#YNaijaWomensMonth: Drag Me Down The aisle

Fareeda Abdulkareem

Today’s Women’s Month essay is written by Alithnayn Abdulkareem, and explores the often underdiscussed dichotomies that come with being multi-ethnic in a country like Nigeria. She calls her essay ‘a comparison between Western and Northern attitudes to marriages and divorces for women in Nigeria’.


My mother is Yoruba, my father is Fulani, through the influence of politics and the reconstruction of geographic barriers, my parents hail from the same state. My father can trace his roots to Katsina, and speaks fluent Hausa, Fulfude and Yoruba. My mother is a solid child of Kwara who also speaks Yoruba fluently. This essay is written with my fractured view of ethnic perceptions, they do not constitute any knowledge denoted with the authority of statistical research, I have interviewed no one for this piece. They simply are random observations by a Fulani-Yoruba girl on the treatment of women with the spectrum of both ethnic groups. I am also aware that exceptions exist within both ethic groups.

Growing up with my mother’s side of the family, inheriting Yoruba traditions, speaking the language and being born and bred in Lagos, by upbringing, I consider myself Western Nigerian. During interactions with people, what they have latched unto, are my names, my pointed nose, my evenly structured face, and my hair type. The general assumption is that I am Northern, from Northerners and otherwise. On other days, I have been mistaken for Ghanaian, Togolese, Ugandan and even South African. I have become accustomed to being the exotic.

Yet, my experience attending university in Northern Nigeria, living with Northern roommates, and having romantic prospects constitute mostly Northern boys, I have observed some upsetting conditions regarding the perception and treatment of Northern Nigerian women, particularly concerning the issue of marriage.

Once in a group discussion, a friend, a Hausa girl asked the moderator what a girl could do if she was born into certain circumstances that demanded that women be all submissive. Me, of Western upbringing  rose to answer, extolling the benefits of rebellion, and the merits of the freedom it provided. The group leader pointed to me and nodded. She looked , called my name and said “its not the same.” And from hindsight, she was right. She was brought up in the deep North, raised in a Hausa speaking family, even resides close to me in Lagos, but I have only run into her three times since 2013. At the back of my head, I think, the next time I might see her in large fractions might be at her wedding.

With all the shades of girls I encountered, beautiful, cerebral, always dressed decently, a trend seemed to pop up, of more than a few girls, dropping out of school, as soon as they became engaged. My first roommate was the first casualty. One semester, she left after getting engaged. while fiancée  returned to school the following semester.

Fast forward a few girls more, and the trend signals less of a concept for modern feminists to panic about, and more of needing a necessary restructuring of the mental patterns of many Northern Nigerians, male and female. I have come across a few memorable and inspiring girls, yet there is the consistent upholding of marriage, as something to do quickly, to appease ones parent’s even at the cost of sanity and happiness. I often joke to my friends that Northerners if a poll was carried out, would most likely have the highest rates of mental illness or stress.

They have a lot to be worried about. Extreme  divorce rates coupled with the seeming addiction to marriage for instance. In Yoruba culture, one divorce is too much, in cases of spousal abuse, the “endure till things change” mantra only works for measurable problems like financial struggles or temporary fights, but in incidences of high trauma, the family will get together to evacuate their child from the situation. In the case of marriage pressure also, Yoruba girls after the requisite “when will you marry” question at best have to deal with irritation when confronted with nosy relatives or annoying set ups. Northern girls, from my observations have more devious challenges to encounter when the issue of marriage is broached. If girls are being married off during their college years so quickly, who knows what manner of mental stress awaits those who graduate? In central Abuja, I have been privy to many discussions of girls aiming for marriage as an escape route from stifling parental control. For them, marriage is the way to freedom, yet a fair number of said girls enter these institutions with little financial independence of their own, and lament when things often do not go the way they envision, financially, emotionally, sometimes sexually.

And what happens after? A quick perusal through the Divorce Diaries section of the Jaaruma website, will provide laughter and tear inducing stories of multiple divorces, or women with five children who are less than twenty five. The general remedy seems to be, if the marriage did not work, on to another one. It takes about three or four for the lesson of self-dependence to sink in.

And this is not the burden of the poor alone. Rich, sophisticated, well-travelled Northerners often fail to escape the mental cage of obeisance to withered and damaging traditions. A personal encounter with a wealthy Northerner led to repeated denouncements of his own fiancée, over small fights. I expect news of their wedding to hit the Bella Naija page and the comment section drooling with “aww’s”. If only they knew he was a functional junkie and she was a mental case. But they’re getting married. Masha Allah.

Often there is the accurate trope that people from Western Nigeria celebrate like no one else. In this satirical piece for Quartz, the writer analyzes the hilarious and problematic politics of Yoruba weddings. Despite the hustling for food and take way wedding souvenirs, the Yorubas from my experience have more to celebrate about during weddings than Northerners do. For in more cases, the bride feels more content to walk down the aisle. For one, she is mostly allowed to marry outside her ethnic group if she deems it fit. She is not to be cast away completely into the building of her new home, without retaining the backbone that is the support of a vast network of matriarchal relatives, she has not been married most likely for financial or political mergers, and she is not engaging in marriage to seek more freedom, she has too much agency, and education to do that.

I have always existed on fractured spectrums, despite being exotic for a Nigerian, I have been born to parents largely atypical of what Nigerian parents have been constituted to me. Or perhaps I have rebelled so much to demand rights, which have been met with scorn, but ultimately my family has always welcomed me back, the prodigal daughter, launching herself into an unforgiving world, sure of her safety net.Given my age range, questions about marriage have arisen, but they have mostly been framed as a concerned attempts to secure a future where I am not alone, less for reasons to do with mergers and appeasing angsty older relatives. For most of life, till date, my family-Westen and Northern’s biggest concern has been towards helping me become the most beautiful, accomplished, spiritual and happy person they could raise. This is a nice exception for someone who easily could have been raised to be an unhappy conformist with a family more interested in sending me off to a new man’s house if the current one failed.

 

 

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