Among the Yoruba people, women are grouped into seven different categories. Two of the categories are regarded as wife materials, two are barely good as bedmates, while the remaining three are those you don’t touch with a six-inch pole, for any reason. They have a saying for that: "meje l’obinrin mo. Meji laa fe, meji laa ba lo’po. Meta to ku, makan ni". For the purpose of this discourse, I will mention the last three that our elders warn us not to marry. The first is the dirty woman (obinrin obun). If you marry her, you risk the health of the entire family. The second is the proud woman (obinrin onigberaga).
This one carries the pride of her father's household on her shoulders everywhere she goes. She is the arrogant type, a peacock of a personage. She talks down on people, sees everyone as an extension of her father's servants. She measures every person she comes across by the affluence of her family. God help any average man who suffers the misfortune of having such a woman as wife. The problem with this type is that no matter what you do, she sees herself as the master and her opinion alone counts. She is a modern day "boss lady".
The last of the trio is the indecorous woman. She is the worst type imaginable. She is simply referred to as “asa obinrin". She is temperamental, simply incorrigible, very untrainable, intractable and pathetically uncharitable. "Asa obinrin" is not just mannerless, she is also shameless. She is like Yarinbo, the wife of Tortoise, who was absent when Orunmila was sharing dignity and moral rectitude. She does the unthinkable. She fights, drinks and gets drunk; commits adultery and when she gets back home, unties her wrapper for her husband to have his due benevolence. Asa Obinrin is "makan" - touch not. Her Odu Ifa prescribes "obu", the one that has no principles of life, and no man marries her and lives happily thereafter. She is not just bad headed, she is equally double left-footed (elese osi meji).
This type is also called "ba’seje" - the spoiler of that which is good. She is also called "pami nku obinrin, ti nsoribenbee soko"(the daredevil who challenges her own husband) A man marries an "asa obinrin" at the expense of his joy and happiness; respect and dignity. Whenever her Odu surfaces on the divination board, the Babalawo asks that it should be thrown away. Once a man marries her, she becomes undetachable! The man gets disentangled from her evil grips only by divine intervention.
There are two prayers in my native Ekiti background, offered whenever one plans to host a joyous occasion. I will love to say them in the exact intonation so that their beauties will not be lost. One says "Honi ka bua re je hi a ha"- may the one who will spoil your day of joy never show up. The second is also similar: ojo hi a gbo'jo li'jo oya re" - may rain never fall on the day your mates are to work on your farm. "Oya", is a farming practice among the Yoruba, whereby, a number of men form a labour group and move from one member’s farm to the other to prepare the farmland for the planting season. One can only be unlucky if the rain falls on the day the group is to work on one's farm. Both prayers are offered to seek cosmic favour on the day of important celebrations. I don’t know which of these two prayers were offered for Professor Charles Chukwuma Soludo as he prepared for his last Thursday, March 17, 2022, inauguration as the newly-elected governor of Anambra State.
Permit my superstition here. After watching the ugly incident at the inauguration, involving Ebelechuckwu Obiano, the wife of the immediate past governor of the state, Willie Obiano, and Mrs. Bianca Ojukwu, the wife of the late Ikemba of Nnewi, Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, I came to one conclusion: Africa must go back to its roots. But for the so called 'civilisation', in our African setting, if all that needed to be done had been done, such an overshadowing incident would not have happened. If, for instance, the organisers of the event had consulted the Oracle and the owners of the land, they would have been told that something that would take the shine off the inauguration was in the offing. Eji Ogbe, the father of Ifa divination, would have asked Professor Soludo to sacrifice "eku meji oluwere"- two fast moving rats; "eja meji ab’iwe gbada"- two fast swimming fish; 'obidie meji ab’edo lukeluke" - two hens with fully grown livers - and "ewure meji abamu rederede" - two goats with matured fetuses. These would have been given to Esu, the trickster, to assist in diverting the legs of “baseje" - the spoiler of that which is good - to another place. If that had been done, we would not be talking about the slapping incident, but the lofty programmes that the Professor of Economics enumerated in his address. Today, I take a bet if anyone remembers what Soludo said at that inauguration because “the spoiler of that which is good" was present.
I sent a clear video of the incident, one that a Facebook friend tagged, "the slap from another angle", to an elderly cousin and his response was: "aye nyi, a nto"- the world rotates while we merely follow in a circle. I reflected on the expression, a summation of feelings whenever the unthinkable happens. I called him back almost immediately and I summarise his opinion of the whole incident thus: "aye ti dorikodo"- the world is upside down.
I cannot agree less. Our world is changing fast, such that we are losing our values at the speed of light. The modern day African husband is in bondage- the bondage of civilization! That is why what happened in Awka could happen and, Willie Obiano would sit down incapacitated. He even suffered further indignity because he had to leave the ceremony alongside the very object of ridicule, the very person who brought that shame to the entire Black Race. I say Black Race because what happened in Awka last Thursday affects every black man and woman wherever they are on the surface of the earth.
It is not for fun that our elders say "when you say this is where my friend suffered indignity yesterday, the disgrace is a common one". It happened in Anambra, it could have been in Ekiti, Kano, Rivers or any other state. And if you ask me, I will tell you without blinking that the victim of the incident is the very African husband that is in the bondage of 'civilisation'; not just Willie Obiano, who sat down, frustrated, incapacitated and in doleful state, while Ebelechukwu waltzed her steps to historical ignominy.
Now, before anyone begins to shout "chauvinism", let us do a simple analysis of the entire episode. Let us begin with the issue of arrival. According to reports, Mrs. Obiano arrived at that occasion almost one and half hours after her husband had been seated. Ask, where was she, when the husband was leaving the Government House for the inauguration? Does that mean the two of them, husband and wife, did not sleep in the same house the previous night? Ask again, for the eight years that Ebelechukwu acted as "Anambra State First Lady", was she not schooled in the rudiments of state protocols, that when the governor is seated, all late comers must enter quietly? Consider the other report that when her convoy got to the locked gate of the venue, she was directed to use another access gate but opted to trek from the gate to the venue, after creating a scene! Imagine the number of eyes popping as she walked the distance; and what would be going on in the minds of the guests! Who does that? Then take another look at the video and pay close attention to how she struggled to get up beside her husband and cat-walked or waltzed her way to where Mrs. Ojukwu was seated.
Take a mental measurement of the distance she covered before getting to her target. Ask why common sense did not prevail. Ask again, if you have the time, why her id suppressed both her superego and ego. Look at those waltzing legs again and try not to remember the pub or club house where you first saw such dowdy steps. And while doing that, don’t forget to notice the gesticulation as she tried to adjust her blouse, like a typical pseudo-Victorian; then watch closely how she first bent to talk to Mrs. Ojukwu, before the latter stood up to deal her the dirty slap. In all these, what picture do you get?
And if you are still in doubt, watch again her futile attempts to fight back, the vulgar language and then how she practically rebuffed her husband, who beckoned on her to sit down. Take a final look at ex-Governor Obiano on his seat and juxtapose his sorry mien with the picture of a happily married man. Go back to our opening remarks and do a wife taxonomy for Mrs. Obiano. Ask again and again, if in a proper African setting, such a character would follow the husband back home. Then remember that we are in the age of "civilisation", with its attendant female rights. You can then pity the modern African husband, whom ex-Governor Obiano represents; or in the alternative, put him in the position of your uncle, brother or cousin and draw your conclusion of what must have been his lot all these years!
As for the argument that Mrs. Ojukwu should have acted differently, that is neither here nor there. Her explanation of why she did what she did is sufficient for me. She speaks: “…all guests were seated, the former First Lady of Anambra State, Mrs. Ebele Obiano, was noticeably absent. She then arrived some one-and-a-half hours later …. I didn’t pay any particular attention to her arrival. Surprisingly, she then walked towards me and I thought she was coming to greet me. Instead, when she got to where I was seated, she verbally attacked me, with her voice raised, taunting me and asking me what I was there to do and using unprintable vile language. Then, she kept aggressively putting her hands on my shoulders and shouting. I requested twice that she refrain from touching me with her hands. She proceeded to do so yet again and went further to grab at my head-tie, which she attempted unsuccessfully to remove...It was at this point that I stood up to defend myself and gave her a dirty slap to stop her from attacking me". You still feel she should have sat still like a statue because she was once an ambassador and has no blood running in her veins! You are asking if I approve of the slap? I will tell you what l feel without mincing words.
Mrs. Bianca Ojukwu is not just a former Nigerian ambassador to Spain, she is the daughter of late Chief C. C. Onoh and wife of former military governor of the defunct Eastern Region, the late Eze Gburugburu 1, Chief Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, a deified icon of his people; founder and leader of the All Progressive Grand Alliance, APGA, the party under which Ebelechukwu Obiano became the "First Lady of Anambra State" for eight years. It is not such an icon that you fight in the public space. By birth and by marriage, Bianca towers well above Ebelechukwu. Medical experts say that every woman carries in her, the DNA of her parents as well as that of her husband. Now, I believe that though Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu is dead, his steely ‘manhood’ lives in Bianca.
By Suyi Ayodele
Source: https://tribuneonlineng.com/awka-slap-and-the-warning-from-the-ancestors/
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