By Funke Egbemode
These men and women who go and ‘kiss the mic’ on a popular radio programme in Ibadan, Oyo State, please whose children are they? Who raised them? Sure I enjoy the programme tremendously too. I am not ashamed to confess that when I’m tensed or trying to control my temper, I rack up old broadcasts and they crack me up. Tension gone, temptation to lash out verbally violently at an offender overcome. I then call up my house-keeper who is an Ibadan woman and we laugh some more.
Whatever informed the creation of that programme was well thought out. I mean life is hard in Nigeria enough without all the analysts and columnists dredging up our failings and failure day in, day out on television, newspaper pages and worst still on social media streets. Who wants to be reminded of our painful past, troubled present and dreary-looking future, all the time?
The comic relief of four men fighting over the paternity of one child or one woman trying to prove, in conk Ibadan dialect, why she slept with two of her husbands’ friends and went on to have a child whose paternity is now in dispute, is always welcome, right? Note that there are three men now in contention for the ‘ownership’ of that child: the man who actually paid the dowry and his two shameless friends who sucked in through the window. It’s even worse when a mother brazenly holds the mic and justifies why she ‘collected’ dowry from two men based on her needs and size of her debts.
I should be ashamed of what my fellow women are doing but imagine how low this poor girl is feeling this minute that pump price of fuel is torturing me like real PMS (I mean pre-menstrual syndrome), I definitely won’t mind a little distraction and laugh.
The stories from that radio programme are as infinitely entertaining as they are ridiculously scandalous. I’ll serve you summary of a few.
Three men went to the mic, claiming ‘ownership’ of two children. Yes, two children, three fathers. One of them, a middle-aged vulcanizer actually sold his equipment [the one he used for his business] to help the mother in question here settle her debt. Don’t ask me if that was love, lust or plain stupidity. And while the back and forth was going on, the shameless mother said the child could not possibly be the vulcaniser’s because he did not fully settle her debts!
Right. Did you say ahhhhh? In other words, if you help me pay my debts, I will dash you one child. If you don’t pay in full, you lose the reward.
Then, there’s this grandmother who raised her granddaughter alone until the latter decided to get pregnant. According to her, one of her lovers, Ibrahim, slept with her on July 27 and the second one, Suberu, ‘knew her’ on August 1. Women, we know these things. Sometimes, DNA tests are not necessary. Just ask the recipient, she will tell you the authentic donor. Anyways, the pregnant Arike said Suberu is the father of the baby. Grandma however insisted the true father was Ibrahim. Please don’t laugh. Grandmothers sometimes know what mothers don’t. In this case, Ibrahim had maintained a steady supply of money, food and beverages to Grandma. That was what influenced Grandma’s DNA results. The old woman put her feet down and threatened to strip herself naked and curse this recalcitrant girl who Mama believed was determined to deprive her of the fruits of her labour.
And then, there’s the ‘Eleha’ [a woman in purdah] who went to the program to call on Nigerians to help her pay her hospital bill. She had had her baby through caesarean section and had been in the hospital for one whole month because her husband abandoned her in the hospital.
So why are we here? Watching a mentally-challenged person display insanity in the market square is entertaining but we all pray for a sound mind. That’s why we must look beyond the entertainment content of these DNA controversies and paternity embarrassment. We must stop clapping at this madness at our village square, interrogate the societal malady and see beyond the comic relief.
What kind of a grandmother decides the paternity of a child based on who among the ‘contenders’ brought more ‘Milo and Bournvita’? Why should the father of any child be in contention in the first place? How did we get to the sorry point of having men contest the paternity of a child, openly?
What’s worse? More men are asking for DNA test of children born in holy wedlock. Women in purdah (Eleha), wife of Pastors are now being found with their pants around their ankles in shameful circumstances.
How did motherhood descend to this sheol? Where are the fathers, the real fathers whose claim to manhood goes beyond what’s in between their legs?
We must first admit that what ails this nation started as a mild flu at the homestead. It is in the family that we raise the leaders who are railroading us into this dance of shame. It is the children that we failed to teach the right values that are selling our value and valuables for little portions of pottage.
In the days of yore when mothers held dear the adage that ‘a good parent’ must not know the husband of their children and still welcome the concubines, the right children were in the right homes. Now, it is the parents that are encouraging bed-sharing. Dark-spirited mothers now teach their daughters how to double-date, lecture them on how to hand over the children of Zubair to Moses. They collect money from both concubine and husband and speak from both sides of their mouths. Today’s mothers no longer believe the same definition of responsible motherhood their own mothers handed over to them. What they have not outsourced they trashed.
I bet you think outsourced parenting applies to only high-heels-wearing city-career women. Wrong. Many of my girls who don’t wear bone-straight wigs are guilty too. The market women, the roadside traders, the ones who hawk in traffic along with the Brazilian-wig-wearing ones all have members in the Irresponsible Mothers League. The men who are doctors and butchers, political office holders and their thugs are also card-carrying members of Irresponsible Fathers of Nigeria.
They chase the money day and night. The men sow indiscriminate wild oats. The women incubate the oats and then leave them at the mercy of the elements.
According to a research titled Dimensions of Child Neglect: An Exploration of Parental Neglect and Its Relationship with Delinquency by Daniel Maughan and Simon C. Moore,
“The effects of neglect on future outcomes are likely to be many with delinquency at the more serious end of the outcome spectrum. Four factors were sufficient to explain a significant proportion of the variance in the underlying data.’ Some of the identified factors are parental separations; disorganized, chaotic; marital harmony and father involvement; and parental supervision. Read them again. Which of these evils has not increased its hold on our family jugular in the last decade?
You cannot divorce the irresponsible children that litter our society from chaotic families, abandoned wives and absentee fathers. Take your pick: 17-year-old boys who think beheading their girlfriends will make them peers of Otedola and Dangote; 16-year-old barely clad girls who are already veteran runs-girls, 18-year-old girls who keep multiple lovers, have serial unprotected sex that produce babies with ‘multiple’ paternity’.
And for as long as we leave today’s seeds at the mercy of the elements, our tomorrow will be full of chapped fruits and twisted trees. Our yesterday’s neglect is already lining up to advertise our shame to the world, passionately kissing the mic.
