FROM CONCEPTION TO BIRTH THROUGH LIFE: THE UNDERLYING CULTURE OF DEVALUATION AND ABUSE OF WOMANHOOD IN PATRIARCHAL NIGERIA

Abstract

Culture mirrors the beliefs, attitudes and norms of a people, and it is largely unwritten. Nigeria has about 250 ethnic groups, each with diverse cultures, some of which the value and abuse womanhood. Beliefs in patriarchal and primogeniture hold women inferior to men, and sons preferred to daughters. As such, female fetuses are sometimes aborted and infant girls are “trashedâ€. By the payment of bride price, a wife becomes the “property†of her husband, and must do all his biddings. It is inconsequential if he rapes her or beats her because, culturally, he is simply “recounting his moneyâ€. He can “donate†her to sleep with his important guest against her will, because he “owns†her. Women cannot drink palm wine in a sitting or standing position before men. They must stoop down low to drink. If they take yam from the barn, or eat chicken rump or gizzard, it is sacrilege. They cannot greet men by handshake. They must bend down to be patted on the back instead. A woman is despised and stigmatized if she is barren or bears no sons. Women and girls hardly inherit immovable property under customary law. Educating a girl is no priority because of the belief that training a girl is like “watering the flower in another man’s gardenâ€. Instead, she can be forced into early marriage, or her virginity compromised in exchange for money to support the family or train her brothers who are the “heirsâ€. If her husband dies, she is compelled to drink the bath water of his corpse as an oath that she had no hand in his death. On the other hand, if she dies her husband is “encouraged†to remarry because it is infradig for a man to be seen “buying foodstuff†in the local market, or “cooking food†in the kitchen. This socio-legal desktop research explores these and like cultural practices which the value and abuse Nigerian women and girls, and make recommendations for their denouncement and abolition.