By Yetunde Arebi

You should have seen the shock on my aunt’s face when Temilade, her 32 year old daughter finally told her she had no intention of ever getting married!   Weddings are a waste of money, while marriages are a waste of time, energy and emotions, she’d declared. All she desires is to be a single parent, or at best, the other wife. My aunt could not believe her ears.

 Her daughter has been bewitched! Finally, her enemies had caught up with her through her daughter, my aunt wailed. Does that mean that she would not be hosting a lavish, colourful, society wedding party for Temilade after all? This is a disgrace worse than death and she would not allow it.

 Auntie Bisi had married her husband, Temilade’s father as a young woman and has remained in the marriage till date, even though it had become humiliating and embarrassing for her and her children. My aunt’s once quiet, loving and homely husband had become a serial polygamist, with women coming and leaving their once beautiful home at will. 

• I still love my wife, do not grant her divorce, man begs court

Despite everything, my aunt had held on to her ideals of what a marriage ought to be, a lifelong commitment to her vows and pretending to family and friends that all was well. Her belief is that she must teach her girls the right values to have a decent and loving family. Unfortunately, her sacrifice does not seem to have had a positive impact on her first daughter.  

I’d always known Temilade to be a strong, determined and independent girl who so far had succeeded in all that she’d done. She grew up too fast because of the things that transpired between her parents, and by extension, her several step mothers and their children. Once, she’d told me of how their father used to take them on visits to his girlfriends’ houses, telling them never to tell their mother. After a Masters degree in Pharmacy, she picked up a job at one of the teaching hospitals in the country and has dedicated herself to her work and social life with a wide network of friends. She does everything young people of her age engage in, work, make money and party as much as possible. She had inherited her mother’s old Honda car on graduation which she had quickly changed into a Toyota RAV 4 Jeep, less than a year after.   

We were quite close until a few years back when she became integrated into the ‘Lagos Big Girls’ group.   A couple of months back, she bought herself the latest edition of the CRV Toyota Jeep. I was very happy for her as it was obvious that she’d got her acts intact.   And now that she’d finally thrown this bombshell at her parents, I was not surprised. I’d seen it coming for some time, but still had to speak to Temilade as her mother had implored.

My niece’s first response when I called to discuss her mother’s concerns threw me off guard. It was vintage Temilade as usual. “I’d been expecting your call before now. There is nothing you or anyone can tell me, my mind is made up. When I bring him home, they can chase him out, but it will not change anything”. She promised to come around to my place just to honour me all the same. At the end of our discussion, I did not only fail in persuading her to change her mind, but she managed to confuse me and left me wondering if she was not right after all.    

The hypocrisy and double standards of society informed her decision, she said. She has watched over the years the various experiences of her mother and other female family members and friends and have come to the conclusion that marriage is not one of the things she wants to invest in. According to her, most of the women she knows who are first wives have similar traumatic experiences in their marriages, either in the hands of their husbands or their in-laws. 

While the women who come in after, enjoy better care and respect. Her mother has had to share her father with four women in the course of their 30 years of marriage. Which does not include concubines and girlfriends. The first woman who had a child for him was fostered on her mother by her father’s family, notably his elder sister, who insisted that though her father had confessed that the affair was a mistake, its product was God’s gift and therefore could not be wished away.

After about five years and two children, his roving eyes discovered another woman who, on realising he was an easy conduit pipe to poverty alleviation, quickly pitched her tent with him. My aunt saw this as an opportunity to recover some of her lost dignity and gave the third woman her support. 

Together, they succeeded in kicking out number two   but could not prevent him from taking two other women, whom he did not bring to the family house. To Temilade, that was also a problem because she had doubts that her father recognised any of his houses as home. Anywhere he had a woman was as good as home to him and they were used to not seeing him for several days and weeks at a time. Her mother managed to have two more children, all girls, and went through hell raising them. Many times, she had to pay school fees when her father promised but failed to show up. Chief in his late 60s is still a lady’s man and shows no sign of slowing down anytime soon.

But why does Temilade feel that this same fate would befall her? She said she has come to the conclusion that this is the fate of most Nigerian women, especially of Yoruba and Hausa origin. Most Ibo men exhibit more restraint when it comes to marriage, she said. Her mother’s sister married her husband when he had nothing, according to the story they’d been told. She had fed and clothed both him and their little daughter for over three years before he secured a job with an oil company and was posted to Port Harcourt. 

He repaid her by marrying a Calabar woman he met there. Luckily for them, the woman refused to relocate to Lagos after her uncle was posted back. A cousin’s husband recently impregnated a young woman on their street. This lady’s family did not see anything wrong with their daughter’s actions but even had the guts to come into her cousin’s matrimonial home to beat her up for daring to call out their child. To add salt to injury, everyone blamed her for encroaching in the girl’s space since she did not come into her home! Temilade said almost all her friends have similar stories to tell about their parents’ betrayal and deceit to one another. She recalled that at the peak of her mother’s depression and confusion, she’d found herself at the doorsteps of spiritualists and herbalists in a bid to win back the love and attention of her husband, a man she’d met and fallen in love with, way back in their university days. They all took her money and failed to return her man to her. Temilade said several of her friends who had gotten married after graduation had abandoned their marriages too and she wasn’t going to make their mistakes!.

Hmmm! Do have a wonderful weekend!!