For Better or Worse? Marital Conflicts and Divorce Narratives among Celebrity Couples in Nigeria

Abstract

This study examines marital conflict and divorce narratives among Nigerian celebrity couples, which have become recurrent episodes, often playing out across traditional media and digital platforms. Despite the sanctity of marriage and the sacredness of marital vows, the number of celebrity breakups not only keeps increasing but also signals shifting attitudes towards marriage, gender, and privacy in Nigeria’s public space. Drawing on social exchange and symbolic interactionism theories and using content analysis of media reports, celebrity interviews, and social media discourse from 2009-2025, this paper focuses on high-profile breakups involving Nollywood and Kannywood actors, musicians, and media personalities. The study identifies dominant causal factors, which include infidelity, financial disputes, career incompatibility, domestic violence, irreconcilable differences and the role of public scrutiny in escalating conflict. The findings show that while the public frequently raises traditional expectations of marital endurance, female submission, and reputation management, younger audiences increasingly frame divorce as a reasonable response to abuse, incompatibility, and personal well-being. Although celebrities use direct posts to control narratives, they remain vulnerable to speculation, misinformation, and gendered moral policing. It further finds that the narratives of celebrity marital breakdowns in Nigeria are not merely personal events but cultural texts that mirror broader societal tensions between modern individualism and entrenched marital norms, and that they shape public perceptions of divorce beyond the elite class. By analysing these narratives, the paper examines how media, celebrities, and audiences construct meaning around marital breakdown and what this reveals about contemporary Nigerian society.