Permit me to call him Ladi. He returns from the United Kingdom. He is about 30 years, with first and second degrees in his belt. The world seems to be his oyster and though he has not gotten his dream job, he feels that a wife will complete him. After all, the Bible says “he who finds a wife finds a good thing”.  He meets a dashing beauty you just have to allow me to call Sarah. They start dating, a Christian dating devoid of sex. They go from one counselling session to the other. Pastors feed them with words of God, verses upon verses about how to make the best of their married life and other tips considered vital to running a good home. Ladi’s parents feel that the two of them are not ready for marriage, given their son’s financial handicap, but they give in and will use this as a weapon later when issues start arising.

The wedding ceremony comes and goes and they start a home. Weeks turn into months and months into years and they are having a blast enjoying all the sex they avoided while dating. However, the financial status of the two of them is a snag. Ladi earns next to nothing in his place of work and Sarah’s hustle brings cash in trickles. The turning point is when Sarah becomes pregnant and in his husband’s wisdom, she will be better taken care of by his mother so he ships her to the home where he grew up. She does not like the idea but she reluctantly agrees because she wants her baby badly, especially because of her initial bad experience. All is going on well until she has her baby and her in-laws’ attitudes assume a frightening mien. One of the key areas of disagreement is that she wants to move out of their house after the baby’s birth, a decision vehemently rejected. Then there is also Ladi’s reluctance to continue a sexual relationship with his wife. His reason:  His financial status does not support having a second child. So, for years, his young wife embraces celibacy because he is unwilling to go beyond occasional kisses and fondling. Sex thus becomes something needed only for procreation.

Let’s leave Ladi and Sarah and get into the story of a couple I have chosen to address as Abraham and Nkechi. They have been married for over a decade. The marriage is blessed with four kids, three girls and a boy, the last girl was conceived during the Coronavirus-induced lockdown. From time to time, Nkechi catches Abraham with one girl or the other, but for the sake of her home, she keeps quiet about it. The best she does is to explain to her sister-in-law and also quarrels with her husband.

These two marriages show different challenges people face in their homes. If the challenge is not about the husband having a girlfriend, it is the in-laws interfering and if it is not that, not having enough sex is the problem.

I know of another couple. Let us just call them Bolanle and Omoniyi. They have been married for close to two decades and they have two kids. They used to have three until they lost one after an illness that saw her being admitted to a government-owned hospital. For all of the years they have been married, Omoniyi does not feel bad about being irresponsible. Paying school fees, house rent and other bills in the house is not his priority. His ready excuse is that he has no money and most times he disappears from home. Recently, he cultivates the habit of sneaking home to change his clothes when the wife and the kids are out. When they call him, he gives excuses that do not make sense. Now his kids face the danger of either not completing secondary school or ending their educational pursuit after that. Their mother ekes a living from selling retail products and barely manages to make ends meet. She owes rent for her shop and anytime her landlord calls; she avoids the call and thereafter lapses into a sad mood. She is on the verge of moving out of Lagos to a town in Ogun State, where she hopes her bills on rent and others will drastically reduce.

Like Ladi and Sarah, Bolanle and Omoniyi have financial constraints. In the case of the former, in-laws’ interference has worsened the challenge and the wife is at the receiving end of their verbal attacks, which has become an every other day affair, while for the latter, the husband carries the crown of leaving the wife in a sad mood. As expected, their sex life has also suffered. Unlike Sarah and Ladi, Bolanle is the one denying her husband sex because she feels there is no sense in an irresponsible man ‘pummelling’ her.  Sarah, like a normal woman, wants and desires sex, but Ladi hangs on his financial handicap to avoid giving her right and, when she complains, she is vilified, not only by Ladi, but also his mother, who relishes telling her that for years too she did not have sex because her husband was outside the country on an assignment.

Let us get one thing straight: Sex is important. Let me say it again: sex is important. And let me add: No woman should be painted bad because she likes sex with her husband. To deny a woman sex deliberately for years is evil, and to now act as though she is a sex freak is immoral. It is a different ball game if the husband is incapacitated. But to use the excuse of not wanting to raise another child yet to dodge sex with one’s wife for years turns logic on the head. What happens to family planning? If the wife cannot use pills or any other method, the husband can use a condom or the withdrawal method or time the sex to periods when she is safe. Avoiding sex totally because you do not have money to raise another child is a no-no. To add salt to injury, you will kiss her deeply and do other romantic stuff but refuse to penetrate when her hormones are already on fire. Somebody should please explain this to me. I cannot fathom it. At all.

My final take: The marriage institution is a school. In this school, some learn soothing lessons; some learn bitter lessons; some others learn semi-bitter lessons. Many learn from these and adjust appropriately and live happily ever after and sadly, the lessons are lost on many and their homes crash. Hardly any marriage is perfect, but from what I have found out, love’s role in sustaining a marriage is infinitesimal because in the face of unmet financial needs, love withers and dies. A man who is incapable of meeting the financial needs of his home quickly finds out that the love between him and his wife is powerless in keeping them together. In-laws’ interference is another factor that anyone desirous of keeping a home should check, be it from the man’s or the woman’s side. Genesis 2:24 screams: “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” That is what it should be. So in-laws should let couples be. And, finally, sex is food for the soul. And just like you eat rice and beans to stay alive, a sexually active person needs plenty of the food called sex to stay sane. If you do not want sex, why get married?

If he was not executed alongside 8 of his Ogoni kinsmen by the regime of the late Gen. Sani Abacha in 1995, writer and activist Ken Saro-Wiwa would have turned 80 last Sunday.  He had planned to read a speech the day he was executed but he was not allowed to read it.

He had planned to say: “My Lord, we all stand before history. I am a man of peace, of ideas, appalled by the denigrating poverty of my people who live on a richly endowed land, distressed by the political marginalisation and economic strangulation, angered by the devastation of their land, their ultimate heritage, anxious to preserve their right to life and to a decent living, and determined to usher to this country, as a whole, a fair and just democratic system. I have devoted my intellectual and material resources, my very life, to a cause in which I have total belief and from which I cannot be blackmailed or intimidated.”

November 10 will make it 26 years that the military junta chose to go for the messenger rather than the message. A lot of water has gone under the proverbial bridge since then. Ogoni, the significant part of Rivers which Saro-Wiwa fought and died for, is still on its throes. Oil giants’ evil deeds on its land are still telling on the health and wealth of the people. Many other oil-bearing communities in Rivers are also down on their knees. No thanks to Shylocks masquerading as oil giants.

The Niger Delta still grapples with a lot of issues. Close to the year of the birth of the Amnesty Programme, the agitation in the region took a new twist. Before the deadly twist, Saro-Wiwa had been judicially murdered. Several other people had been killed by security operatives under one guise or the other. With intellectual activists like Saro-Wiwa out of the way, another generation of activists took over. This set believes if you make peaceful change impossible, you make violent change inevitable. They also believe it is illegal to be lawful in a lawless environment. So they took to arms in their quest to prove a point.

They damaged oil pipelines at a devastating speed. They bombed military boat houses. They siphoned barrels of oil.  No thanks to these dare-devils, oil installations were blown up and oil workers feared to go to the rigs and others. The economy bled. The country was losing billions daily.

All the violence and blood-letting were because of oil, a commodity that is non-renewable and will fizzle out with time. And, after oil, we will remember Oloibiri and how oil has left it impotent. We will remember Ogoni land and how oil killed its leading lights, such as the great Kenule Beeson Saro-Wiwa. We will remember oil and remember with dismay that Ogoni people had no choice but to drink benzene-contaminated water. We will remember oil and remember poverty, degradation, rejection and desperation. We will remember oil and remember imageries of luxury here and there, but in short supply.

Long after oil has stopped being our main source of revenue, we will remember wealth was something many heard about and saw when the rich chose to throw their weight about. We will certainly remember that despite all the wealth around the region, many students and pupils stayed at home because school fees were gold and diamond their parents could not afford.

How can we ever forget that while oil reigned in some parts of the Niger Delta, they never saw night. Reason: the multinational firms in these areas have their flow stations so close to homes and send out gas flares throughout the day. So, the only way to differentiate between night and day is to check their wrist watches.

We will always remember that while oil was the lord, oil pipelines in many towns were not underground and often burst, damaging soils and existence. Will it be possible to forget that the people shouted, protested and threatened violence over their fate, yet change refused to come?

The oil giants seem to have another licence: to send their hosts to early graves so that their leaders can have all the wealth for themselves, including the little they manage to spend on basic amenities. This environmental genocide is having serious effects on the people. And we will never forget.

Long after oil, we will not forget that strange diseases killed the people, pregnant women developed strange allergies while health centres were ill-equipped to take care of their health needs. We will never forget that several people developed aggravated asthma and respiratory symptoms, such as coughing and difficult or painful breathing, chronic bronchitis, increased and premature deaths were not uncommon.

We will always remember that while oil was the lord, oil majors were more interested in the oil than in the people. They can die for all they care. We will remember their mantra: Oil is more important than man. How can we ever forget that while oil reigned we all forgot agriculture which, before independence from the colonial masters, paid our bills. Long after oil, we will remember the interventionist agencies set up to improve the lot of the Niger Delta people. We will remember how, at a point, the oil cash meant for the betterment of the people were given to an herbalist by the head of the board of an interventionist agency. We will remember that one of these agencies became a cesspool for corruption where contracts were hawked like bean cakes, where insiders encouraged outsiders to sue the agency so that judgment debts could be shared. We will not forget that while oil reigned, greedy men stuffed dollars — millions of it— in safes tucked away in poverty-stricken communities. We will remember the yachts, the private jets, the mansions, the diamond wristwatches and the world they bought with stolen oil cash.

We will remember that men and women thrust into positions of influence used them to acquire affluence. We will apparently not forget that in the oil era men lost their conscience and humanity to the extent they bought guns for the youths to take out political adversaries.

When we remember oil, we will have at the back of our minds the 12-Day Revolution in the Creeks in 1967, which was championed by the trio of Isaac Adaka Boro, Samuel Owonaru and Nothingham Dick in a failed bid to secede from Nigeria.

We will also remember protests and agitation by groups, such as the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People (MOSOP), led by the late Saro-Wiwa.

My final take: When we remember these facts, we will remember the pains, tears, sorrow and blood that followed. We will also not forget the good things that oil brought, but we will continue to debate whether or not we would have been greater if agriculture had not been abandoned because of black gold.

Rest well, dear Saro-Wiwa and fellow Ogoni travellers.

Nigeria needs money. Plenty of it. One of the agencies saddled with the responsibility of bringing in the funds to oil the economy is the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS). Our status as the biggest economy in Africa does not align with the very low levels of tax collection. Last year, Nigeria collected 8.26 trillion naira ($20 billion) in taxes while South Africa earned $85.3 billion.

Having to deal with a situation where several individuals and companies avoid paying tax, the FIRS finds itself, at times, being too aggressive in the performance of this onerous task.

For some time now, the agency and MultiChoice, the pay-tv company, have been at loggerheads over what is due to the federal purse from the money the latter makes in Nigeria every year. This has seen the parties being in and out of court. The latest battle is being fought at the Tax Appeal Tribunal (TATA). When the tribunal sat in Lagos recently, the FIRS pushed out a statement that MultiChoice had been mandated to pay N900 billion, which is equivalent to 50 per cent of the alleged tax liability of N1.8 trillion before it could hear an appeal on the disputed liability. The FIRS claimed the tribunal relied on Paragraph 15 (7) of the FIRS Act to make the ruling. I saw nothing in the certified true copy of the tribunal’s ruling that backs this claim.

As expected, MultiChoice soon fired back, accusing the FIRS of distorting the facts of the proceedings of the tribunal. In a statement, MultiChoice Nigeria said: “MultiChoice Nigeria has noted today’s media statement on the Tax Appeal Tribunal (“TAT”) appeal hearing held on 24 August 2021.

“The direction issued by the TAT does not compel MultiChoice Nigeria to make payment of 50% of N1.8 trillion, being half of the disputed tax assessment which is under appeal.

“The direction issued by the TAT in accordance with paragraph 15(7) of the Fifth Schedule to the FIRS Establishment Act requires MultiChoice Nigeria to deposit with FIRS an amount equal to the tax paid by MultiChoice Nigeria in the preceding year of assessment, or one half of the disputed tax assessment under appeal, whichever is the lesser amount plus 10%. The lesser amount is the tax paid by MultiChoice Nigeria in the previous assessed year which is substantially less than the disputed assessment.

“MultiChoice Nigeria is a law-abiding corporate citizen and continues to engage constructively with FIRS in an attempt to resolve this matter.”

The seriousness of the matter is captured in a Bloomberg report, which shows that it prompted a rush to sell shares of the Johannesburg-based company and erased $240 million of market value in less than two hours of the FIRS statement. The stock declined 8 per cent to a near 11-month low. It took MultiChoice’s explanation for the stock to gain 3.6 per cent back.

The effect of this kind of dispute on stocks was witnessed when the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), in 2015, slapped MTN with a $5 billion fine for failing to deregister subscribers without proper registration. MTN also had tax disputes. The matter was eventually settled for a far lower penalty after months of negotiation, but MTN’s stock has not fully recovered. This kind of thing is one of the factors risk assessors tell foreign companies desirous of doing business in Nigeria and they just stay where they are, robbing the country of much needed Foreign Direct Investment (FDI).

Interestingly, the FIRS has not explained how it arrived at how MultiChoice is owing it N1.8trillion. Common sense depicts that tax is on profit. I wonder how much MultiChoice could have made to owe a tax liability of N1.8trillion. Is MultiChoice’s turnover in Africa even up to that? Basic arithmetic seems to punch a hole in the possibility of MultiChoice making N1.8 trillion revenues. Even with N20,000 as a monthly subscription per subscriber, the company can’t make N1.8 trillion in the whole of Africa.

Ordinarily, this confusion should not arise because Multichoice, I understand, was the first to allow FIRS real-time access to its earnings for Value Added Tax (VAT) computation.

When I checked the Multichoice website, Nigeria contributes 37 per cent of the subscribers in Africa. I sincerely believe that it is very easy to resolve this issue since all MultiChoice subscribers in the country pay through Nigerian banks, whose records are accessible to the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). The CBN may have to help out by revealing this statement to the FIRS. Even MultiChoice’s bank statements, which FIRS has access to, should ordinarily have resolved this. This whole confusion makes me wonder who are the consultants the FIRS is working with? Assessing firms for taxes should not be rocket science the way this one is turning into.

For me, this kind of needless disagreement is at variance with the much-talked-about ease of doing business mantra of the Muhammadu Buhari-led administration. Coming at a time the economy is in trouble and we need FDI, we might end up making potential investors stay far away from our shores.

The COVID-19 pandemic has further weakened our economy and we need all the investments we can get. This is not a time to allow unnecessary squabble to kill the few thriving investments we have. A United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) report shows that no fewer than 250, 000 children in Nigeria die on their first day of life. The figure is the second-highest in the world, according to the 2017 multi indicator cluster survey. Because of this, a child born in Nigeria today is likely to live to the year 2074 while a child born in Denmark is likely to live until the 22nd century. To get over situations such as these, we need investors and the way to get them is to make sure we treat those already in the country with fairness.

One bad example of treating investors poorly hunts us till now. It concerns the PI & D. To make investors have confidence in us, we must respect agreements. Contracts must be sacrosanct, a situation where a change of government leads to policy somersault must be ended.

With our economy crawling, we should remain open for business. We must have at the back of our mind that the global market for foreign direct investment is highly competitive and, to tap into it, we must position ourselves strategically. We must change the perception that we are all about oil. We must tell people that Nigeria is also about tech, agriculture, services and manufacturing. But while doing all these, we must treat the investors we already have with respect and decorum. We cannot take advantage of the fact that we are critically important as Africa’s largest economy if we are treating investors with disdain.

My final take: The FIRS must be fair to MultiChoice. It needs to tell us how much the firm is earning and how it arrives at the N1.8 trillion it is asking it to pay as tax liability. Failure to do these is not incapable of making nonsense out of our ease-of-doing business policy. Ultimately, it can send wrong signals to potential investors, which we need badly to be able to save our economy and also move millions out of poverty.

He operates out of an open space on the Apapa-Oshodi expressway. But what he does is the sort that can be aptly described as magic. His name is Ayuba Amadu and he is from Illela Local Government, that Sokoto State town that shares boundary with the Republic of Niger.

Amadu is one of those people whose efficiency proves that education is not about being in the four walls of the classroom. It also proves that “grammar no be success”. Hausa is his medium of expression, and he makes swivel chairs so well that even shops selling imported chairs run to him when they have issues to resolve with their products.

Amadu, who came to Lagos at 25 in 1999, left Makira, Niger State, where his father relocated, because of his overbearing step-mother.

Idi-Araba, that enclave in Mushin Local Government Area with a huge Hausa population, was his first home in Lagos. He was helped by a man he never knew to find his way to Idi-Araba, where a man named Alhaji Usman, a Sokoto indigene who sold Quran and some other Islamic publications, allowed him to sleep in his shop whenever he closed for the day.

He started by helping a man sell fish and about six months later, he had become his own boss and going to buy fish in Ijora that he would smoke and sell. He soon got tired of the business because the fire used in smoking the fish was getting too much for him. Orange selling was his next trade. Sugarcane hawking followed. And during fasting, he sold dabino. He later dabbled into selling coconut and gworo.

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It was gworo that led him to his destiny. While he was hawking gworo one day around Berliet Bus Stop on the Apapa-Oshodi Expressway, he saw some people working on executive swivel chairs. He found what they were doing interesting. And for months, he was ‘learning’ by observation. One day, he bought one of the chairs, dismantled it and coupled it back.

Soon, he bought Allen key, plier, hammer, big stapler and started going to buy scraps from Maza Maza, Alakija and Westminster in Apapa. Today, he is a remarkable success.

Let’s leave Amadu for now. Let’s talk about another great story that is on MyTori, the brainchild of a senior journalist of distinction, Mr Taiwo Obe of The Journalism Clinic. It is the story of Joseph John Apeh, an auto technician whose good character has stood out in a tribe populated by lying artisans. He is good at what he does, but what has made him keep meeting helpers after helpers is his integrity.

There is also the story of Mr. Nyaknno Osso, whose love for the library is likable to a priest’s love for the pulpit. Osso was staying with his uncle, who wanted him to read medicine, but a stint at the University of Ibadan library redirected his life to a path he has absolutely no regret about. He went on to read Library Science. His uncle got angry, refused to pay his fees and yet he stood his ground. Money came from helpers and he completed his study and is the brain behind the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library and many great libraries in the country. The great Dele Giwa dragged him to Lagos to set up a library when Newswatch was starting out. Through his work, he has met world leaders, including the late Nelson Mandela and ex-President Bill Clinton.

His uncle later realised his mistake and pleaded for forgiveness.

“Back to my uncle, Prof Eno Udo: later in life, he became exceedingly proud of me; that I was able to decide, even at a young age, what I wanted to do and passionately went after it. When, between 1987 and 1989, I was preparing the Who’s Who, I delayed publishing it because my uncle wanted to become a full professor before he could be featured in the work. By then, he was an associate professor. I conceded. When he was promoted in November 1989 to a full professor and backdated almost 19 years, I gladly inserted his name. He was proud that I made a mark as a librarian. He took me out to lunch one day and asked that I should forgive him. Who was I not to? We became so close and before he died in 2008, he sponsored the building of my house in Ete. It was his way of showing that he was totally confident of my ability and the confidence I had as a young man to go into a profession that nobody in my village had been before. When I was appointed Special Assistant to President Obasanjo, he was so, so, proud,” he recalls in MyTori.

His story is about tenacity and staying through to what one believes in. He is now the CEO/Editor-in-Chief at The Biographical Legacy and Research Foundation (BLERF). He has been a librarian for fifty years.

MyTori also has the stories of Rufus Oladipo, a disabled shoe cobbler, Felicia Nwakocha, a barber, Alhaji Uba Haruna, Kano-born suya expert, Mukaila Adeyemi Adebayo, a ‘motor boy’ now a driver and hoping to be a truck owner, and Catherine Agbo, whose story shows that not even a strict mother can stop a girl from having a boyfriend and doing whatever she wanted.

MyTori is the go-to site for stories about everyday people. It was an idea Obe conceived when a third-year mass communication student of Adeleke University, Ede, Osun State, was sent for internship at The Journalism Clinic. His interest was photography and this triggered an idea of a pictorial storytelling site.

Obe recalls in a statement announcing his new project: “I once did a LinkedIn article where I said that my pieces on the social and professional networks are to demonstrate to our trainees that everything I teach is possible. It took a while for this student to get started doing what I told him to do – interviewing and taking pictures of his neighbours in Ojo Local Government Area where he lives.”

His encounter with a graduate with an interest in photography also helped bring the idea to life. “When I asked this young man, who has a bachelor’s degree in humanities from Bowen University in Iwo, to tell me about himself, he said he has interest in photography, cinematography, content creation and graphic design. Somehow, NYSC refused to approve his posting to Oyo State, and he sought redeployment to Lagos State. So, I have made a request to NYSC to post him to The Journalism Clinic. That will be his work when he joins August ending after his NYSC orientation. He was excited when I told him that he would be learning a few things from me, although I did not go into specifics,” Obe said.

His encounter with Stephen Oloh, a 2016 computer science graduate of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, who lives in Oyigbo Local Government Area of Rivers State, also played a major role in developing the website.

“This young man,” he said, “has a special story. We have only met virtually. One day in 2018, he sent me a Direct Message on Twitter, stating how he was robbed at gunpoint and dispossessed of his valuables, including his laptop, phones, and certificates, and since then things had not been the same for him. I have been trying since then all I could do to support him and find his feet again. When this idea came, I decided that he would play a significant role and he has proved that he is superbly competent.”

The stories are told in the voices of the interviewees but are clinically edited. Translators are contracted to translate interviews not done in English to make available the juicy tales of people you are unlikely to see in newspapers to readers.

My final take: MyTori is a brilliant concept with the capacity to show that it is not out of place to feel lost, but tough times don’t last, tough people do. No one is alone in life’s hard knocks.

They were lonely times with seemingly longer nights and days and weeks that appeared to be dragging and unwilling to become a month. Everything was strange; miles apart from the known. A wicked virus had just crashed into the world seeking a place in villages, in towns and cities. Nowhere was safe. Beaches were closed, cinemas locked, recreation centres sealed. The Kabah was empty, the ever-busy Times Square was deserted and the beaches in Miami were roaring with no one to dash in and out of them.

The world simply took a forced break and there were coronavirus deaths everywhere across the globe; friends and neighbours who had been breadwinners lost jobs; well-wishers happily accepted pay cuts and businesses took decisions that would have been unthinkable. Capitalism had no choice but to be ruthless, tearing down walls. Birds no longer sounded like birds. And rats sounded like some other rodents.

But there was a different kind of challenge on the home front across Nigerian cities. Couples not used to staying at home together for long had no choice but to stay home for months in 2020 following full or partial lockdowns introduced by the government to contain the virus named Coronavirus.

Before the forced stay at home, gender-based violence (GBV) was very common. Nigeria, according to statistics from the Centre for Women’s Health and Information (CEWHIN), has long been facing a gender-based violence crisis, with 30 per cent of women and girls aged 15-49 having experienced sexual abuse. The COVID-19 pandemic lockdown increased the instances of violence in Nigeria to heights never attained.

Nigeria’s commercial capital, Lagos, its next-door neighbour, Ogun, and the Federal Capital Territory were under full lockdown for weeks in 2020. A study by CEWHIN shows that reports of domestic violence cases rose from 60 in March 2020 to 238 in April the same year—an increase of 297 per cent. The number of reported cases in March and April 2020 for 23 of Nigeria’s 36 states shows a monthly increase of 149 per cent due to lockdown.

The violence left many abused women stranded and seeking refuge anywhere they could get. Like most things about the country, there were not enough temporary shelters where women in dire need could run to. Unlike Canada with a population of 37 million and more than 400 women’s shelters, Nigeria with a population of 200 million-plus has less than 20 shelters for women. Its prevalent culture of gender-based violence did little or nothing to increase the shelters over the years forcing most victims to seek refuge with families and friends.

The increase in the GBV was described by a commentator as pandemic within pandemic and it was clear the victims need to find rest of mind for their bodies and peace for their souls—thus began moves by pro-women non-governmental organisations to berth more shelters. And two of such homes have sprouted out of Lagos soils this year. There is one on the mainland in neighbourhoods far from the madding crowd. And the other is in the Lekki Peninsula part of the city of aquatic splendour.

The one on the mainland is named Hearts of Hope Shelters. When you walk into it, you see deliberate efforts to make the occupants feel at home away from home. The living room has two couches that sit one person each; there is a two-seater and also a three-seater— all sitting pretty on a green rug with blue and yellow patterns. The off-white wall hosts an abstract artwork depicting a woman. The bright colours of the painting seem to be screaming: there is hope after a storm. An artificial flavour in a vase stands just after the arc that separates the living room from one of the rooms in the home. Atop the plasma television, which overlooks the centre table, is an inscription: Hearts of Hope, Lagos.

In the Lekki Peninsula axis of Lagos lies a new shelter known as the Sholly Serenity Place, whose yellow-patterned wallpaper, yellow chairs and yellow centre table radiate calm. The kitchen area boasts of modern gadgets: gas cooker, microwave oven, electric kettle and more— meant to make life abundant for its temporary residents. The sitting room and the room are also painted light yellow giving the ambience a calm mien.

These homes, which offer temporary shelters for victims of gender-based violence, benefitted from the generosity of individuals and organisations who contributed either cash or utensils. They also provide survivors, widows and other at-risk persons with financial assistance and academic scholarships. Skills acquisition training is organised in areas such as soap making and tie and dye for the occupants of the home so that they can be self-reliant after leaving the homes. The homes also cater to their psychosocial health issues. They are also counselled regularly on how to avoid violence in the future. These two homes value God and the occupants are reminded that God is fond of them. They are also told not to feel like guests but family. And they are made to see themselves as special and undeserving of violence of any form.

The Sholly Serenity Place says it is a ‘haven and an oasis of serenity for vulnerable women, victims of domestic/sexual abuse’. It was founded by the Shola Adefolalu Gaska Foundation, a non-profit organisation.

“Our mandate is to provide safe and caring temporary accommodation for these women while they work with organisations such as the Domestic and Sexual Violence Response Team (DSVRT), Women at Risk International Foundation WARIF), Mirabel Centre, Project Alert amongst others to get the required help and counselling they need. Guests referred to us will be accommodated, fed and cared for totally free,” the foundation says.

The Hearts of Hope Shelter, established by the Betty Abah-led Cee Hope Foundation, says it is out to give hope at a time when “the COVID-19 era is witnessing a major spike in Gender-Based Violence”.

With these two homes, women now have more homes to stay in when they fall victims to GBV, but more are certainly required given the huge population of animals in human skin who call themselves spouses.

Throughout the first year of their marriage, her menstrual flow was constant. This cycle would be repeated for the next seven years. And, in those years when her period maintained its constancy, tears and sorrow were her uninvited guests. They never alerted her before they started cascading down her cheeks, leaving her helpless hubby to play the consoler when it happened in his presence. Many times she cried when he was away at work or visiting friends and family members.

Like an average African woman, she had initially only looked up to God to give her a baby. She had seen her friends who got married before and after her having babies who brought them joy. When friends and family members held birthday parties for their children she wondered when it would be her turn to feel the joy associated with such events. She wanted her own joy and she began visiting one religious house and prayer centre after the other. There the pastors regaled her and others with testimonies of women who had had their babies after attending prayer services after services and vigil services after vigil services. The testimonies sounded so good and true and she ‘sowed’ financial seeds to attract her own children. She also prayed and fasted, at times for days. She sang praise and worship songs and received her baby in the spiritual sphere and expected the baby to materialise in the physical realm.

But months after months, her monthly flow never ceased for once. The prayers and the fasting did not work the miracle she expected. Science seemed to be where she should have put her hope and trust. After going for series of tests, moving from one hospital to the other, a gynaecologist told her it was time she tried the In-vitro fertilisation (IVF). It is estimated that approximately 3.5 to 5 million children have been born worldwide following ART treatment. It is estimated that over 40,000 babies have been born through IVF in Nigeria since 1989.

The IVF route did not come cheap. She and her husband had to cough out about $3,300. It could have been more if luck had not smiled on them and the first IVF was successful. Age was still on my friend’s side so good eggs were harvested, fertilised and implanted in her uterus. And it did not take time for a successful pregnancy to occur in her uterus. And like the parents of Louise Brown, the first child successfully born through IVF treatment in July 1978, luck smiled on my friend and her hubby, she carried the pregnancy to term and they had a son— thus joining the expanding list of beneficiaries of the work of Robert G. Edwards, Patrick Steptoe and Jean Purdy.

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Many women go through as much as ten IVFs and still have to adopt babies or take babies from family members. A popular pastor’s wife quest for those tiny tots who love to scatter homes with no knowledge of how to fix them saw her waiting for a decade. She sought help, including IVF. The money went down the medical drain and her tummy remained in perfect shape. Eleven IVFs refused to yield results and she opted for adoption, and life continued.

Before my friend took the IVF route, a pastor, who came for a programme in her church to pray for women, told them that in trying to have babies, they should emulate Sarah and Anna who never had IVF. He also mentioned other women in the Bible who conceived without scientific help. My friend, at that point, felt she had backslid into sin and was not trusting God enough. She was torn between going with science or with faith. Her gynaecologist resolved the dilemma for her: IVF is not satanic, the gynaecologist explained. In fact, the gynaecologist added a clincher: IVF is a miracle from God.

There was another issue for my friend and her husband to resolve: who should know about the IVF. They decided it should be for their ears only. And of course, the medical hands involved.

Thinking back, my friend says she will advise young couples to go the IVF way one year after being certified infertile and unable to medically have a child unassisted. My friend says her gynaecologist advises that couples who get married late should seek help after six months of constant sex and no pregnancy.

The day my friend narrated her story another woman also shared hers. She also had IVF. Not one, not two, not three, not four…She had ten and still there was no pregnancy. She eventually went the adoption route. She blamed the fact that she did not act on time on the belief in Africa that such matter was spiritual and should be left to God to handle. Now, she knows better and advocates the need for women to try all the options, including surrogacy. She speaks of men who are not supportive when their wives are unable to conceive, despite the fact that the fault may not be the woman’s. She speaks of men who will refuse to go for testing because they believe the problem can never be from them. She speaks of the depression women in this situation face, the abuse from unsupportive spouses and the scorn from an ignorant populace which assume infertility is only from the women.

My friend buttresses this point by saying it is wrongly generally believed that a Nigerian man can never be sterile. Thirty per cent of infertility, my friend says, is, according to statistics, traceable to men who have either low sperm count or zero sperm count.

Infertility is not just primary. A couple who have had a kid before may find it difficult to have another, a situation experts describe as “secondary infertility”. It is said to account for more than half of all infertility cases.

My friend believes it is time Nigeria and the rest of Africa went the way of nations such as Canada and Belgium where universal coverage of IVF improved the use of safe infertility treatments. She also believes the time had come to drum it in the hearing of ignorant men: men too can be infertile with either zero sperm count or low sperm count, thus being a major contributor to what researchers have found out: five to eight per cent of couples battle infertility worldwide and the prevalence in sub-Saharan Africa is higher, with 10 to 30 per cent of couples in Nigeria slugging it out.

An expert says a man will have low sperm count and it is the woman that will be taking drugs; lifestyle factor such as smoking of cigarettes, marijuana and cocaine plays a major role in male infertility. Obesity reduces sperm count and what a man eats and the vitamins he takes are key to improve their sperm and reproductive organs.

My final take: Men’s role in infertility should be adequately acknowledged; a woman’s value need not depend on whether or not she has a biological child; government needs to put in place health coverage that can reduce the financial burden of IVF; in-laws, friends, family members and the society at large need to stop depressing women in the waiting room.