BY NIGERIAN AUTHOR AMARA CHIDINMA EZEDINIRU

When I think of polygamy, the suffix ‘poly’ stares me in the face. Poly represents more, doesn’t it? More should always be better than less, shouldn’t it?

The closest I got to polygamy was in stories told by my friends who grew up in it. If the movies were not there, my imagination would have failed me on this. Most of the stories were grave and still are. They sent shivers down my spine and still do. The gory stories of incessant physical combats, the domestic violence, the starving, the stress of constantly being edgy are forever playing out in my head. Living in Nigeria and knowing the stories of “Village Pipu’ makes it worse.

‘Village Pipu’ is a phrase used in describing extended and nuclear family relations who resort to black magic to resolve problems in their favour. Black magic is spiritual. Some spiritualists are known to conjure and unleash all manner of demons on the lives of their ‘client’s supposed oppressors. Penalties include mysterious illnesses, poverty, ugliness, falling out of favour with all and ultimately death. Sometimes though very rarely are people rewarded with any form of goodness. Spiritualists are reputed for evil. It beats my imagination how these work knowing that the substances that constitute the media are dead animals, red clothes, feathers, chalk, shells, etc. How do such inanimate objects become efficacious? How do they effect poverty and death on a person?

Polygamy is the act of marrying multiple spouses, that means having more than one husband or wife at the same time. Since the definition accommodates this practice from both sides, I’m surprised that in our clime, women are denied such an experience! As a free-spirited being, I encourage people to do whatever they consider empowering as long as it is fair to all concerned.

Can women also be free to have more than one husband? Can we stop being fooled by the culture that men constituted to keep them more powerful than women? Can we make our choices and just like men, live with the consequences?

I know for sure that if women were to engage in polygamy, their focus would not be on rearing and uncaring for multiple children. They would rather focus on unity. The children would have one mother anyway, hence it makes it easy to foster love and unity. The husbands would not be bothered by the discord that arises with the question ‘which mother has you?’. There would be no need for such, for what reason? Our difference has always been the bane of our disunity and vehement disagreement. A mother no doubt knows how to bring her children together, she will consider her health and the overall good of the family, she will stick to a few children unlike the men who stir up unnecessary child-bearing competition and dissension amongst the women. For the men, the wives fight to have the first son or the first daughter or the most sons or the most daughters. When one woman is having all the children for the husbands, who will call the shot?

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Amara Chidinma Ezediniru is a business administrator, human resource manager and a certified teacher. She is widely traveled, a compassionate Rotarian, an author of three books, and a mother. She is the managing consultant of Rald and Vid Consulting Ltd.