One man writes an article about Chief Hannah Awolowo from the panorama of her loyalty to Chief Obafemi Awolowo and everyone ignores what a maverick Mama really was, but of course they concentrate on what is most important; how Nigerian women these days are not like her or worthy of respect. However, have you asked yourself one question, are you yourself Chief Obafemi Awolowo?
Nigerian men are quite swift to engage in straw man deductions; A glaring dichotomy exists, where they paint themselves with broad strokes of leniency, while women are expected to embody perfection, held to a divine standard that few can attain.
Of course, Chief Mrs Awolowo is another train to jump on. It’s nothing new. It is the same story with any achieving married woman they read about on blogs; they concentrate less on her personal achievements but more on how she kept her marriage; indeed men are to be nurtured and pampered, this is the sole aim of a woman’s existence, one was created as a mother to birth men, the other or others as “helpers”. Is this not supported by our good religious books?
A voice is crying in the wilderness! But it is not that of the Baptist but the Nigerian man who is perpetually in a state of ennui; listless, dissatisfied, condemned to a life of antithesis; his existence is a paradox, where in his heart he is king but one condemned to this brutish reality of eking out a living in harsh cut-throat conditions and then the disrespect, the way women are changing, morphing into something unrecognizable. There’s certainly no good woman left in the world, women are no longer like our mothers.
This man in fact, like the Baptist is something special, condemned to living in a wilderness and eating locusts, however the wilderness and the insects are probably all in his head, probably a product of his delusions. There is a saying that those who do not want to be contented will always find something to keep them dissatisfied; this is indeed the miry fate of the Nigerian man.
We forget that before a jewel can become a “jewel of inestimable value”, it must first be seen to be a jewel. Indeed, the mere fact that something is a jewel does not mean it won’t be ignored, neglected or undervalued. Do Nigerian men value women?
I never really believed the story of Adam and Eve to be real in that literal way but one thing that lends credence to this story is the attitude of Adam himself; you see the dissatisfaction and blame seems to be indeed the factory setting of men. Adam bravely even blames God for giving him someone to help him and of course, cowardly blames the usual suspect, woman. “The woman you gave me, gave me the fruit to eat”. Not his decisions. Heavens forbid he takes any blame. Sometimes I ask myself what that Adam man was expecting after that, that he’d be let off the hook while the woman is punished? Is not this the way of the typical Nigerian men; disloyal but expecting premium loyalty and reverence?
Obafemi Awolowo obviously respected his wife and was not threatened by her achievement, much of which she did not get through him but through her own ingenuity. A successful business woman who became the first Nigerian distributor for the Nigerian Tobacco Company; a seasoned politician and astute speaker, a strategist. A woman he was happy to leave in charge of his affairs when he was incarcerated for treason. It was not just her loyalty and ingenuity but his own faith in her greatness that did the “magic” we celebrate today. How many Nigerian men can let their wives breathe and be great?
The quintessential Nigerian man wallows in a pool of mediocrity and his wives is to be in that middle point where she can be but not become, good but not to be great, attempt to achieve but never outdo him, afterall he has been warned ahead of time about how “women start behaving when they start achieving”. He was born ready to curtail this. Not under my roof! He ends up living in paranoia that translates itself to encumbering, gagging his wife and disenfranchising her from greatness through covert and overt means and this, he does to assuage his own mediocrity and insecurities but he still complains when things go south, afterall, in Africa, a woman whose husband failed doesn’t have “a good head”😂🤭.
Speaking of dissatisfaction and blame as a theme of the Nigerian man, it has become a genre of its own in WhatsApp Groups; the complaint from middle aged men on how they regret their dreary marriages, how they are now alone in the world, how their manipulative wives have conscripted their children and moved to a far away land leaving daddy to fend for himself, how their wicked wives won’t let them admire the generous posteriors of younger women or keep “side chicks” that make them feel alive. There’s even a darker comical genre of male jokes called “Kill my wife”, very popular among middle aged men.
While this killing of course is not literal, the concept of doing away with their wives and of seeing wife as a blockade to enjoyment is something quite common; fantasy is the boon of middle aged men who feel powerless in the face of the dreaded mid-life. Fantasy is a warm hearth in this blistering cold world; a balm against the helplessness they feel amidst a changing body they do not want to admit, the inevitable aging they willfully deny. God forbid he cannot get it up as he used to, God forbid he is on the other end of the ladder, a Will? He’s still a young man. God forbid he’s gone beyond his prime like a once ripe melon facing the prospect of decay; nobody more stubborn than a middle aged Nigerian man, not even the Baptist.
While the older Nigerian woman turns to God, fellowships and children sometimes to seek relevance and ethereal peace, a Nigerian man dares not age without a fight, he attacks it with more beer, juvenile character and good old philandering; seeking younger female consorts like a boxer in an urgent wrestling bout with his waning masculinity. He complains his wife is too spiritual and inaccessible and his girlfriend is too worldly, superficial and materialistic. Between his wife who is of course not a prized jewel but now, to his regard, a plain Jane and his girlfriend with her painted eagle talons and ghastly wig, he’s never truly satisfied. He is a walking contradiction that hates the things he loves.
Unlike John the Baptist who fantasizes about the Kingdom of God, our Nigerian men fantasize about being King Solomon and not for his wisdom too. One fantasy they surely enjoy is that of polygamy. You’re sure to see them from newspaper stands, to bars and WhatsApp groups extolling the virtue of polygamy, how the white man took away their God given rights to polygamy and fed their women with the notion to dare think they can be equal! But how many of them follow through? That grand notion fades away as quickly as the froth of the beer they are drinking. Is not this why the Duke of Somolu is a hero in certain quarters, the knight who dares do what they could not do. Sir Lancelot of polygamy, living their fantasy.
The Nigerian man will rarely do more than fantasize and complain; if they could, would this country be this impoverished and without any plans for revolution?
Like Adam, he goes for the low hanging fruit, women, the cause of every disaster from Pandora who opened the box to the man who died last night. Solomon despite being the wisest man, wasn’t he brought down by women (and not his own decisions), not unlike Adam? Jezebel did same to Ahab, it was never his duty to think for himself. How dare you burden a man with that extra responsibility. I also forgot that our muse John the Baptist was killed because of a woman’s request, did we not tell you women are evil? Thankfully, Awolowo found a good woman in Madam Hannah, one who he could call a jewel, Samson was not that lucky.
[Nneoma Nocrap is a reluctant writer, a disenchanted poet, a satirist and sometimes a lawyer)