduct.