As the beehive of Nigerian women who are divorced from their husbands continuously increase, they have found a clever way of ridiculously putting a smiley face on their status. Through the ingenuity of Hajia Atine Abdullahi, pictured here right, a National Association of Divorcees was born to cater for the divorcees, widows and orphans of Nigeria. Icheoku notes however that the association appears to have an axe to grind with men as they exclude divorced men, widowers and apparently male orphans from their beneficiaries? It seems that the NAD is unapologetically, purely a feminists right-wing group; and Icheoku adds, little wonder no man could tolerate them as wives? Now they are ganging up against men and possibly will entice other remaining happily married women to also kick their husbands to the gutter and join them - "the fully and truly liberated women of Nigeria"? They are organising a rally in Kano-Nigeria this month, to protest what they termed the growing number of divorce in Nigeria's Kano city and particularly against what they claimed is the “insufficient husbands in Kano State.” Icheoku asks, if there is a dearth of husbands, why then divorce the one you have even if he is a talakawa or an almajiri? What should be important for the likes of this fire-breed, fiery eyed Atine Abudullahi is that any human-being with a man-hood is good enough, period! But to forever be hopping around in search of a Brad Pitt with all the money in the world and who is also heavenly well endowed is no brainier as it is the root-cause of their predicament! Any three-legged individual should ordinarily suffice, as they say in the land of the blind, one eyed person is usually the king, so stay and love the one you have. According to available information, the association is expecting one million divorced women at the event in Kano and Icheoku says, you then begin to wonder how many women are still married? As if to add impetus to Icheoku's assessment, a recently released data from Kano State government shows that over 80% of marriages in the state were unstable. Hajiya Attine Abdullahi, who is the executive director of the association, said the rally is to highlight the incidences of divorce as a growing social problem bedeviling their Kano State. Icheoku says, may be this Hajiya can start by converting to a more marriage-respecting religion since her Sharia practising Kano state encourages Muslim men to treat their women as chattels that can be easily disposed and at will. Monday, January 12, 2009
DIVORCED AND PROUD NIGERIANS!
As the beehive of Nigerian women who are divorced from their husbands continuously increase, they have found a clever way of ridiculously putting a smiley face on their status. Through the ingenuity of Hajia Atine Abdullahi, pictured here right, a National Association of Divorcees was born to cater for the divorcees, widows and orphans of Nigeria. Icheoku notes however that the association appears to have an axe to grind with men as they exclude divorced men, widowers and apparently male orphans from their beneficiaries? It seems that the NAD is unapologetically, purely a feminists right-wing group; and Icheoku adds, little wonder no man could tolerate them as wives? Now they are ganging up against men and possibly will entice other remaining happily married women to also kick their husbands to the gutter and join them - "the fully and truly liberated women of Nigeria"? They are organising a rally in Kano-Nigeria this month, to protest what they termed the growing number of divorce in Nigeria's Kano city and particularly against what they claimed is the “insufficient husbands in Kano State.” Icheoku asks, if there is a dearth of husbands, why then divorce the one you have even if he is a talakawa or an almajiri? What should be important for the likes of this fire-breed, fiery eyed Atine Abudullahi is that any human-being with a man-hood is good enough, period! But to forever be hopping around in search of a Brad Pitt with all the money in the world and who is also heavenly well endowed is no brainier as it is the root-cause of their predicament! Any three-legged individual should ordinarily suffice, as they say in the land of the blind, one eyed person is usually the king, so stay and love the one you have. According to available information, the association is expecting one million divorced women at the event in Kano and Icheoku says, you then begin to wonder how many women are still married? As if to add impetus to Icheoku's assessment, a recently released data from Kano State government shows that over 80% of marriages in the state were unstable. Hajiya Attine Abdullahi, who is the executive director of the association, said the rally is to highlight the incidences of divorce as a growing social problem bedeviling their Kano State. Icheoku says, may be this Hajiya can start by converting to a more marriage-respecting religion since her Sharia practising Kano state encourages Muslim men to treat their women as chattels that can be easily disposed and at will. 
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Christy 'Apena' Essien-Igbokwe , the wife of Jegede Shokoya of the New Masquerade and Nigeria's lady of songs is dead; she was 51years old. Although her family claimed that "brief Illness" killed her like so many Nigerians; Icheoku retorts that it was most likely AKwa Ibom voodoo and remote control that was used to arrest her. It is on record that she had fallen out with the governor of her native Akwa Ibiom State and have been having a relentless war for political turf with the governor? So who knows whether she was sacrificed to Ekpe cult or even Alusi-Okija as an offal; afterall African science is still very much alive and portent. May her soul rest in peace.
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Home Our Papers Daily Trust Letters Divorcees and Northern governors
ReplyDeleteDivorcees and Northern governors
Written by Nura Iro Ma’aji, SYAHD
Thursday, 15 January 2009
“Success in marriage does not come merely from finding the right mate, but by being the right mate”
— Barnett R. Barker
Most men do not care about spending time in finding the right mate before getting married, let alone being the right mate after getting into the marriage institution. Rather, they demand and expect more from the institution instead of thinking what the institution requires from them. But that is not to say that the women are free of any blame, because they also have their own problems.
Revelations from media reports show a very disturbing picture of the crisis bedeviling the marriage institution, particularly in Kano State. We are also being informed daily about the current condition of women divorcees in the state and also the possibility of finding same situation in other parts of the northern region.
A recent report argued that there are about 20,000 women divorcees in Kano alone, and 15,000 thousand of them are attending activities of just one association called Voice of Women Divorcees, and this association is not getting support from the Kano State government or any of the international donor agencies. This is perhaps an unfortunate and disturbing situation.
In 2004, Population Council Nigeria made a survey and reported that about 50 percent of marriages in Northern Nigeria are at an average age of 15, and the worst thing is that these girls have limited educational attainment with no economic empowerment skills. This situation deserves urgent attention in the entire Northern states not just Kano. Though Kano State government has started taking steps towards empowering the divorcees in the state, I am personally advising the other Northern state governors to make a survey in their various states concerning the rate of divorce and condition upon which divorcees are now living in.
More over, I am also advising the governors to incorporate a Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO) with focus on women issues, so as to find it easier in empowering the divorcees. Invitations should also be extended to international donor agencies for them to make their own input. Programs that will further educate people on issues relating to marriage both from religious and social points of view or any other way through which people can understand the message and legislations that will checkmate the situation should also be put in place.
Nura Iro Ma’aji, SYAHD, Kano State, nuramaaji@gmail.com.This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
Sharia police block women's rally
ReplyDeleteThe Hisbah are charged with policing the morals of Kano's Muslims
Islamic authorities in the northern Nigerian city of Kano have told organisers of a planned protest by divorced women to cancel the event.
The head of the Sharia police, or Hisbah, said the planned protest was an "embarrassment", and is "un-Islamic".
The organisers have agreed to postpone their protest scheduled for 29 January.
Women's rights activists say divorced women are often thrown out of their homes, lose custody of their children, and many end up destitute.
The Director General of the Hisbah, Saidu Dukawa, said there were also security concerns over the protest.
"We fear what could happen in the streets if there is a large gathering of people, it could get out of control," he told the BBC's Hausa Service.
Large gatherings of people can be volatile in Nigeria, which has been rocked by violence between Muslims and Christians over the last 10 years.
Quarrelling spouses
He also said the idea of street protests were "un-Islamic", and "morally wrong".
"Never in the history of Islam have women taken to the street to press for their demands," he said.
The Hisbah were reported by local media to have said they feared the demonstration would "ridicule Kano in the eyes of the world".
Kano is one of 12 northern Muslim-majority states governed by Sharia law.
The Hisbah are in charge of policing the morals of Muslims to make sure they are "Sharia-compliant".
They do not have the authority to ban the protest from going ahead, but told organisers they would report the demonstration to the police if they continued with it.
One of their duties is to reconcile quarrelling spouses and prevent divorce.
But divorce in polygamous northern Nigeria is very common.
The Association of Divorcees Widows and Orphans has could not immediately be reached for a comment.
RAGE OF DIVORCEES
ReplyDelete•Planned rally by women of failed marriages raises
dust in Kano
From DESMOND MGBOH, Kano
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Photo: Sun News Publishing
More Stories on This Section
A planned rally by a Non Governmental Organisation (NGO), Voice of Widows, Orphans and Divorcees Association of Nigeria to mobilize about one million divorcees in Kano State in protest against the increasing number of divorce cases in the state, is currently raising dust in the different circles, as the male folks are mounting pressure to frustrate the move.
Sources close to Daily Sun in Kano noted that ever since the concept to mobilize the divorcees was mooted, many female divorcees were already upbeat about the prospect of the rally mirroring their plight, just as a number of stakeholders, including some elders and religious leaders in the state, have vehemently declared their strong opposition to the libertarian approach to addressing the problem by the women.
As at last week, the chief executive of the NGO, Hajia Atine Abdullahi and some of the organizers were invited by a number of security organizations in the state for talks over the planned rally.
It was gathered that Hisbah, the Sharia Implementing body of the state has also taken steps to stop the rally billed for January 29.
Speaking on the issue, Mallam Aliyu Abubakar, the deputy commander general of Hisbah told journalists that the rally was unislamic and stood against the moral norms of the state, adding that the rally would ridicule the people of the state in the eyes of the world.
However, it is not certain if the organizers had accepted to shelve the rally in obedience to the pressure being exerted on them by forces opposed to the rally.
In a recent interview with Daily Sun, Hajia Atine Abdullahi , the chief executive of the NGO explained that the group was mobilizing its divorced members to the rally as part of efforts to draw the attention of the world to the sufferings of the women, many of whom were passing through very difficult and challenging times after being abandoned by their husbands.
She said from the organisation’s records, some of those women were divorced for very flimsy and unacceptable excuses, ranging from failure to cook the husband's food early enough, coming home late to asking for money to buy foodstuffs, adding that the men just flung the divorce papers on the faces of the innocent women.
"Their suffering is terrible, they have no money, no place to stay, no food to eat and cannot just resume their normal lives without the help of the society," she lamented.
Hajia Abdullahi urged the men to consider the problems as crucial and treat it with due urgency as it affected the entire family system, adding that what her NGO was asking for was for the men to discuss with them so that all the stakeholders could work together to reduce the rate of instability in the family.
She said the group was ready to arrange marriages, according to the dictates of the Islamic faith for anybody who wanted a wife from the list of their divorced members.
Before the Kano divorcees’ street protest
ReplyDeleteWritten by Is’haq Modibbo Kawu
Thursday, 22 January 2009
In 1995, I made a package for the BBC’s NETWORK AFRICA program on the problem of divorce in Kano. As part of my research, I spoke with intellectuals at Bayero University and had the epiphany that many women in Kano actually visited with Malams who also double as marriage consultants of a sort. I interviewed one somewhere off Zoo Road in the Hausawa Quarters of the city and was surprised that one of his clients was the wife of a leading political figure in Kano at the time. I knew the lady in question as a post graduate student at BUK. It was obvious to me, that there was a serious problem with matrimony in Kano, with its very high divorce rate!
The 1995 episode came to my mind, when I read the report in SUNDAY TRUST of January 11, 2009, that Kano’s divorcees were planning a mass street protest by the end of this month. The plan was attributed to Hajiya Attine Abdullahi, who was described as the Executive Director of the little known National Association of Divorcees, Widows and the Orphans of Nigeria, to highlight the growing divorce rate and “insufficient husbands in Kano (that is a very serious matter!)”. Hajiya Attine promised a “one million divorcee” march and promises that it will be “the biggest in the history of Nigeria”! And what a sight that would be on the Sharia-compliant streets of Kano!
Hajiya Attine’s Association had addressed the press at the end of an emergency meeting, prompted among other reasons, by the incidences of divorce that have become “a growing social problem bedeviling the communities of Kano State”; and the fact that the Kano State House of Assembly has been unable to redeem a three year old pledge to initiate laws against the menace. The divorcees’ association wants the one million person street manifestation “to protest against the outrageous number of divorcees currently sent out of their matrimonial homes and of which no one is doing anything”. And if they have forgotten, Hajiya Attine reminded the responsible officials of state, that society faces “a serious social problem that has the capacity to impact negatively on the social fabric of any society that has chosen to neglect it”.
Furthermore, Hajiya Attine underlined the raison for the anger of members of the National Association of Divorcees, Widows and the Orphans of Nigeria: neglect. “It is this seemingly neglect (SIC) that we will come out to protest and we hope the rally will equally create awareness on the plight of these mothers as well as draw the attention of the community to this serious social problem that is not viewed with the seriousness it deserves”. The divorcees are unhappy that their developmental roles in society are not adequately recognized and the rally will raise such awareness amongst the leadership of the state. But they also have a message for the offending husbands as well. “We hope (to)… also draw the attention of our husbands who should know one million divorcees that will be on the street on that day are their failure for keeping their home fronts”! This is a naming and shaming exercise of a very novel type in Nigeria in general, and Kano in particular!
But if any reader thinks that this is a freak issue on the margins of a deformed democracy, you better think again, because our reporter said that last year, a committee of the state government in Kano, comprising of NGOs (was the National Association of Divorcees included?), the Ministry of Women Affairs and even Adaidaita Sahu (the morality enforcer in Kano) came out with a report which said that over 80% of Kano marriages were “unstable”! Again, that is very worrisome. The committee attributed the problem to the absence of sincerity during courtship; ignorance about the religious status of the marriage institution; economic down turn; working women phenomenon (whatever that meant!) and materialism in marriage! The truth is that marriages are endangered in Kano and it threatens the fabric of the family. I know a leading son of Northern Nigeria, who will not to allow his daughters to marry men from Kano, because he said they mistreat their wives and rush to divorce them!
It is clear that we must think through this problem of divorce and find ways to help stem them. We cannot build a stable community on the very slippery foundation of divorce; children must have the stable ambience to grow in order to reproduce the future of our culture. In this construction of societal continuity, men have to assume responsibilities which help the survival of matrimony with its stresses and strains. We must also fight the culture of patriarchy and chauvinism which refuses to recognize the role of the woman in a fast changing world. Similarly, education and liberation for women must also mean an added sense of responsibility in matrimony and society, to help strengthen the community and our nation.
Susane Wenger and Femi Fatoba: Two artists lost from the firmament
In 1988, I was involved in many art events around Nigeria during which I interviewed some of Nigeria’s leading writers, sculptors, poets and so on. It was in the course of that year, that I made a half hour feature on the Osogbo Art School for Radio Nederlands. I spent two weeks in the Osun State capital, tracking artists like Twins Seven-Seven, Jimoh Buraimoh and of course, Susane Wenger. Susan had been out of circulation for weeks, because she was being initiated into one of the traditional cults of the Yoruba people at the time, and one of the essential elements of the initiation was that period of hibernation.
Susane has an adopted daughter, a lovely lady called Doyin, who facilitated my effort to get the interview which she consented to, soon after the initiation ceremony. I visited the Osun groves, which contained several artistic pieces from her New Sacred Art Movement and it was also obvious that she was the highly revered matriarch for all the Osogbo artists that I met in the course of my reporting assignment. Susane Wenger spoke English with a very heavy German accent, and her Yoruba was similarly heavily accented. She would lace her words with incantations and dirge as well as show profound respect for the different deities in the Yoruba pantheon of gods, showing that she was a sincere believer in the traditions of the Nigerian people that she adopted as her own. In Osogbo, there was a genuine feeling of love for the woman, who became part of the cultural history of the town from the 1950s, first as the wife of Ulli Beier and much later, the wife of a traditional and local drummer! Because I spoke German, Wenger even toyed with the idea that I could travel with her to Austria that year, for an award ceremony that was to be held in her honour that year. Her death closed a major artistic chapter in recent Nigerian history, and her remarkable residence, which was made a national monument a couple of years ago, will be a place of visits for years to come as the place where an unusual European woman, who dedicated her life to the cultures of the Nigerian people spent the better part of her life.
I was also informed this week, that Femi Fatoba, the poet and theatre art teacher died in a car accident a couple of weeks ago. I have always felt that Femi, a member of the second generation of Nigerian poets, like Funsho Ayejina, Tanure Ojaide, Femi Osofisan, Odia Ofeimun and Niyi Osunadre, wrote some of the most lucid, accessible, even pleasantly mischievous poems, I ever read! And you only needed to meet him to find that he was as deceptively lucid, as he was funny and profound. Femi Fatoba kept a completely shaven head with a very bushy beard. He told me a story of a kid who once saw him in a market in Ibadan, and shouted: “Mummy! Mummy!! Why is this man’s head upside down”! Femi loved his country with passion and dedicated his life to the artistic expression of that passion as well as helping to train generations of students at the University of Ibadan. His death represents a major loss to the artistic community of our country.
N767.5 Million: Chicken feed for Mike Okiro’s dogs
Recently, Inspector General of Police, Mister Mike Okiro, told members of the House of Representatives, that Nigeria might harvest a plethora of horse and dog deaths, unless he is given the approval to spend the chicken change of seven hundred and sixty-seven point five million naira, as the feeding allowance for the dogs and horses that he keeps on behalf of all of us! Unfortunately, the media didn’t report just how many reps went for the handkerchiefs in their pockets to wipe the tears from their faces, as the nation’s chief cop made his plea, which should ordinarily win him an award from animal rights organisations for compassion. Unfortunately for Mister Okiro, his plea resembles a hastily buried corpse, with the unfortunate consequence that a foot is sticking out of the ground!
In the 1970s and 1980s, it was true that the Nigerian police had well nurtured dogs sections around the country as well as very well-kept horses. But like a lot of things in Nigeria, the dogs sections gradually deteriorated and almost collapsed. I am not in possession of any information which showed that Mister Okiro gave an inventory of the number of dogs and horses that will need to be fed with the chicken change of N767.5million. But given the not-too-pleasant reputation of the police in matters financial, it might be that those handling the dogs and horses might also end up being fed along with their animals with the chicken change that Oga Okiro has passionately pleaded for. The main issue here is that he might just get the entire amount anyway and Okiro will then be able to shout DEO GRATIAS as many times as the number of dogs and horses there are in police pens around Nigeria! But not all of us believe these yarns about dogs and horses that need almost N800 million just to feed in one year (and the ridiculous threat that they risked death if that chicken change is not approved!), even if they will be fed with diamonds, Oga Okiro!