By ADESOLA AYO-ADERELE
As a young graduate, my then spinster elder sister worked with a new bank in Ibadan – away from our family’s state of residence which was Lagos.
She rented an upscale apartment from this ageing retired army colonel who should be between 50 and 60 years old. He was Yoruba.
The man had several beautiful buildings on his plots, fenced them and rented out some.
He had two very young wives who should be between 25 and 30. They had two small kids of kindergarten age, a boy and a girl.
Every morning, this man would drive the kids to school with all the fanfare and joy that I considered extravagant.
He had no maiguard, so, he would open the gate himself, lock it and drive the kids to school. He’ll do the same when he returned. At such moments, I always wondered why any of his wives couldn’t step out to do the gate-opening and locking rituals for him every morning.
If yes, how come that in 16 years of a so-called marriage, he didn’t by chance father at least a child among the four kids born by his wife right under his roof?
Then, every evening around 7 p.m. the man would enact another gate-opening and locking rituals, this time, with his two wives fantastically dressed and driving out in separate cars as he bade them goodbye with all the laughter.
By midnight, the man would be at the gate to let them in. The two women would drive in, one after the other, to the joyous welcome greetings of their husband.
After observing the unusual arrangements for a few days during a stopover visit from Kaduna where I was observing my NYSC, I asked my elder sister what the unusual matter was and she said people believed that the man was impotent and that he allowed the wives to go out to socialise and bring in pregnancies…
In my then 22-year-old heart, I didn’t only pity the old man, I pitied the so-called wives the more. What on earth would make any woman subscribe to such demeaning arrangements — material comfort? Emotional blackmail? Or could they have been subjected to a deadly oath after they had discovered their husband’s health problem, possibly after marriage?
Such arrangements are not new in many Nigerian cultures, though; and that is the light in which I see the case of the Osogbo woman who was alleged to have had four children, all of whom don’t belong to her so-called husband of 16 years.
People have called her the most unprintable names possible and, rightly so.
But my questions are, is the man potent at all? Does he have the capability to impregnate a woman?
If yes, how come that in 16 years of a so-called marriage, he didn’t by chance father at least a child among the four kids born by his wife right under his roof?
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As I watched the morbid drama, the woman kept swearing under her breath that she and the man knew their secret but that even on the pain of death, she would never spill it; and I’m like, see a born idyat!
If the coded message she’s trying to convey is about the man’s impotence, then, what gave??
Why would a hitherto reticent husband who most probably turned the other eye while his wife made babies with other men suddenly turn around to deny a woman who had given him a semblance of regular family life for 16 odd years?
And here is wisdom for singles: Once a relationship is tending towards marriage, lovebirds would do well to undergo salient medical tests for everything possible — virility, fertility, diseases and mental health.
And once either of you is discovered to be below expectations, especially in terms of virility and fertility, it is better to let go.
As for women married to impotent men, you agree to bring in kids from the outside to your peril.
There’s something about him that he hasn’t told the world. And the same TV house that helped to expose his wife’s shameful serial adulteries should also help the man to discover his own state of sexual health — assuming he doesn’t know up until now.
And in these days of donor eggs and sperm, caution is still the word because, if the man changes his mind as I suspect was the case with the Osogbo couple, the woman will most likely be the one to bear the shaming and name-calling.
Have I justified the Osogbo woman? Not at all.
Do I blame her so-called husband? Yes, I do.
There’s something about him that he hasn’t told the world. And the same TV house that helped to expose his wife’s shameful serial adulteries should also help the man to discover his own state of sexual health — assuming he doesn’t know up until now.
And if it turns out that he is infertile, he should explain to the world what arrangements he had with his wife concerning pregnancy and childbirth and at what point the arrangements took a different shape as we now have it.
That is justice.
