By Theo Adebowale

Matrimony has been endangered since times past. Christian leaders quoting copiously from the Bible have taken their time to lecture us that God frowns at divource, abhors polygamy but insists one plus one are one. Their position would have been reinforced had we information about the matrimonies of the early apostles and how their marriages were managed and how easy it was for them to keep strictly to monogamy. But because Christianity came to this part through Western Europe, and monogamy was prevalent in the west, the practice was well propagated among converts. Not a few converts to Christianity also renounced their original polygamy. Why not?
The disadvantages of having more than one wife were well advertised among those privileged to have Western education. Family infighting, spiritual attacks, fighting to finish over inheritances and several dangerous acts of rivalry are overwhelming references to discredit polygamy. Such evidences early drown advantages deriving from practice. Children are expected to go to school instead of lending hands to mothers on the farm. New trades unfold in the economy, and they take first the males out of the villages. The women get married and also migrate to emerging and expanding, urban centers.
Lifestyles are changing and the culture of monogamy continues to get more popular. Celibacy found its way into African continent, and it becomes evidence that healthy adults can remain unmarried which is even more self-denying, than monogamy. The alien nature of ‘one man, one wife’ and what some have regarded as the nature of man keep polygamy obtaining even among highly placed hypocritical Christians. Have we not heard that Pentecostal pastors keep side chicks, and have some mothering for them? This practice helps to reinforce the hypothesis that polygamy is in the nature of man. Even ‘adulterous’ wives now justify their trade by referring to this practice among the men folk. So people began to emphasise the condemnability of double dealing among African males.
Information Communication Technology has unfolded the nature and operations in the global village to the intent that since discovery of the steam engine and in the hustle for the golden fleece, polygamy has manifested universality. The extended family culture in Africa makes it visible, while the nuclear family structure in Europe conceals it to effect. In the United States of America, serial polygamy it is.
A man consumates a marriage in one state only to abandon mother and child there and proceed to another state to repeat the process. Because of an effective social security system over there, the economic effect on the children, products of such serial matrimonies are less damaging than they are in our planless economies. With apology to economists, we can confidently proclaim that details are an essential requirement for economic planning. Population, occupation, demography, age distribution, gender distribution are part of essentials to facilitate economic planning.
Research surveys, intelligence gathering, enumerators, sociologists, geographers are some of the expertise and specialists that facilitate. But when their place is lost to tale bearers and sycophants the necessary data required for government policies are jaundiced where available.
Is it any wonder that many homes are populated by children whose biological fathers are not members? The Yoruba believe that peace in a home remains undisturbed until bastards therein are grown up! In the monogamous homes, it is now speculated that polyandry might have even made an in-road. There are incredulous stories of some career women that business takes out of matrimonial home for reasonable periods of time when they make time to make babies to make babies with another husband while still retaining the husband of ‘her youth.’ Very difficult to believe but there are those that would narrate such stories on oath. A newly married woman was said to have been impregnated by an elderly polygamist who summoned courage to invite the bridegroom and got some elders to prevail on him to release the bride on sabbatical. After weaning the infant, she returned to her ‘original love’ to continue matrimony in the spirit of ‘give and take.’ We may not be able to confirm in this edition whether or not it happened in Ondo State. All we can say is that the multicultural society is capable of swinging surprises.
Multidisciplinary studies are gaining currency in tertiary institutions worldwide. Some scholars have been looking into feminism in languages and linguistics. There were those who pioneered some studies in the chemistry of feminism. It is not impossible to have The Profession of Polyandry!
In all these, the society would be a better place when we deploy skills and expertise to planning. Presidents Clinton and Obama were able to get to the pinnacle of their career and politics strongly because of their society that keeps records and provides for her children. Even churches in their system are not likely to put much emphasis on monogamy. Any wonder that in our post-colonial and First Republic system, those that invested on such themes were successfully sidelined by those that did not pay attention to such issues.
A man with more than a wife but who fathers’ disciplined, responsible and successful children would earn more respect than one whose sole achievement is ‘one man, one wife.’ President Shehu Shagari was husband to many wives and several children. He was a member of National Party of Nigeria throughout the Second Republic. Alhaji Tafawa Balewa, Ahmadu Bello, Amino Kano, Ibrahim Waziri were each polygamist but remained with their parties in their political lives. They fulfilled their target.
Chief Obafemi Awolowo was a monogamous Christian. He did not make the highest office which he worked assiduously for. But then his political legacies remain unbeatable in Nigeria.
Cross cultural influence result in change. But then we must begin to address and recongnise essence of certain cultural practices so we can address their interference capacity in socio political life. Until we do this, we may not be able to demonstrate a practical knowledge of factors responsible for resistance to ideological political identification. We may also continue to have those saddled with the responsibility of ensuring the stability of our political system sabotaging our efforts. Those that contradict their religious professions cannot be expected to reckon with perjury as a serious infringement. Serial defection by politicians over here may afterwards not be unconnected with serial polygamy that has become a fad in Western Europe.
Must defection be tolerated by our system? Would the two party system of National Republican congress and Social Democratic Party not have resulted in a stable and durable two party system? Would that not have minimized the sins of indiscipline like adultery, divorce, remarriage in the body politic?
For how long can Nigeria cope with disloyal members in political parties who unashamedly continue to destabilise the system for us?
What is the benefit of serial polygamy that cultural polygamy is not superior to?