Women, sex and control by Abimbola Adelakun

Kano State is in the news again.

 

The surprising dollop by the NDLEA that Kano leads in drug abuse rate in Nigeria might dampen the zeal of the state government and its Hisbah and Mullahs’ quest for a puritan enclave even though they seem too far down the highway of fundamentalism.

 

Before NDLEA’s bombshell, Kano was already amputating its Five Deadly Sins — alcoholism, adultery, divorce, fornication and prostitution. Minus drinking, other sins are being challenged with the Magic-Bullet of Mass Weddings. Kano is not alone in the government-backed wedding jamboree, as Sokoto and Zamfara have copied its model. Sokoto has been the most prudent of the three states as it has expended only a reported N30m on 250 citizens’ weddings.

 

Zamfara women specifically harassed its government into mass-wedding action. A number of them staged a peaceful demonstration to inform the state they were being pummelled by poverty and need to be married. About a quarter of them have now been registered for marriage. Both states, however, pale in comparison to Kano with its 4,461 marriages over the last 18 months. Knowing how cultural practices shrouded in religion quickly becomes a smokescreen to obscure –rather than deepen — serious issues, the culture of mass weddings might have come to stay in northern Nigeria.

Several editorials have pointed out that the states have no business running/funding – more or less — a dating agency. These comments are insightful but overlook the misogyny that undergirds these ceremonies.

 

The hypocrisy of the defenders of the practices who insist they are protecting female virtues is a shimmering blight on not only the women being abused in the process but also those who keep quiet in the face of this absurdity.

 

Two questions for Kano State and its copy-cat confederates: Why are they more concerned about sexual immoralities among poor/working class folk?

Where were these moral enforcers when last year, the CBN governor and Kano prince, Mallam Lamido Sanusi, was accused of adultery? What was their opinion when the ever-garrulous Sanusi offered an uncharacteristically tepid defence? Why is the sexual impropriety of the poor more grievous in the eyes of God –or whoever makes the law — than that of the elite?

 

Second, why the undue fixation on women? The Commandant General of Kano State Hisbah Board, Sheikh Aminu Ibrahim Daurawa, specifically spoke about having “married off” 1000 plus women. I find his phrase, “marry off” (and it was echoed by the journalist who reported the story) very problematic. Is this not an evidence of the attitude behind the practice? To get rid of women they consider a social nuisance by tucking them under a phallus?

 

To a religious mind, this line of thinking is not strange. If not for women and their inability to control their long-throat, the whole world would have remained in the Garden of Eden till now, in naked bliss. But the logical mind cannot help but ask if the whole anxiety about unmarried women (there is no evidence that the men in this exercise are unmarried) who are wont to grow sexually wild and therefore need to be curbed before they destroy the piety of poor men is not a cover-up for something graver such as class and gender repression?

 

If this is not about sexism, why is it that Kano recently disqualified 35 women from the exercise because 19 tested positive for HIV and 16 were already pregnant? And before then, 25 people were also disqualified for similar reasons.

 

Now, this is one of those times you wished there was an expository essay on the phenomenon of mass weddings in our three prelapsarian states. How, precisely, is it run that women test positive for AIDS but not a single man reportedly did? Could it be that the men were not tested?

 

Aisha Atiku, the planning director of Kano Hisbah Board, was quoted saying when their religious police arrest a prostitute, they table before her an option of marriage and if she agrees, she is included in the mass wedding jamboree. I am curious to know when prostitution became a one-sided affair. What of the men who patronise commercial sex workers? Are they given the options of either marriage or punishment as well?

 

Summed up, the “possessions” given the newly wedded couple say a lot. Aside from the bed, mattress, chairs, curtains and other life-enhancing items for the couple’s use, the woman is given two sets of wrappers. The man on the other hand, receives two sets of guinea brocade; between N10,000 and 20,000 each as dowry to formalise the marriage agreement; and another N20,000 to boost his business. That in itself says a lot.

 

For the woman, the wedding is an end and so she is handed practical items like a bed and wrapper. To the man, it is a means because, at least, the state offers cash support so he can boost his business. Why is the woman not given money to start — or boost — her own business? Is this kind of attitude not one of the ways through which our society propagates poverty? Is anyone surprised that the face of extreme poverty worldwide is that of a black woman? When a society chooses to unduly focus on a woman’s body in the name of morality while neglecting economic and social empowerment, both men and women eventually sink into an unending cycle of poverty.

 

Has it occurred to the organisers of mass weddings that marriages are not the actual needs of these women? If some of the women had to be disqualified because though already pregnant, they still applied to be “married off” to some other man, that is a symptom of a bigger and far more urgent problem that transcends religious morality.

 

There is a lot wrong with the culture of mass weddings and it is made worse by the state sanction of the sexism that sustains it. These male-dominated activities that regulate women’s sexuality definitely deserve rebuke. The other day, it was Governor Orji Uzor Kalu lecturing women to remain virgins when the winner of the 2013 World Purity Queen (and what on earth does that mean?) paid him a visit.

 

Why is how and when of women having sex a bigger issue than how the state can level the ground so that more females can rise beyond social constraints?

Copyright PUNCH.