This piece was provoked by the trending Edo State case of the wife who was shot in the arm by her husband, for delaying the preparation of his meal. What an incredible punishment for a domestic “offence”. A case of deploying a sledge hammer to kill a fly, one may say. I’m still angry about the incident, and it provoked me to research for solutions to this marital menace called domestic violence. The quest here, like many others reactions on this case, is to proffer preventive measures to such situations.
Ours is a violent environment. Little misunderstanding often degenerates to hiccups and physical fights, without restraint.
There is no place that we cannot and we don’t engage in physical combat: streets, parks, schools, banks, National Assembly, State House of Assemblies, church and mosque etc.
Not only that, there is no category of persons who does not fight: rich, poor, clergymen, married couples, market women, honourables, wives of prominent men, etc. It’s like an open ended thing.
This is why it’s not a surprise to well informed minds, that in recent years, domestic violence has assumed a criminally dangerous, alarming dimension. Is it possible not to find women in a maternity ward? Or find a fish that doesn’t swim or a bird that doesn’t not fly? In fact, it’s believed that one cannot even find a sick bird in its nest. Or is it not a biblical stand that, where carcasses exist, there will vultures gather?
So, how can we do it such that, we won’t find violent persons, especially husbands, among married couples? It will be a miracle to discover such a situation.
Why? Violent environments breed violence and violent persons. And what do we do about this? We blame domestic violence on certain reasons: anger, provocation, drunkenness etc. Doing this is like making excuses for the culprits. To me, I rather lay the blame at the door step of steadily growing violent environment in our societies, especially the under- developed ones. If we will eliminate violence from our environment, domestic violence will be an exception, rather than the rule. Such that, we will be able to save many victims of domestic violence, like the case of the gospel artist, Osinachi, presumed to have fallen into the cold hands of death, through the abuses suffered in the hands of her husband.
Whatever might have induced the domestic violence, be it anger, provocative acts of utterances and stubbornness, or even hard drugs, as some claim, the failure to rid our environment of violence, through stringent conditions, remains the root of all forms of violent acts, domestic abuse, inclusive.
The Bible makes us to understand that, when judgement is not speedily executed, the heart of men is set to do evil continually. In essence, societies must not allow evil to fester. Rather, it must be decisively dealt with. That is the reason why domestic violence has been curtailed in developed societies like British and America. Stringent measures are in existence to restrain people from violent acts, including domestic violence. This is why ladies now prefer to live in such violence restrained nations. Legal framework and traditional engagement help people to keep their sanity, no matter the reasons, in most cases.
It’s therefore my humble submission that restraining legal framework will go a long way to drastically reduce, if not rid, our marriages of violence. Such laws should not just be in place, but prompt enforcement must be ensured, without recourse to social status. A guilty person must be promptly made to dance to the music of judgement. Failure to do so, is the reason why Osinachi and many other unreported ones, have been sacrificed on the altar of domestic violence.
This is also the reason why corruption has assumed a dangerous dimension in our nation, Nigeria. We have failed to make sure that corrupt people face the highest legal consequences. Rather, we treat them with kid gloves. Thus, corruption fight has remained a mere rhetorical engagement, rather than a disengaging force. What we need is not corruption fight but war that will see us firing from all arsenals of life imprisonment, forfeiture of all assets, and in the most serious cases, death penalty.
We need to do more than the present acts of eliminating domestic violence, if we will achieve the desired goal.
Like the first lady of Edo State promised, let us bring the roof down on any act or person involved in violence in our society. We should no longer fold our arms and allow violence to destroy us on all sides.
Let the slogan be, “Violence is Evil; Let Us Say No to Violence in Our Society”.
Our various institutions at governmental and nongovernmental levels must embrace such slogan and demonstrate enough resolve to see it to the end. Educational environment, religious set up, office setting and other social institutions must rise up to forbid violent acts in the society.
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