AMAC reunites 100 marriages in 2018 – Official

AMAC reunites 100 marriages in 2018 – Official
By Bukola Adewumi
Marriages
Abuja, Jan. 17, 2019 (NAN) The Abuja Municipal Area Council (AMAC) in Federal Capital Territory said it resolved and reunited not less than 100 marriages that were at the edge of collapse.
Mrs Ramatu Abdulrahman, the Head, Social Welfare department of the council, disclosed this in interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Thursday in Abuja.
She noted that the reconciliation of broken marriages was a great success on the part of AMAC because “when families are united, the nation is united,” said the official.
Abdulrahman expressed optimism that more results would be achieved this year if the Chairman of the council, Mr Abdullahi Candido, provides the department with better working tools.
She regretted that most residents have been taking their challenges to the wrong places where they could not get help.
She noted, for instance, that most couples who had problems take such to friends, family members, religious leaders, traditional rulers or courts for intervention, and this most times do not end well.
“We thank God, now people have started knowing more about us and our activities in the department. We were able to settle more than 100 marriages in 2018.’’
She said that the issue of divorce was very common among young couples, sometimes after marriage of two, three months or one year they come to us that they want to divorce over little issues.
“When we go into details we discovered that the interference of third parties was responsible for some breakup of most marriages.
“Another problem we discovered is the fact that many married couples refused to go for counselling before they were joined together either in the church, mosque or court.
“God he is helping us to settle some marriage problems, we have NGOs that we partner with as a form of networking and we go for home visitation unexpectedly to see how the couples are doing,’’ she said.
Abdulrahman advised couples to prepare their minds psychologically before they contract their marriages.
“This office we are using now is not too conducive, sometimes we have more than three to four cases to attend to and we like to give our client some secrecy.
“We need a social case room that is well equipped with recording items and comfortable seats because people can always deny what has been said if not recorded.
“We also need a comfortable place where our clients can sit and relax so that they will have confidence in the social workers and they will open up to us,’’ she said.
Abdulrahman, however, appealed for separate allocation of funding to assist the social welfare department achieve its obligations.
She attributed major collapse of marriages to lack of advice or counselling. (NAN)
BOL/MST
Edited by Muhammad Suleiman Tola