On a bright and fateful morning in July, a friend casually sent me an article on social media. This particular friend had formed an impression of me as an avid reader and so he routinely sends me articles he finds really interesting to read for fun. Sometimes he asks me to read up on certain topics or people and would question me later.
The article in question this time was a thirteen (13) page article written by the popular and indomitable Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. It had been adapted from her 2012 speech at a TED event and made into print.
I was in the debate and essay clubs in my high school and I had learned to make non-academic reading one of my favorite past-times so I didn’t really mind reading this article. Moreover, this article was relatively short so I figured it wouldn’t take me much time to exhaust.
True to my thinking, I finished the article in under an hour. While reading the article, it felt familiar. On probing, it turned out that I had already watched the TED talk this article was based on. Sometimes, as if on a whim, I become a really avid consumer of TED talks.
Section 1
But something happened that I hadn’t really counted on. Consciously and unconsciously, my brain got opened to Chimamanda’s intellectual argument and the point she was trying to drive home. However, instead of concurring with her points, I found myself disagreeing.
Section 2
I genuinely felt that some of her points were exaggerated or over-dramatized. Maybe she even did this on purpose
For instance, on page five(5), she described going out with her friend Louis. On this particular occasion, she went out with Louis in Lagos and a Valet helped her find parking spot for her car. As a show of gratitude, she decided to give him a tip.
He collected the tip and was happy but instead of reciprocating her gratitude, he turned to her male companion Louis and said thank you.
On page 6, Chimamanda insinuates that when she attempts to visit some bars or cafes, she is refused entry solely on the account that she is female.
Section 3
Reading these anecdotes, I started to get angry. How could Chimamanda, a world renowned, acclaimed, and extensively decorated writer lie about Nigeria, her own birth country, just to sell some extra copies? The further I read, the angrier I got.
It was personal to me and hurt me more because I know Nigeria personally. This was my country she was writing about. A country I grew up in and cherished. A country I call home and continued to even after I went abroad to pursue my university education.
I knew Nigeria in and out. It’s bars, it’s streets, it’s ways and almost all it’s nooks and crannies. The Nigeria I knew wasn’t the one Chimamanda was describing.
Section 4
Yes, people have always said sad and terrible things about Nigeria and especially about her issues with gender. Yes, Nigeria isn’t perfect and I wasn’t pretending that it was.
But in my opinion, Chimamanda was lying. She was taking the Nigeria I knew and twisting it a thousand different ways just to make a juicy story. She was adding a little more spice to her story so that it’ll make for a more interesting read.
Section 5
That was how the idea for this article was born. At this point my anger turned to rage and then to disappointment. The more I read, the angrier I got. How could Chimamanda commit such a dastardly act of misleading the world?
It was at this point that I decided to write an article, to counter Chimamanda’s narrative. The article would set the record straight, stick it to Chimamanda, and expose her lies.
My plan was to do a basic research. I would walk around the streets of Nigeria and especially Lagos and ask questions to anyone who cared to answer. The aim was to find the bars that as Chimamanda said, wouldn’t admit women (of course I didn’t expect to find them).
Ultimately, I would trash Chimamanda for lying because these bars really didn’t exist. I would affirm that her friend Louis was really right when he said to her “everything is fine now for women”. My country, Nigeria, treated women much better than Chimamanda portrayed or wanted to admit and I was going to show that to the world.
Section 6
But then, again, something happened. I returned home to Nigeria from abroad, a freshly minted graduate with new and ambitious ideals. I was beaming with ideas on gender equality and fairer treatment of the female sex. Here I was, back to the same dear country I left behind, the only one I had ever seen or known it’s borders until a few years back.
On my return after all these years out, Nigeria didn’t look or feel new to me, and that was the problem—it felt old. Attitudes and dispositions to women that I hadn’t noticed before I left somehow become very conspicuous; this time I noticed them.
Because I hadn’t noticed them earlier, I didn’t think they existed or maybe I just didn’t pay attention to them.
Women were still being treated as second fiddle. It was an epiphany. Like going back three (3) centuries into the past. Only that this wasn’t 1819, this was 2019.
Section 7
On return, I had to visit and make acquaintance with people I hadn’t seen in a long time. Nigerians typically have large extended families and my uncles and aunts would consider it disrespectful if I didn’t grace their homes with my presence after so much time away.
I remember traveling to South-Eastern Nigeria to visit a relation. On my second evening of visit, after doing justice to a few jars of palm wine, a local alcohol drink —otherwise known as palmi—, this particular relation started advising me on marriage.
That was the day I learnt that apparently women are supposed to be married very young, preferably in their teen ages. At this age they are assumed to be young, dumb and unsullied and so they can be kept at home as housewives and wouldn’t make any trouble.
It is also at this age that her husband can mould her into any shape and form he wants, a wife made in his own image.
Section 8
This appalling and hostile attitude towards women and their rights seeps down even to minute things. Once I was in an Auto rickshaw or as Nigerians call it, Keke Napep .The men in the keke ride got into a serious but amusing discussion. If you were listening from outside, you would have thought these able bodied men were having a heated argument.
The bone of contention was that one of the men had described an experience where a female passenger that was getting on the same ride wanted him to adjust so that she could sit by the door.
The men swore that over their dead bodies, they would never let a woman make them shift their sitting positions nor give up their window seats. If it was a fellow man, they would gladly oblige but never a woman!
When such hostile attitudes towards the female gender seeps into seemingly irrelevant things like sitting positions, it tells a broader story. It serves as an omen to a more deeply rooted prejudice. A prejudice that seats so deep that it’s begun to crack the surface and manifest itself in trivial things.
Section 9
All is not well in Nigeria. Nigerian men, just by virtue of their sex, still go around with a sense of entitlement, a sense of ownership.
It is not uncommon to hear a man refer to his wife as property, saying things like ‘na my wife, I go do am the way I want’ (she is my wife and I reserve the right to treat/use her in any way I deem fit).
It is also not uncommon to see a man assign maid-like duties to his wife. This ownership mentality might be one of the reasons why gender based violence is not uncommon.
Alone, the woman does the dishes, the laundry, mans the kitchen, cares for the kids, and does just about every other domestic chore despite sometimes being just as working class as the man is.
Even though not as rampant, Nigerian men still ask their wives to put their careers on pause and become a full time stay-at-home mom to care for the kids even if the woman is more educated and qualified than he is.
Sometimes it’s done out of jealousy or inferiority complex because she earns more and might therefore be called the de-facto breadwinner; a title the average Nigerian man does not wish to share with anyone including his wife.
Section 10
So recently, my siblings and I were having a family chat. The mood was jolly, fueled by plentiful food and drinks. After a while, my parents decided to join in the fun and laughter. Everybody seemed to be having a good time.
As the conversation progressed, my sister became disgruntled. She was worried by the fact that although we had inherited some ancestral lands in our hometown, she wouldn’t have a share in these lands just because she had the ‘bad fortune’ to be born female.
You see, in the Igbo culture, male children are regarded more and the women don’t get to share in their father’s inheritance. I’ve always wondered why women are regarded as half-children or non-heirs unlike males since it takes the same birth process to conceive and deliver male and female children alike.
Section 11
What other proof of the general attitude towards women do you need than looking to Nigerian leaders and their politics. Imagine when leaders that are elected to represent your interests—mind you, women make up a reasonable number of the electorate—publicly proclaim to the world that the highest position a woman can occupy is “the other room”.
It tells the world that Nigerians, leaders and citizens alike, don’t deem their female counterparts qualified or even worthy enough to be in the same positions with them.
They aren’t worthy enough to enjoy the same privileges, partake in the same inheritance, or even sit in the same window seats, as the case may be.
Section 12
And so here I was, with pen in hand and a paper before me,, but I was torn. I didn’t know what to do. My Nigerian experience had knocked the proverbial wind off my sails. I had been disarmed, my dream article made toothless by a harsh reality.
From my experience, maybe Chimamanda was right after all. How could I, a typical Nigerian Igbo man swallow my pride and admit this?
Truth however has a way of cracking the surface no matter how much one tries to deny it. The truth in this case is that Nigerians need to do better. Our treatment of women, our unconscious hostility towards them isn’t healthy.
I must admit that this attitude is something we have learnt over time but this is not an admission that it cannot be unlearnt, nor an excuse for why it persists.
Since it took much time to learn these attitudes, since this culture is as old as anyone can remember, unlearning it will take as long, if not longer. This means the job of unlearning this culture must start today—make haste while the sun shines.
Section 13
Our men must be taught that the woman is not inferior to the man, neither is she a second class human. We must train our male children to see their female counterparts as every bit as human as they are.
We must teach them that the rights and privileges that apply to the male should also apply to the female.
In marriage as in business, society must instruct the men that the women, their wives, are partners, not slaves nor maids and definitely not their properties.
At the risk of controversy, dare I say that men must begin to see women as equals while at the same time respecting the differences between both genders.
Closing
After trying and failing to run away from it, I must make a solemn admission. Chimamanda was right! The Nigerian men I met, the hostile attitudes I observed, they were totally capable of treating her and every other woman in the many ways she described in that article.
She was right when she gave that TED talk in 2012 and that talk still resonates and applies today. Like she said then
“all of us, men and women, must do better”.
The End
Author; C.E Ogamdi
This article is based on the book-length essay: We Should All Be Feminists, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.
