I
recently saw the movie adaptation of Alice Walker’s book ‘The Color Purple’
directed by Spike Lee and Starring Whoppi Goldberg, Oprah Winfrey, Danny
Glover among others. In the movie Whoppi Goldberg’s character Celie Harris has
been a victim of abuse all of her life, by the time she was fourteen she
already had two children by her father and they were taken away from her at
birth, she is forced against her will to marry a rich local widower Albert who
beats her when he thinks she falters, turns her into a maid for his house and a
nanny for his over-pampered children, in the long run Celie becomes
submissive, silent and accepting of her fate at the hands of Mister Albert. On
the other hand Sophia who marries Albert’s son Harpo is a spitfire who refuses
to take violence from the men in her lives. When Harpo asks Celie what he
should do to make Sofia more submissive and respectful of him she tells Harpo,
‘Beat her’. Sofia finds out that Celie gave Harpo this wrong advice and has
this to say to Celie:
“All my life I had to fight. I had to fight
my daddy. I had to fight my uncles. I had to fight my brothers. A girl child
ain’t safe in a family of mens, but I ain’t never thought I had to fight in my
own house! I love Harpo, God knows I do. But I’ll kill him dead ’fore I let him
beat me. Now, you want a dead son-in-law, Miss Celie? You keep on advising him
like you doin’”.
Celie
represents the higher populace of Nigerian women who see domestic violence as a
part of life, the type of norm that I preach against, while Sofia represents
the strong, independent, self-evolving black woman who refuses to take abuse
and stands up against her partner to protect herself, Sofia is the type of
woman that I propagate in this piece.
Nneoma
and Aloy are a young married couple of six months. Nneoma’s family wanted her
to marry a young man who had a promising future and would be willing to support
with the upkeep of Nneoma’s family. Two months after they got married, Alloy
slapped Nneoma over a minor argument; she let it pass with the thoughts of it
being a onetime action. A month later, Aloy beat her up so bad her injuries
could not be covered up. The fifth month into their marriage, Aloy beat Nneoma
again, only this time she had to be rushed to the Intensive Care Unit of a
nearby hospital. Her brothers beat Aloy, got the police to arrest him and he
was locked up for two nights before he was released. When Nneoma got better,
she went home with her parents to recuperate but only after a week her father
told her she would have to return to her husband’s home. She begged her father
to let her stay because she was afraid of Aloy and what he could do to her. Her
father replied by telling her that no one forced her into marriage so anything
she had to face in her marriage was entirely her cross. With fear, trepidation
and resigned to her faith of misery until death, Nneoma returned to her
husband.
Keere
is a 300 level student in a Nigerian University in the middle-belt region of
Nigeria. She has been dating her boyfriend Lawrence for seven months. No one
knew Lawrence had a mean streak of violence in him until Keere moved in with
him; that is when the violence began. Lawrence would come home from lectures to
an already prepared meal of Semo and Egusi soup with large chunks of meat, he
would stare at the food in anger, throw it all away, lock the doors and beat
Keere up for reasons that are still unknown to me. I remember one time when I
heard Keere screaming; Lawrence had locked the doors and was hitting her with
everything he could find in sight, her friends were crying outside the door
begging Lawrence to let Keere go. When Keere emerged, she looked bloodied,
scared worse than a chicken at Christmas and emotionally stripped of her
dignity. I found a way to speak to Keere the next day and I pleaded with her to
leave Lawrence, she told me “Chima, he will change, he is just acting out in
the spirit of his youth”. Three months later, when Lawrence grauduated, he took
Keere home to his family and introduced her as the girl he wanted to marry.
Ifunaya
works with one of the branches of First Bank in Lagos, she was a victim of
domestic violence for more than 10 years, and nobody knew what was happening
because she always covered her bruises well. She stayed in an abusive
relationship for so long in the hope that her husband would ‘snap’ out of his
violent character and become the man she had married. When she realized that
was never going to happen, she wrote a letter to her husband, dropped it on the
coffee table took her children and left. She got a new flat, changed her
children’s school and got sole custody of her kids, Her husband can only see
the kids several times a month and the visits must be supervised because
Ifunanya insists that a man who hit her for 10 years in front of their children
will not be left alone to interact with them until he gets counseling for his problems.
My
mother told me about a friend of hers Chizoba who got married at the age of 22
to a young man who was extremely jealous and incredulously possessive. He would
lock her up in the house when he was going to work and would only open the
doors for her to step out when he came home; he beat her up if his meals were
late and apologized with six yards of hollandis wrapper. Chizoba ran away two
years later from a marriage that had become a prison. She had no University
degree, no job, no vocation, no money, but she had her life.
The
Nigerian constitution is a huge joke and a shameful fallacy, that much is a fact.
The constitution guarantees equality in its fundamental human rights provision
in Chapter IV of the 1999 constitution embedded in the constitutional guarantee
for all persons. I cannot over-emphasize how little lives are valued in
Nigeria, the nonchalant attitude of government to critical matters and the
blind eye of the public to problems that stare us in the face. A key social
problem that occurs every day in Nigeria but seems to be without government
attention nor public apathy is the discrimination for justice and violation of
women in Nigeria. The law says one thing but another practice exists in
reality. Women rights are not regarded as important and are infringed upon all
the time. The problem is further compounded by a patriarchal legal system that
governs the country and a Sharia system in the north that places women as
subordinates whose rights are not properly defined in laid out regulations. My
focus here is on domestic violence suffered by Nigerian women at the hands of
those who are supposed to love and cherish them and the betrayal from the
people who should protect them.
According
to a research carried out by Think Africa Press two-third of Nigerian women are
victims of domestic violence in their homes; this type of abuse can be
physical, sexual or psychological and although men can be victims of domestic
violence women suffer disproportionately. Questions seeking answers for this
issue include:
Why
is domestic violence on the increase in Nigeria?
How
effectively are the police in attending to cases of domestic violence?
What
framework has the government put in place to criminalize domestic violence?
Why
do a large mass of the Nigerian public turn a blind eye to this issue?
How
can women seek justice as victims of domestic violence?
What
do women who have been abused need to do to move on from the tag ‘victim’?
The
first problem with domestic violence is that it is seen as a private matter to
be dealt with on the home front. In poor neighbourhoods of Lagos where I live,
nobody interferes when a man is beating his partner because it is accepted as a
normal means of punishment for an offense which the wife/girlfriend has
committed, thus the need for physical discipline. The motivation for this write
up came to me when my neighbor locked the doors to his flat so he could
properly ‘discipline’ his girlfriend who was seven months pregnant, she had the nerve to ask him to sell his small generator so she
could use the money to buy clothes for the unborn baby. I saw him when he
emerged, walking with his shoulders taller, a look of pride for his actions on
his face and I wondered why this short 5ft 5 inches guy did not look for
someone his own size to pick on!
If
the woman is brave enough to go to the police, she is looked at with scorn and
told to go home and solve her problems. Unless she is affiliated with a civil
rights group or comes from a family of affluence, the husband is in this case
arrested, locked up for a couple of days, beaten an inch within his life and
released.
The
constitution is not clear on punishments for domestic violence, so men with a
penchant for beating women can do so without fear of arrest or jail term. The Nigerian
police do not have specialized institutional framework that can deal with cases
as sensitive as women suffering abuse in their homes. You put a police officer
whose highest qualification is a secondary school leaving certificate behind
the counter of a police station and expect him to have the intellect and
psychological capacity to deal with a woman who is hysterical, wounded and
emotionally broken. According to Amnesty International, many believe that a
woman is expected to endure whatever she meets in her matrimonial home, to
provide sex and be obedient to her husband who has the right to violate and
batter her if she fails to meet her marital duties. The penal code in Northern
states allows
the correction of child, pupil, servant or wife as long as it does not amount to
grievous harm (Section 55). Furthermore, marital rape is excluded from the
definition of rape under state-level Sharia penal code in Northern states and
under the criminal code in Southern states. Specifically, section 295 of the
criminal code recognizes
“the resort to some degree of violence for correctional purposes” (Think Africa
Press). The Muslim Family Safety Project contradicts the above with this
statement “Forcing a wife to have sex without her consent is a crime called sexual assault and a person charged with
a crime cannot use religion or culture as an excuse or legal defense”. The
reason I stated the above is because the Sharia law which is supposed to be a
guideline for the way of life for Muslims in the north, while also executing
punishment to erring members has no clear cut defined laws on domestic
violence. It does not associate rape in marital home as violence or abuse neither
does it state clear punishment for men who abuse their wives. The masses are
also guilty for turning a blind eye every time an incidence of domestic
violence happens around us. The government has not been firm enough in its bid
to institutionalize legal framework that criminalize domestic violence or
protect women from abuse in their homes.
Most
women in Nigeria cannot escape violence in homes because of their poor economic
status. A large number of women who are victims are those who have no jobs and are
fully housewives. Thus they put up with the fear of loss of financial support
offered by the male and the constant threat of threat of eviction from their
marital homes; this is not limited to uneducated or poor women because a Global
Press Institute study shows that 65% of educated women have been beaten by
their husbands or boyfriend.
Another
reason why domestic violence is on the increase is because victims do not speak
out due to the fact that those who do receive poor treatment regarding their
cases. The real figure of Nigerian women who are victims of domestic violence
is unknown because there is a low number of women who report domestic violence.
This is not Europe or America where government rises up to socio-political
issues regarding safety of its citizens. Sadly, this is Africa; to be more
precise, this is Nigeria Where Anything
Goes. A country where the government is blind to the needs of the masses
except those of its own, where bills take five years to become laws, where
archaic practices detrimental to human lives are still in effect because they
refuse to accept that change is the only reality that must occur for
pro-creative development to be achieved.
So
while we wait for the government to save us, why don’t we find ways to survive
and redeem ourselves like we envision we should be? The most important factor
that Nigerian women need to let go of is the victim life. The life of a victim is a woman who is beaten all the
time by her partner; she takes it in stride without seeking redress and accepting
abuse as a part of her life. The woman who lives as a victim lives a life of
fear, anger, hate, frustration, discontentment and an unfulfilled life that
ends in misery. We need to be stronger than we perceive ourselves to be because
we are not minor, we are major. By taking abuse in silence we grease the engine
of sadistic men who feel that the only way they are in charge is when they use
violence to solve problems with their wives. We must achieve economic empowerment
before we tie the knot with a partner. Insist on getting an education before
marriage so that you have something to fall back on when you need a way out. If
you cannot get an education, find ways to start a trade or get a job even when
you are married so that you are not completely redundant and dependent on your
partner on all your needs. A man will treat a woman with a measure of respect
if he knows she can leave and sustain herself without his help. The days of divorce
not being an option are far gone. If your partner refuses to change, leave him
and rebuild your life elsewhere especially if you have children. If you let
your children see you live the victim life, your sons will think it is okay for
them to hit women and your daughters will believe it is a part of marriage for
a woman to be physically abused.
Damola
almost lost her life and that of her unborn baby at the hands of her boyfriend
who took out his frustrations on her, Celie was a victim of circumstance who
saw domestic violence as a part of her life, Nneoma married the wrong man but
was unable to escape thus she lives in misery and fear, Keere hopes that her
abusive boyfriend who batters her when the mood strikes will change when they
get married. Chizoba a prisoner in her own home and a puppet to her husband ran
away with nothing, Ify got away and has moved on with her life accepting her mistakes
as what they are while forging a pathway for her children’s future in the
comfort of her new home.
Most
of these women have been my neighbours at some point in my life, I have watched
them suffer, watched them cry, and seen the fear in their eyes, the regret
etched on their brows, trapped in a constant state of unhappiness.
You
are not a victim; you are a woman with a life to live and a purpose to serve.
If anyone who is supposed to love you and cherish you makes your life a living
hell you have every right to seek happiness where you can find it. The choices
we make are ours but the decisions to adjust our lives when we make mistakes
are what make us greater. I aspire to be like Sofia, a woman strong in the
face of despair, unbroken in a society where women are supposed to be
submissive and to fight for the ideas I believe in, though not with violence.
SPEAK
OUT AGAINST DOMESTIC VIOLENCE NOW!!!