“If you observe the increasing number of mentally retarded women roaming our streets in Northern Nigeria as a result of domestic violence, neglect and social stigma, I think you would think twice about marrying off your daughter early without giving her decent education and empower them to be self-reliant even if she parts way with her husband. In fact, you would not dare malign any woman who is determined to challenge the negative stereotype by going after her dream before marriage. You only need to be in northern Nigeria to know women are less addicted to drugs than men but have higher number of mentally unstable people than men, and the causative factors off all this is domestic violence not asiri or aljanu ( spell casting and demons).
My secondary schoolmate was married off before she even sat for her final exams, despite her entreaty to be allowed to further her study, he father told her the husband would allow her once she married him. We we’re very close in school because we all shared strong passions for books and creative writing but I lost her contact in 2007 shortly after she got married and I learned months later that her husband changed her contact in order to cut her off from dealing with outsiders. I tried in vain to establish contact with her but I got the shock of my life today at Bauchi Central Market.
I was in a haste to rush out for a rendezvous with an ambitious entrepreneur when somebody called my name and I looked at a motherly woman trying to remember where I had last seen her but without success. it was when she told me I was her mate at secondary school that a chill ran down my spine, I could not believe my eyes. I was so shocked that it took me a minute to say her name, hoping it was not her. She looked so dejected, emaciated, dirty and her turgid countenance convinced me she was having a hard time.
We parked out and talked for almost 30 minutes. But to sum up the case, it was one of the saddest stories I have listened to in my life.
She got pregnant shortly after marriage and her husband said she would go back to school once she gave birth, but that was not forthcoming as she kept on giving her different excuses until she gave up after giving birth to her fourth child.
As a petty trader, the husband added two more wives and the new arrivals teamed up against hers until the husband sided with them that she was the most troubling woman. So he alienated her by refusing to take care of her. He even taunted her that her father gave her to him in marriage for his wealth and she had to live with him because she had no where else to go.
She had six kids in the space of 12 years, the father is living in a small house so small that some of his children have to sleep in their friends’ rooms. She knew if he had been divorced, it might take her a decade to find a befitting husband again who was certain to be polygamous. She had no skill to find a job, she had no formal education and small children are a burden she could not cope with alone. She was so worried with uncertainty that she fled to her grandfather’s village in search of solace but she was asked to exercise patience and return to her husband who was always verbally abusing her, shunning her on bed and even blaming her for his declining fortune.
The worst nightmare had come on the day she just woke up to see the husband standing over her and giving her a divorce notice. She slumped and it took her weeks to become stable again.
She cried like a kid, after hearing my bumpy but successful journey in life, but as a mother of six, her dream is all but virtually crippled as she is now a cleaner at one house, washing dishes to provide foods for her abandoned kids because she in fact had to rent a room to stay with her kids because her parents are too poor to even accommodate her.
There are millions of women who are going through similar abuses and neglect but we are not speaking against this dehumanizing practice because we treat women as sex tools and we don’t think they are entitled to the opportunities that are at our disposal.
Is this the achievement we are debating about? Neglecting women, and having more children than we can take care of?”
Aliyu Bashir Almusawi
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