He visited only to have sex – Sophia Momodu tells court

Momodu informed the court on Friday that the applicant was unfit to have custody of their daughter because he is unable of providing her with the necessary care and is constantly unavailable.

This was said in a counter-affidavit she submitted in response to Davido's custody action.

She said that even during the course of their relationship, Davido never truly committed himself to or exhibited love for his daughter.

“He always used the condition of making myself available for his sexual pleasures as a precondition to visit our daughter or show some fatherly love to her.

“The applicant, apart from his cravings for sex, only comes around to spend time with our daughter when he wants to use our daughter for his media stunts or promotions.

“The applicant has always been known to go away and stop communicating with our daughter, to stop making payments for school fees and/or maintenance for our daughter, whenever I refused his sexual advances,” she stated.

The respondent stated that Davido once threw her and their daughter out of his home in Atlanta, US, during a summer holiday in 2017 and they ended up squatting with a friend.

Momodu stated that she never denied Davido access to his daughter and that it was he who chose to be “an absentee father.”

She added that she had been responsible for her accommodation and that the artiste had always had access to their daughter until he chose to abuse it by visiting at odd hours to demand sex.

“When I noticed that the intention of the applicant for coming late at night to my house was not to visit our daughter but to seek sexual favours, even after our relationship had ended, I told him to desist from such late-night visits, as our daughter, who needed to be in school in the morning, would have slept at the time of his late-night visits.

“It was when I refused the applicant’s ingress into my house at ungodly hours of the night on the pretext of visiting our daughter that he decided to stop visiting or calling our daughter and this has been the pattern with the applicant all through his relationship with our daughter.

“Whenever I refused to be his sex slave, he would stop caring for his daughter and abandon her and use the fact of our daughter’s sadness due to his absence to force me to accede to his unwholesome demands.

“I have never stopped the applicant or his family members from coming to visit his daughter, calling or reconnecting with our daughter,” she stated.

The respondent again stated that contrary to Davido’s claim, he has not been faithful in paying their daughter’s school fees, having defaulted in 2021 and 2022, with the school writing to her in January 2023, over unpaid tuition.

“The school wrote via email notifying me that our daughter will not be allowed entry into the school unless all outstanding fees from 2021 to 2023 were paid off,” she said.

Momodu informed the court that Davido's father had stepped in and covered the cost of the education.

She clarified that she has been the one paying the rent for the flat where she resides with her daughter, in contrast to Davido's assertion, and that Davido did not purchase a home for them.

Despite her father's carelessness, Momodu stated she has been giving her daughter the greatest care and will keep doing so because she is a loving mother.

At Friday's hearing before Justice A. J. Bashua, the respondent was represented by a legal team headed by Punuka Attorneys & Solicitors Chief Anthony Idigbe, SAN.

Chief Idigbe brought attention to the hearing notice that Davido's legal team had published in a major newspaper, which contained four mentions of his daughter.

Chief Idigbe and the judge both decided that the child's name should not be mentioned at all, even if the press was allowed to report.

The judge then ordered everyone who wasn't involved in the case, including the litigants, the press, and other attorneys, to leave the courtroom for the hearing.

With the approval of the court, Chief Idigbe alerted the media of Section 143 of the Lagos State 2015 Child's Rights Law before they departed.

It stipulates that: "Only the parties to the case, the court's officers, and members may attend court in an instance involving a minor.

Additionally, it states that everyone who was actively involved in the case, including their attorneys and solicitors, the child's parents and guardians, and other parties, could enter at any time.

Chief Idigbe also brought up Section 144 of the law, which forbids revealing a child's identity in print.

The passage says as follows:

“No person must publish the name, address, school, photograph, or anything likely to lead to the identification of a child in a matter before the court, except as required by the provisions of this law.”

He further referred to Section 145 of the Child Rights Law, which provides: “The proceedings in the court must be conducive to the best interest of the child and must be conducted in an atmosphere of understanding, allowing the child to express himself and participate in the proceedings

Momodu, in the counter-affidavit, also faulted the publication of the suit in a national newspaper.

“The applicant (Davido) in publishing this suit in a national newspaper has exposed our daughter to great danger.

“I would have to implement extra security measures to ensure the continued safety of our daughter in school,” she stated.

At the end of the proceedings, it was learnt that the court referred the case for possible settlement by the Alternative Dispute Resolution section of the court during Settlement Week.