EVEN by the dastardly standards of the absurd, this story is extremely bizarre, but it is a story the Nigeria Police Command in Adamawa State must handle. A 20-year-old wife, Amina Hassan, set her husband’s house ablaze for, of all reasons in the world, refusing to divorce her! The suspect, who hails from Shuware community in Mubi North Local Government Area of the state, reportedly got married to Muhammed Auwal only about a month and a half ago, but she was already fed up with the union. She told whoever cared to listen that there was a prenuptial arrangement that her husband would divorce her shortly after the wedding ceremony. But he had apparently reneged on the agreement and she had proceeded to douse his home in flames, according to the state Police Public Relations Officer, Suleiman Nguroje. Hear her: “We made an arrangement that he would divorce me after the marriage. I met him and pleaded with him to divorce me but he remained adamant. He descended on me and started beating me instead of divorcing me, as a result of which I lost my temper and set the house ablaze.” Before the drastic, criminal venture, Amina had reportedly informed her parents that she was no longer interested in the marriage.
Morally and socially, the Nigerian society has been headed downhill for some time, and this story shows the increasing loss of values in the society very poignantly. The questions that Amina’s actions throw up are legion, but the most salient relate to human volition and the bastardisation of the institution called marriage. Why contract a marriage, only to annul it shortly thereafter? If you are not interested in marriage, why marry at all? And if marriage is proving uninhabitable, why not make a recourse to the relief mechanisms offered by the society? And, by the way, exactly when did arson become a veritable response to marital conflict? Surely, even the best of marriages is characterised by conflict, at least occasionally—local wisdom says that even the tongue and the teeth quarrel, but they manage to sort out issues without needless ruckus. The alternative, grim in its import, is for the entire body to be engulfed in terrible pain. The Nigerian society has to address the question of the loss of values, and very quickly, too.
Coming to brass tacks, it seems pretty apparent that hardly anything would have been right with a marriage in which a supposed wife would descend into arson, burning down the supposed husband’s house/residence because of his refusal to honour a prenuptial bond to proceed unto divorce. Whatever must have passed for a marriage in this case, no matter the elaborateness or otherwise of the ceremony associated with it or heralding it, could not have been a joyous arrangement marked by the consent of the two individuals involved. And this raises fundamental questions about the way and manner many marriages are contracted in the country outside of the consent and active participation of those directly involved and expected to live with and within it.
Though the absence of consent in marriage remarked on here does not justify the resort to arson by the supposed wife, yet it must be noted that it takes two to tango, and that the society must increasingly work towards getting people really interested in marriage. The parties must be personally involved and give their express, unforced consent. Parents or the society enforcing marriages without the express consent of the parties, if only to stave off increasingly inimical reactions within marriages flowing from lack of consent, must be seen as an anathema. We expect the government and the concerned authorities to ensure that the culprit in this arsonist reaction is punished according to the laws of the land, if only to teach her that nothing justifies the resort to arson in any conflict, but the Nigerian society must acknowledge the critical contribution of the consent of parties in making for worthwhile, enduring marriages. No two ways about it.
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