“There is no debate whatsoever that the bizarre and the dramatic claim instant attention, and that the primary object of commentators is attention. But commentaries should be about more. The commentariat would live up to Journalism’s correlation function when they probe deeper and lay bare the innards of a social malaise, the catacombs of a political miasma, and dispel legal harmattan haze for their readers to see their way around.”
AS expected the commentaries on the bullying and harassment which attracted equal and opposite reaction of a “dirty slap” at the inauguration of Charles Soludo into office as governor of Anambra State during the week have focused merely on the absurd drama, and therefore the banal and bizarre display of a cultural anomaly that has long simmered and caused untold pain, hardship and outright havoc in our society. The Nigerian commentariat are often preoccupied with symptoms, unaware of or ignoring the causative links to the issues that ail us all.
For instance, we denounce bad governance, and at best gloss over its link to the leadership recruitment process that is so flawed only the mediocre, the third rate team ever gets the diadem. We bang our heads against the wall over fitful public power supply and scarcely mention the equally fitful investment in power assets that led to spurts of power in the first place. The list goes on.
And so it was that the attention was on the dirty slap that Mrs Bianca Ojukwu dealt the immediate past First Lady of Anambra State, Her Excellency, Ebelechukwu Obiano at the inauguration ceremonies of Professor Charles Soludo, the 21st governor of the state.
There is no debate whatsoever that the bizarre and the dramatic claim instant attention, and that the primary object of commentators is attention. But commentaries should be about more. The commentariat would live up to Journalism’s correlation function when they probe deeper and lay bare the innards of a social malaise, the catacombs of a political miasma, and dispel legal harmattan haze for their readers to see their way around.
The underlying question behind the improbable heckling and public slap is the cultural issue of the place of a woman without a man in our society. A woman on her own, and not as man’s consort, is made so vulnerable and subjected to such a host of indignities by cultural practices that the society appears helpless to stop it. This was what was on display during Soludo’s inauguration.
It is most unlikely that Ebele Obiano would have walked all of that 35 yards or thereabout over to Bianca, were she seated beside Dim Emeka Odumegu-Ojukwu, her late husband, and let out all of that verbiage, much less made an attempt to yank off her headgear. Not likely!
That is the crux of the matter—the cultural nonsense, that without her man, a woman is nothing, or at best, not a full human being deserving of respect and human dignity. So the message—cultural message—that Ebele was trying to deliver to Bianca was not the reported taunt of “what are you doing here, you that had said you would never attend any UPGA event anymore.” Ebere went there to let Bianca know that she could be dealt with, that her husband was not with her, that she is a nobody on her own.
The Bianca experience is emblematic of what widows, single women, divorcees go through daily. The life of a “man-less” woman is a daily diary of harassment, denial, bullying, discrimination, insults, and worse. And yet this is a country of laws, where the rule of law is the Holy Grail and holds that all are equal before the law. And yet this is the most religious country, where equality of all men and women before God is a catechism.
It is therefore not enough for the Obi of Awka or any other persons and groups of persons to merely denounce what Ebele Obiano did. That would amount to focusing on the symptoms of a problem. The problem needs to be rooted out right from the cultural matrix that ordains unfair deal to widows and single women in the dispensation of privileges from the community level right up to the top of the corporate suites, in the boardroom, in the political arena and in religious dispensations.
Norms, statutes, traditional institutions, the media, and all spheres of life that play a role in the shaping of consensus need to be summoned to duty in the remaking of the society that treats all women just as fairly as men.
Gender justice has to be made a measurable matric in the scale of equity for the treatment of all persons, and should be used to deny privileges to those who violate it in the performance of their public roles. And gender discrimination should be made justiciable to check wanton violation that is now the norm.
There is need for institutional arrangement such as a department in the ministries of women affairs, with the mandate to monitor and punish gender profiling such as was visited on Bianca Ojukwu by Ebele Obiano. This would be a reasonable pathway to the inclusive society that is the stuff of political soapbox every election cycle; that is the fixation in the conference circuits and on solemn altars.
The cultural impetus that fed the show of shame at the Soludo inauguration is the conversation we are not having.
· Otogaran is a communication specialist ad lives in Abuja
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