THE case of Samaila Musa, a 30-year-old resident of Kastina State who inflicted maniacal cruelty on his wives, underlined the burgeoning incidents of domestic violence in Nigeria. Samaila was reported to have chained his two wives and locked them up in a room for 10 months. The women -Fatimah Salisu, 25, and Hadiza Musa 20 – alleged that he shaved their heads and pubic hairs and cut their nails. These, they claimed, he ground together, mixed with their food and forced them to eat. Besides putting pepper in their private parts, they lamented, he made them to bathe, urinate and defecate in the room. Despite these bitter pills of wickedness, he forced down their throats, he had no qualms about having sexual intercourse with the shackled women whenever his libido got hold of him. ”He usually had sex with me in Fatimah’s presence and did the same to her in my presence,” Hadiza said.
Samaila’s primitive bestiality in a 21st century Nigeria seems like a fairy tale. Yet it is a grim reality of a form of domestic violence that occurs in Nigerian homes. It is pathetic that brutality of women is not only a problem of the illiterate class, like Samaila and his family. The elite are just as guilty. This problem appears largely as an African evil. Maltreating of women is deeply ingrained in the consciousness of African men. It has its root in the repugnant belief of male chauvinism. It is this mentality that makes an African man sees himself as a god in his home. He is a deity whose arbitrariness, follies and irresponsibility cannot be questioned. He rides roughshod over his wife. She must always be on her knees, holding out a sacrifice of appeasement to him. Some men want the biggest chunk of meat in the pot, though they don’t contribute a kobo towards the preparation of the meal. Many men treat their wives as spoils of war. The African man is too proud to apologize to his wife, even when he is clearly in the wrong. He believes doing so will demean his manhood.
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It is well within the rights of an African man to beat his wife. Many men in Nigeria have turned their wives into punching bags, though they were not schooled in the swift science of boxing. The society sees it as normal. Nobody bats an eyelid at that. A man can beat his wife when he deems worthy. After all, it is his wife and none else’s. He ‘owns’ her spirit, soul and body. But when the reverse is the case, people express shock. A woman must not lay a finger on her husband. It is a taboo! There are women, though in the minority, that have the strength to beat their husbands. Yet they rarely do that. I knew a woman who had the habit of pinning her husband against the wall whenever they fought. The man would yell and wriggle fruitlessly to break free from her stranglehold. Often, it took the intervention of a co-tenants to liberate him. Some men are like pygmies in contrast with the monstrous stature of their wives. Gabriel Garcia Marquez, winner of the Noble Prize for Literature in 1982, describes the amazing corpulence of a woman in a short story. Marquez, in The Incredible and Sad Tale of Innocent Erendira and Her Heartless, published in 1972, writes:” The grandmother was so fat that she could only walk by leaning on her granddaughter’s shoulder or on a staff that looked like a bishop’s crosier. Naked and huge in the marble tub, she looked like a handsome white whale.’
A lot of men behave like animals when they fight with their wives. Like a bull teased with a red flag, they charge at their wives. Maddened with rage, they tear their clothes into shreds, sometimes in full public glare. Still, it is to these same women they turn for sexual solace whenever they are pressed hard for it. There are men who pummel their wives when their sexual advances are rejected. Sex obtained in such a way is no more consensual. It is a rape and it will attract prosecution in saner climes. Samaila, like the Giant Despair in John Bunyan’s immortal classic, The Pilgrims Progress, tormented his ‘prisoners’ by starving and whipping them. Fatimah and Hadiza looked ‘malnourished,‘ their backs terribly scarred and aching must have looked like a zebra’s crossing. The harsh economic realities in the country are major causes of friction between couples. The federal, state and local government routinely fail to pay the salaries and arrears of their workers. Private companies pay pittance and casually flout labour laws to lay off their employees in droves. Prices of commodities, goods and services soar beyond the common man’s reach. Resultantly, men fail to fulfill their financial obligations to their families. Hence, they feel economically emasculated. This erodes masculine pride. The resulting aggression, many men transfer to their families. Many men brutalize their wives on the suspicion of marital infidelity. While some of such allegations may be real, quite a good number are figment of men’s imagination.
Many men commit murder on the discovery of being cuckolded by their wives. They, in a fit of rage, stabbed their wives or their lovers to death. Samaila’s wives claimed they did nothing to warrant the degree of dehumanization that he subjected them to. He, in turn, accused Hadiza of failing to return her bride price as ordered by a magistrate court. He added that she scaled the fence and ran away for eight months . He said he locked up the duo for 10 weeks, not months, because they were taking hard drugs. Samaila , now in police custody, refuted as expected, the grave allegations against him. The wives alleged that he began to restrict their movements just few days after their marriage. They added he chased their relatives and friends away. Some men, like Samaila are too possessive and dangerously jealous. It is high time domestic violence, in all its ugly manifestations, was accorded the urgent priority it deserves. The majority of Nigerian men are dangerous in their homes as the Bornu, bomb-laden terrorists who are having a field day plunder, massacre and abduction, though they have been ‘technically defeated.’ Samaila appears, to me, as a raving lunatic. He, like many Nigerian men, suffers from serious psychological problems. It’s good that a Kastina-based NGO, Gender and Social Inclusion, is actively involved in the matter. This case should be pursued to its logical conclusion. Victims of domestic violence in Nigeria hardly get justice that is commensurate to the physical and emotional damage they suffer. The standard practice in customary courts, where many of the cases are heard, is to effect a divorce and mandate the man to pay a certain amount of money to the woman regularly.
The man gets away with the assault and the woman is left to nurse her wounds. The man becomes emboldened to administer the same fate to another woman. Nigerian men need mental re-orientation on how they treat their wives. The woman is a partner-in progress with her husband in the home. She is not only to be consigned to the kitchen. She should be respected, valued and adored. The Nigerian governments, at all levels, should put in place an information system to track incidents of domestic violence. They occur in Nigerian homes with the regularity of a conveyor’s belt. The federal government of Nigeria should embark on a purposeful governance that will ease the economic woes of Nigeria. All the euphoria on Nigeria becoming the biggest economy in Africa means nothing to the common man as long as it does not lead to a considerable increase in his standard of living. As things stand, the much-trumpeted dividends of democracy, under Buhari’s watch, do not trickle down to ordinary Nigerians. The masses groan while public office holders are busy slashing at the National Cake with the knives of wanton greed. Men should not take the law into their own hands to avenge themselves on their wives. They, should rather explore the legal route of divorce. Nigerian government, at all levels, should collaborate with the NGOs to douse the raging inferno of domestic violence in Nigeria.
Olusegun writes in via segtaiwo50@gmail.com
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