Trouble in Sardauna’s House

A punchy headline reads – Husband Killer Yewande Oyediran bags seven years for manslaughter. Ms. Oyediran was convicted of killing her husband on February 2, 2016 after hearing that her husband fathered another child outside their marriage. Such debauchery is unknown in the north, our north where women are adequately protected, especially from their own […]

A punchy headline reads – Husband Killer Yewande Oyediran bags seven years for manslaughter. Ms. Oyediran was convicted of killing her husband on February 2, 2016 after hearing that her husband fathered another child outside their marriage. Such debauchery is unknown in the north, our north where women are adequately protected, especially from their own feelings. Yewande is not your run-of-the-mill ghetto ratchet; she is a qualified lawyer and worked at the Ministry of Justice. Trouble is, we all know that women should not be working at all. All that education should be spent taking care of a husband and mentoring children – that’s the traditional role of the woman. It’s a role she is destined to accept and never question or seek to modify.

Yewande sounds like a Yoruba name. I may be wrong. I bear Yoruba-sounding names too but I am full-blooded Yagba, from the House of Sardauna. There’s trouble in Sardauna’s house! Stories like Yewande’s are becoming common in my north. Northern women do not do jealousy. 

So this story of an educated woman stabbing her equally educated husband to death after going through his phone rankles me? Jealousy; that innate of human attributes known only to those who have sold their souls to modernity does not grow in the hearts of our daughters. Kishi, or jealousy is something you see in Indie movies or their debauched Nollywood and Hollywood counterparts. We sought to protect our unique culture and tradition by establishing an art unique to us and respectful of our culture. We called it Kannywood. The plots are heavily censored to reflect our unique peculiar reality and to eschew the corroding values of western urbanity.

If the plots have music in them at all, it must be virtuous sound as monotonous and boring as it should, it must teach time-tested morals unknown to Mamman Shata or Dankwairo; not meant to attract youth to express their feelings. If the plot has romance, it must be romantic virtuosity – no kissing, no holding hands and certainly no scenes except ones in which the suitor sees his belle in an open garden where he dances around trees instead of with her. In the north you don’t find love, you find arranged marriage and grow love on it. 

This story must be from the corroding influences of modernity, planted by the enemies of our pristine virtues to tarnish our time-tested custom and tradition. This was what the Hisbah, our morality police was meant to prevent. This is why they go around shops and markets confiscating books and material with raunchy scenes before they corrode our morality. Our enemies do not understand our desire to remain untainted by the corroding influences of modernity. They do not understand why we would waylay trucks carrying alcoholic drinks, confiscate and break them in the market square. We don’t do debauchery and lechery flies off our skin.

We’re still shocked with Boko Haram. We knew what aspect of education is harmful because we disparage co-educational institutions to keep our purity. We’re still shell shocked that our own Abdulmutallab attempted to bomb a plane over America and that some of our children went to Syria to join ISIS. We denied Maitatsine, and we hate. We’re not ashamed when others laugh at us as we conduct house-to-house census of girls and women of marriageable age then link them to eligible bachelors or willing married men. We have the highest rate of analphabetism; some say the highest rate of diseases including HIV/AIDS. We still wonder how these things came to be. 

Why do you think we were so angry with Rahama Sadau? The girl knows that we do not do songs eulogizing human feelings. Certainly she knew well enough not to appear in videos that would not be sanctioned to air in Kano. There are those who claim that our children have been sold to addiction of alarming sorts and we refuse to accept that label. We have learnt that if you ignore a problem long enough, it goes away.

So, what is happening to the house that the Sardauna built? It must be that agent of the devil, boko and of course its twin, the Internet with its wide door leading to the hottest parts of debauchery. Those who say education is not for girls may have points after all. If that lady couldn’t read and write, she’ll still be happily married even if her late husband had twenty sidekicks. If we ban the Internet, all our problems would go away. Whoever heard of women being jealous in the north?

People have suggested that we start speaking about these issues. No. We must kick against them. Women’s rights are best protected in the language of one of our most revered leaders – in the living room, the kitchen and za aza room. We all know that when a woman is guilty of murder, elders dig a hole, bury her halfway while sinless men stone her in righteous indignation until she is sent to eternal damnation in the hottest part of jahannam. If over-education is ridiculing the house of Sardauna and resuscitating human attributes long suppressed by oppressive tradition, it, too should truly be dubbed haram and expunged.