Tag: Nwoko

• By Ray Ekpan

In every household in the world, people launder their dirty linens in secret. They do so because they do not want anyone to know how dirty the clothes are, whether they are old or new, whether they are badly sewn or half torn or whether they are what we call “papa dash me”, – an oversized contraption given to a child by a father who has no money to buy him a new shirt.

The laundering is done in several ways depending on the poverty or prosperity of the launderer. It can be done in a stream in the village. You can sit on a stool, pour water and detergent into a bucket or basin and do it; if your wallet permits you can pack your dirty clothes in a Ghana-must-go bag and deliver to a washerman to do the dirty job for you for a fee; if you are rich and sophisticated, you can do it on a washing machine and dryer and within hours you are done.

Whatever method is used the important thing is that it is not done in the open, not in the full glare of a watching public because dirty linens are not for public exposure.

But sadly, two persons who are well known by many Nigerians are breaking the code and washing their dirty linens in the market place. Senator Ned Nwoko, a 65-year old man, lawyer and billionaire and a wife that he married when she was a tantalisingly pretty teenage actress are on the social media throwing bombs at each other about their private lives. Their stories can make a salaciously tantalizing Nollywood movie and the public seems to be lapping it up. But some of their friends are angry that the people are inserting themselves in the drama. Why not? There are three reasons why their story is tickling the public. (a) They are the ones who have put their story in the public space. The public never asked them to do so. As it is often said, if you don’t like the smell of onions, don’t get into the kitchen.

Whether they like the smell of onions or not they have put themselves in the kitchen. (b) The two of them can be regarded as role models. Nwoko is a lawyer and a senator in the Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. His duty is to contribute to the good governance of Nigeria through legislation. He is paid by Nigeria’s taxpayers for that job. Regina is an actress in Nollywood and the viewing public pays money to watch her act. So she is, in a way, the property of the public. (c) Both money and beauty are important components in life. Many men do anything and everything to make money, big money. And many women do anything and everything to look beautiful, very beautiful.

Many Nigerians would remember that Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, that iconic Afro beat czar, sang about “Fanta face and coca cola body,” the concoction by some women to change their complexion to attract men. All of these efforts by men to make money and women to get prettier are indications that both money and beauty matter to them very much. Many years ago, Dr Stanley Macebuh and Dr Yemi Ogunbiyi, two top executives of the Guardian newspaper, imported sugar into the country and that caused a problem with the publisher Mr Alex Ibru. Chief MKO Abiola, a well-known billionaire met the two men and jokingly said to them: “Sugar sweet ooo.” They responded: “Money is sweeter.” Even though Abiola had tons of money, the money did not save him. He died. Lesson? Money has its limits.

While beauty is also very important to women it also has its limits. Elizabeth Taylor was a very pretty woman who had eight husbands in a row but her beauty did not give her marital stability. The bigger lesson in the two cases is that there is no advantage without a disadvantage whether it is money or beauty or anything else. So to those who are asking the public not to poke their long noses into the Nwoko/Daniels affair, I tell them of an adage in my village. It says that when a woman delivers a baby in the market place, it is fruitless asking her to hide her nakedness because her nakedness has already been exposed. There are no big leaves to use in covering her up. That is why the brouhaha between Nwoko and Daniels is raging.

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Let’s look at the facts of the matter as stated by both parties on several social media platforms. Nwoko, a man who already has four or five wives says that he did not marry Daniels out of love but because his people asked him to marry someone from his place. That is a ridiculous reason for marriage because it is not where someone comes from that makes the person good or bad. And in any case, there are good and bad persons in every tribe or community. People are good or bad depending on their upbringing and who they interact with, their exposure and experience in life. Nwoko has been quoted as saying that he cannot marry any woman who is not a virgin. Wonderful! Virginity is good but it is not the ultimate virtue in marital terms. Someone can be a virgin but lousy, temperamental and reckless, so reckless that her marriage is endangered. And was Nwoko himself a virgin when he married the first wife or when he married Daniels? If he wasn’t, that is hypocrisy.

Daniels admits to taking alcohol and hard drugs because according to her, that is the culture in the acting industry. There is no profession that prescribes recklessness as a way of life. Anyone in any profession that chooses to live recklessly is doing so on his or her own as a matter of choice and not in obedience to any professional code of conduct. The second reason she offers for her alleged drug addiction is that Nwoko encouraged her because taking the stuff helps her to perform magic on the mattress. That may be true; drug and alcohol may make it possible for people to have a volcanic eruption in bed but the negative consequences outweigh the benefits. There can be good sex without hard drugs or sumptuous alcohol as aphrodisiac. Do drugs and alcohol lead to a lasting relationship between men and women? They don’t because they introduce complications into the relationship. Ask Nwoko and Daniels.

Daniels accused Nwoko of engaging in domestic violence. If he did that, then he is reckless. He is a much older man than Daniels and he is called a distinguished Senator so he should act the part of a senior citizen. Since he chose to acquire Daniels as a trophy wife even after having a sizeable collection of other women, he should treat her “like royalty, like a valuable trophy, like a jewel of inestimable value,” thanks to Obafemi Awolowo. She is young and young people make many mistakes because of their limited experience and exposure. Any man who marries a girl that is far below his age must be ready to make sometimes inexplicable concessions for the fluency of the relationship.

It is not my business to ask Nwoko why he is a polygamist. Perhaps he wants to reduce the number of unmarried women since there are more women than men in the world. But his having a harem will not make a substantial reduction among the unmarried. He must have found out by now that polygamy is not a joke. Even a man who has only one wife knows that managing the differences between him and his wife is a herculean task. Both of them have to agree on whether they want to eat afang soup or ofe Owerri. And when the age difference between the couple is gargantuan as in the Nwoko/Daniels case, the matter gets more complex. Both of them obviously got involved with each other for reasons best known to them. It may have been a conference of convenience between gold digging and cradle snatching, between lust for money and lust for beauty.

When General Ibrahim Babaangida was in power, his wife Maryam told Newswatch in an interview that she was angry, very angry, with a decision of the Federal Executive Council. So she raised hell. And what was the decision? The Federal Executive Council had decided that every woman in Nigeria should have not more than four children. But they did not put a ceiling on the number of children a man should have. It meant that men could have several wives and their wives could have a maximum of four children each. So while the woman could have just four children, the man could manufacture a battalion. Men’s injustice to and discrimination against women is intense. It goes on interminably in Nigeria. That is why polygamy thrives. Nwoko must strive to make it less revolting. He and his wife must make compromises so that the relationship can last, so that we can be saved from hearing what we do not want to hear.

The bigger burden for achieving this belongs to Senator Ned Nwoko.