Ah. I have started and stopped this piece several times already for two reasons. The first is that I did not want to write a piece that seemed in anyway disrespectful to a man old enough to be my father. I wanted to be able to balance my disagreement with respect (these things can be delicate sometimes). The second is that I do love Pete Edochie. As an actor. He gives strong, flawless performances in his movies, delivering his lines with so much conviction that makes it easy for us to forget that we are watching a make-believe world. I am a huge admirer of his massive talent.
Recently, however, videos of him giving relationship advice to married women and reminding them how a ‘good African woman’ is supposed to act (have no agency, accept everything that is thrown at them, make sure that no matter what, no matter how you are treated that you hang on to a marriage) have been making the rounds. Edochie is one of those actors whose characters in movies are conflated with their real life personas. He often plays the role of a very wise father or leader, a man who takes his time before he speaks, weighing his words before letting them roll out to dispense wisdom you want to print out and live by. Edochie commands a huge amount of respect and many young people look up to him. He is seen as a custodian of tradition and culture: he’s Okonkwo, for Pete’s sake. Notice the pun?
Anyway, that is why his comments in the recent videos are regrettable and harmful. In one of the clips I saw, he criticizes Nigerian women who leave their husbands for cheating on them. Cheating is nothing, he implies. Solomon in the Bible married 700 wives and kept 300 concubines, he says, so what’s the big deal about a man cheating. So, Solomon is now our African ideal? Okay oo. He goes on to ask, “And if the man decides to marry the women he’s cheating the wife with, nko? What will you (the wife) do? Nothing. You’ll do nothing. Absolutely nothing.” I wish the person interviewing the highly respected Edochie had asked him his stance on women cheating. Should husbands accept their wives cheating with the same equanimity as Edochie advocates that wives should accept husbands cheating? Or is this a case of what is good for the goose is not good for the gander? Should the husbands too get ‘creative’ and pack condoms for their wives when they “leave on tour” like Edochie advises Naija wives to do for their husbands? Because, our women work too, they leave home for extended periods, they are open to the same temptations as men are.
And that is what the respected gentleman seems to have forgotten because from the videos, it sounds as though he assumes that Nigerian women do not work, that a Naija woman’s sole duty is to make her husband’s suitcase when he travels and that a (Naija) woman’s only ambition is to stay married, no matter the state of the marriage. And, therefore, that a (Naija) woman whose unfaithful husband decides to marry the women he’s having affairs with (to teach the ‘nagging’ wife a lesson?) has no choice but to stay and swallow it. She can do “absolutely nothing” because how else would she survive? It’s not our culture, he says, to divorce. “We are not white people.” But it is our culture to expect that men cannot control themselves, cannot control their desires and so their cheating must be accepted with no fuss?
It is also ridiculous to say that divorce isn’t our culture. In Igbo culture, marriages are dissolved. The man returns the bride price, the woman’s family accepts and the marriage is over. This culture is not western. Besides, I have always found it interesting when I hear how it is not “our culture” for women to do certain things ( like stand up for themselves in a marriage) as if we too are not human, as if culture were this rock that is unmovable. It just sits there for us women to be thrown against and when we complain, we are chided and reminded that we are not white women. It is okay for a white woman to ask for respect in a relationship ( because cheating and cheating so brazenly that you can threaten your wife with bringing in your side chick is massively disrespectful) but not so a Naija woman? This “our culture” seems to want women to be like air: unseen, unheard but still useful.
The irony is that from documented history, our women have been anything but. Think of the Aba Women who protested against taxation being extended to them. So no, you are not being ‘a good woman’ by keeping quiet, by being someone’s foot-mat, by accepting that you are not deserving of respect. If it makes you happy, that’s an entirely different discussion, but please dear sisters and daughters, do not be held hostage by someone’s idea of what you can and cannot do. This life is yours too.
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