News coming out of Naija at the moment is scary; abductions, killings by known and unknown actors, gunmen and bandits; fires in different parts of the country threatening to engulf us all, because it seems, we do not (want to) learn from history. And in the middle of all that muddle, the epidemic of violence against women continues unabated because you know, it never takes a break. This past week, two incidents caught my attention:
The first one involved a young woman in Abuja whose husband was said to have intentionally run over with his car after an argument about money, killing her. A source reportedly told journalists that the perpetrator had a history of abusing the deceased. In the past, when I had conversations with friends about women staying on in abusive relationships, I had argued that apart from low self-esteem (as a result of abuse), the biggest reason abused women remained in their relationships was for financial security. I had naïvely imagined that any victim with the means to support herself would not stay. With the stories I have heard recently- including this one where the murdered wife apparently had a good job, and that of the doctor who had a public reconciliation on TV with her husband in 2020, it is clear to me that fear of financial ruination is only a small part of why some women remain in toxic relationships. There are other fears which are more compelling and these fears are driven mostly by culture and society. Ours is a culture that teaches women that any marriage is better than no marriage. And so we find women holding on to marriages that are literally killing them. They stay in bondage because, “What will people say?” Families encourage their daughters to endure because they do not want to be known as the family whose daughters cannot sustain a marriage. Where the women have children, it becomes even more difficult for them to walk out as ours is a society that stigmatizes single mothers. Reno Omokri (aka Deep Thinker, aka dispenser of gold-nuggets) tweeted recently that “Except she was raped, or widowed, I have zero sympathy for single mothers. The Black world faces a baby mama epidemic. We must not encourage it, or make celebrities out of bleached, surgically enhanced Jezebels who are unashamed of their whoredom!” I don’t even know what he means by ‘the Black World’ and I’d be curious to know why the ‘epidemic’ is a baby mama one and not a baby daddy one, abi these women are getting babies by themselves? And that leap from single mothers to “bleached, surgically enhanced Jezebels unashamed of their whoredom” is dizzying. More than a few folks agreed with Omokri. In a society where single mothers are stigmatized, it would require uncommon strength and a support network for a woman with children to leave her marriage, no matter how bad things are.
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The other incident happened in Delta State. The clip, shared on social media, shows a group of men apparently destroying the shop of their father’s widow because she refused to be inherited by another male in the family. In 2021! That was her crime: standing up to an oppressive culture. This woman had kids with the deceased husband, and that shop was likely how she made money to look after herself and her children. On top of losing her husband, she’s now also most likely lost her major source of income and goodness knows what else. We’ve all heard stories of widows being dispossessed of their homes by greedy in-laws. Nollywood isn’t making up these narratives from thin air. It is maddening that in so many of our cultures, women are regarded as second class citizens. They are seen as less than men. They are to be led by men; to be guided by men. They are seen as just one step above children. That is why society asks women to prioritise marriage, any marriage over their own well-being. That is why a widow can be ‘inherited’ by a dead husband’s brother. That is why it is acceptable to discipline wives by beating them. That is why a strange man can tell a woman he imagines to be insubordinate that he keeps “one like you” at home. That is why, even in today’s Naija, a woman with a husband can access spaces a single woman of a certain age can’t. That is why landlords in many parts of Nigeria are reluctant to rent to single women. The implication is that the married woman is under the guardianship of someone who can ‘control’ her. Linked closely to the idea of control is that of respectability. Omokri’s tweet makes the point for me that in 21st century Nigeria, the absurd notion that certain women deserve more respect than others – this hierarchy based on nothing other than whether or not they are/were under the ‘guardianship’ of a man – solidly holds sway. The fact that Omokri is a 46-year-old married man with decent education and global exposure shows us just how much work there still is to be done. ‘The road far sha’.
Yet, the ‘road far no mean say we no go waka am.’ We must call out men like Omokri to whom a lot of our youth look up to. We must be willing to challenge and dismantle cultures that are toxic however and wherever we can. One step at a time, we must be able to imagine and realise a new society. And my dear sisters in terrible marriages, may I remind you that it is always the better option to walk out than to be carried out in a body bag.
