Opinion article by Duke of Shomolu, Joseph Edgar
I didn’t come from Polygamy but married into it. Created my own and have seen friends that came from it, created their own and wallow in it.
The child of Polygamy is a special being. He is either weakened and traumatized or bold and courageous as a result of the many struggles of his youth.
There are many reasons for polygamy. Cultural, traditional, enforced and also as a result of uncontained libido among others on the part of the man.
For the woman it could be enforced, widowhood, love, lust, circumstances.
I want to believe that in both cases there could be some element of love.
No matter the situation, the whole structure quickly deteriorates into cabals of conflict.
The Nigerian man of our grandfather’s times could best handle the centrifugal forces because they were mostly Okonkwo types. They were strong and backed with very strong cultural ethos which kept women in their places so that they could rule the roost.
For today’s man, it’s a different scenario. Today’s man is a weak caricature of yesterday’s man. He is weakened by education, western morals and all other types of exposure which strengthens the woman and turns the man into a feminine effigy.
Now putting today’s woman into the hot mess that is polygamy without a strong central force is a recipe for disaster.
Even for our fathers, we saw plenty diabolic engagements and witchcraft as a result of the woman’s inability to get a fair hearing.
So death was common. Injuries and spiritual attacks were all common place.
In all of these, nobody is really looking at the effects of this madness on the child.
The child is caught in a turbulence he didn’t ask for. Thrown from pillar to post by a competition that is needless and really has nothing to do with him.
The woman makes her struggle his. You hear things like, ‘ they can never like you’. They didn’t like me’. The acculturation starts from birth and the child is bred to understand hatred and hate.
The constant fight for attention or the lack of it now becomes the child’s problem.
The fact that s3xual attention can be far and in-between leaves the child a tool for blackmail, struggle and madness.
The man, naïve and depending on material resources, a dwindling s3xual drive and the ultimate cluelessness of a man is left almost helpless as he watches his community disintegrate into chaos and lawlessness.
He has been defanged. He cannot physically maintain order like his father because beating is now criminal. He will be out talked and where the woman is financially independent, he looses all instrument of legitimate force.
He becomes as useless as the children he has brought into this world.
Today’s focus is on widows, orphans, people with disability and the rest but are we really looking at the child of polygamy.
We are daily spewing damaged youths into society. People that were born into strife, curated in strife and bred with the fighters instinct. Not trusting anybody and cannot be loyal to any tendency because he has been taught to kill to survive.
There are some good products out of Polygamy but these I dare say are rare.
These good ones have come out stronger. They have seen life in its rarest form and have learnt to be strong. They are bold and know how to fend for themselves.
Others have come to realise that their mothers are the issue which is usually the case.
They turn their backs on their birth mothers and adopt their step mothers or a big sister who will give them a balanced view of life.
The mother of Polygamy is not a normal mother. She is taut, fearful and vengeful. Everything and everybody is an enemy.
Everybody wants to kill and chew her children. She is ready. The pastor, herbalist and prophet is her constant companion.
Her hubby’s pictures, her colleagues and their children’s pictures and her children’s pictures are currency for trade as she moves from one herbalist to that pastor in search of protection.
The man always always dies early. His health weakened by all the wahala, his life cut shut by a spiritual attack gone bad or basically just God calling him and then all hell, is let loose.
His mother is his only pillar. She must be a witch. She must be spiritually fortified otherwise her son is toast.
My mother used to say – Ini it is not your fight. It is mine. I will laugh and say- mummy it’s not a fight, it is my family.
In all of these struggles, the child of Polygamy like a war child is left alone to scavenge for life.
He seeks the friendship of children from saner homes. He seeks help and where he has God given sense builds safer hamlets in his bid to build a life away from the toxic environment he was born into.
For the one with no sense, he becomes a liability to society and ends up in the gutters of shame.
The child of Polygamy needs help but will his mother allow society to move in and rescue him?
Na wa
*Duke of Shomolu*
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