What came to my mind as I read a divorce story in the online version of this newspaper on Wednesday was this biblical quotation that “the race is not to the swift.” The story is about a wife whose divorce prayer was answered by a Grade C Customary Court in Iseyin, Oyo State, Baliki Oke. Baliki had dragged her husband, Arowolo, to the court in July, seeking a dissolution of their seven-year-old marriage over his unending demands for sex.

“My husband wants to kill me with sex; he demands sex more than he does for food; he wants sex with me six times in a day before he gets satisfied”. She is not done yet:  “Arowolo goes to the farm very early in the morning and would not wait for me to bring his lunch. He will come home in the afternoon just to have sex twice before he goes back to the farm and would still make demands when he returns at night.” Again, she is not done: “Anytime I try to resist him, he will beat me till I surrender. I have decided to quit for the sake of my life, I don’t want to die now, my Lord; please divorce this marriage.”

Contrary to what we find in similar divorce cases, one would have expected the husband to deny that he is a sex maniac. But he didn’t. As a matter of fact, he admits it is a problem he has been battling unsuccessfully to let go of. “I have worked very hard to solve this problem of incessant sex urge to no avail. The truth is that I can’t cope with life without sex; I can’t work, eat or play; sex is more important to me than anything else in life”, he said. Arowolo added: “ I have been suffering since she packed out of our house about 10 days ago; I have not been going to work, I have begged her relatives to plead with her on my behalf”, Arowolo told the court. Finally, he begged the court not to grant the divorce, with a promise to check his urge for sex if given a second chance.

But the president of the court, Chief Abiodun Raheem, apparently took pity on the wife; he therefore had no choice than to grant her prayer for divorce because, according to him, all entreaties by the court to the wife and her family to make the wife reconsider her stance were futile as she insisted that she has had enough. He then dissolved the marriage and ordered Arowolo to be paying his (now) former wife N2,500 weekly for the upkeep of their only child.

Those who read papers regularly know that our customary courts are where things are happening. Things, juicy, salacious things. And I keep wondering how the court presidents cope with some of the cases that are brought before them.I wonder how many times the court officials would shout “order, order” in view of the hilarious laughter that normally follows when the cases are going on. Sometimes the court presidents need Solomonic wisdom to decide. Like the instant case. A wife suing for divorce on account of her husband turning her into a sex machine. Some would ask: so what are marriages for if a party cannot demand sex at any time of the day from his or her legal partner?

As I was reading the story, so many things crossed my mind. Our world is indeed a place with many different folks, different strokes. It’s a world with amazing peculiarities. Whereas one wife is complaining about her husband frequently or incessantly turning her inside out beneath some ruffling sheets, many others out there would not mind being pounced on the same number of times, perhaps more, by their husbands, who have become absentee husbands since they are hardly there to even touch their wives. I have no doubt Chief Raheem would have decided many of such cases too.

Even when some husbands are present, there is hardly a difference as they merely relate to their wives as if relating to a log of wood. “Mi Lord, I am tired of this wedding because my husband has no time for me (euphemism for he does not have sex with me). “Mi Lord, he is treating me as if I be wood”, the soft sell newspapers would scream with their banner headline.  One paper that knew how best to treat such stories was the defunct Lagos Weekend. I wonder why it has not crossed someone’s mind to set up a paper in the mould of this once upon a popular tabloid. With the vanities that have seized the national, nay the global space, I have no doubt such tabloid would sell like hot cake. I was reliably informed that even chief executives of many blue chip companies in those days would denigrate the Lagos Weekend openly whereas it was an inevitable companion  of theirs in the comfort of their closets. But this is not where I am going.

There are also the Christians among us who would be wondering why any court would dare to put asunder what God has joined together (especially if the couples are Christians). But others would also counter that it is dangerous to force people who have lost interest among themselves to stay together as husband and wife. We have seen the result of such forced marriages in the rising incidence of murder among such couples. Again, this is not where I am going.

In the specific case under focus, one question that is bound to be agitating our minds is whether the couple courted before getting married. If they did, did the man’s insatiable sexual urge not manifest then? If it did, how was it handled? Did the woman continue to cope then because of the marriage carrot that was dangled by the man, the ‘trophy’ in sight? Or, did the problem (because it has now become a problem since it has led to the separation of the couple) develop after their wedding? In which case, one can sympathise with both parties, especially with the man himself acknowledging his weakness; all he wants is for the wife to show more understanding. Germane as some of these posers are, still, this is not where I am going.

One would naturally expect that a marriage that has lasted seven years, with such a track record of insatiable libidinal urge, should have produced many children. But no. All they have to show for it is a child (the story did not even state whether they had a boy or girl). This, exactly, is where I am going. As a matter of fact, this was one of the questions agitating my mind as I read the story. I was waiting to see how many children the couple had and perhaps what would become of them now that the parents are parting ways. But, instead of being disappointed when I eventually learnt the couple had only one child; what came to my mind was that, the race, as the scripture says, is really not to the swift.

Indeed, it occurred to me that some men would have gone to some of our customary courts to seek divorce on the grounds that all their efforts in bed had produced only one issue in seven years, despite the fact that they were always having sex the way former Mr and Mrs Oke did! (As if the fault is that of the woman). It dawned on me that this is a world where some people are crying that they do not have teeth; yet some others are yearning for lips to cover theirs. This is a world where those who have heads don’t have caps and those with caps are looking for heads on which to wear the caps. It is a world in which some females literally begin ante-natal care the moment they jump off the bed after the very first attempt; yet some keep doing it whenever, wherever, for donkey years, in rain or sunshine, in sickness or in health, with empty or full stomach, yet, they have no child to show for it. The race indeed, is not to the swift.

This is the reality that our politicians must realise, especially with General Elections around the corner. None of them needs to tell us that he is not desperate for power. As General Olusegun Obasanjo reportedly said in 1979, they (the outgoing military government) may not know who (among the politicians) would succeed them, but they knew who would not. In the same vein, we, the people, may not know who is not desperate for power, at least for now, we will know when the primaries come. But these politicians had better be warned again: the race is not to the swift.