Women equality with men and our future

By Prince Pieray Odor   Nigerians are pathological consumers because we consume—accept and apply or ingest—ideas,   practices, goods and values from the US, Europe and Asia, or recommended by UN agencies, without investigating the health, environmental and cultural effects of them and even when experience somewhere or commonsense suggests that they will have disadvantageous, […]

By Prince Pieray Odor

 

Nigerians are pathological consumers because we consume—accept and apply or ingest—ideas,   practices, goods and values from the US, Europe and Asia, or recommended by UN agencies, without investigating the health, environmental and cultural effects of them and even when experience somewhere or commonsense suggests that they will have disadvantageous, harmful or deadly effects. We neither produce our ideas, etc, nor reject what they give us. Here I consider our consumption of an aspect of feminism known as ‘‘women equality with men’’.  

For a long time Nigerian women—except very few—demanded, through lectures and campaigns equality with men. They explained this to mean having absolute right and freedom to work in any employment outside the home and to participate actively in politics as men do. When doing so kept them away from home, they demanded that their husbands should carry out domestic duties. Many men do that now! Spinster feminists demanded sexual, contraception and abortion rights. Married feminists demanded extramarital sexual right and freedom and the right and freedom to abort the child conceived, so-called ‘‘unwanted pregnancy’’, without seeking the consent of their husbands.

Backed by several UN agencies, feminists first demanded 30 per cent women in political appointments and the legislature, then 40 per cent women, and now equality in politics and in all decision-making. They argued that our patriarchal religious and traditional practices have been oppressive and discriminatory to their gender and want total liberation. As total liberation they want to end patriarchy. ‘’Gender’’ and ‘‘affirmative action’’ became their strategic tools for achieving their aims. While ‘’gender’ is defined inclusively—male and female —in practice it is only about women and for women. This is why we have women hospital and women ministry, and none for men, education of the girl child and no education of the boy child, wife battery and no husband battery, female sexual harassment and no male sexual harassment; and women are said to be affected most by everything with no consideration for men.

Through itemisation approach, I show that accepting and applying feminists’ ‘’women equality with men’’ by our governments and demanding ‘inclusion of more women in government’’ by Nigerian men and women of honour, are consistent with what I call pathological consumption:

1. There is absolutely nothing wrong with having men working PRIMARILY outside the home and women working PRIMARILY in the home.  This is a division of labour that worked very well for our families just as economic division of labour works well in the industries.

2. The duty of women is fundamentally moral while the duty of men is fundamentally material; hence women should control men. Women abandoning this bulwark of firmest support for family life is why husbands, wives and children are scattered, children are given up to operators of commercial centres to be brought up by them from as early as six months, and are not given moral and spiritual upbringing. Children have become very radically individualistic and materialistic, know only their rights and freedom and make their parents respect these. Youths and children are not able to speak the Nigerian languages of their fathers while many children were able to speak both in inter ethnic marriages when traditional marriage values were practiced. Marriages are characterised by competition, insecurity, infertility and increasing divorce rate.   

3. When Nigerian women carried out their moral duties to the nation, Aba and Egba women stopped the British government imposing pauperising economic measures on Nigerians. But women in the ministries help the IMF, WB, WTO, and UNDP to impose taxes, fuel cost increases, and currency devaluations on Nigerians which increase inflation and poverty.

4. Women who hold political positions as ministers and advisers in our governments—federal and state—women in the legislature, and women who belong to NGOs set their moral duty to the nation aside because of financial and other benefits. This is why financial and other forms of corruption by people in the three arms of government, the ministries and the larger societies have been worse.

5. It is noted that the duties of carrying out moral upbringing and care for children, moral control of men, and home-keeping are very taxing and invaluable work, and cannot be assessed properly for financial reward. Women who abandoned them for political and other jobs have become so bloated and corrupted by the wealth these provide that they have made themselves the executive husbands in their homes. President Buhari was absolutely right for denying his wife political portfolio as his predecessor did, restraining her to the duty of a wife. This action saved the country huge amount of money while her criticisms controlled his actions!

6. Note that ‘women equality with men’’ cannot be said in any Nigerian language. Its promotion is actually responsible for the breakdown of social systems in the west. The breakdown is becoming visible in Nigeria. The west has been trying to correct its error while we are plunging into it although it will have greater effects on future generations of Nigerians. Feminists who originated this were girls and women who were sexually profligate and dissolute, iconoclasts, social deviants, recalcitrant, and absolutely egocentric, who imposed their will on men. This is why they have very little or no value as wives! Most of them are divorced, never married, and single mothers!

7. God did not make any two people equal: No man is equal with another man, no woman is equal with another woman and, certainly, God did not make any woman equal with any man. Nigerians are religious people and people of history. Let us live as such, not as feminists dictate.

As my conclusion I note that generally, everything about our marriage and family life is absurd and not suited for us. I emphasise that there is absolutely nothing wrong with the separation of duties for men and women, that dislocation and crash are inevitable for any human system that lacks moral control under the force of materialism, and that to sustain ‘‘women equality with men’’, or ‘’gender equity’’ in order to please feminists will have worse consequences in our marriages, children upbringing, family life, governance, economy and social order than we have been experiencing.

Odor is an independent researcher based in Lagos