By Lasisi Olagunju
Click To Join MA WhatsApp Community
In competition with the Helen Paul story last week was the scandal of an Osun family. A man’s four children were found to have been fathered by other persons. The man is Kola, his wife is Toyin. Husband and wife were on radio trading blames and accusations and making confessions. In Yoruba land where I come from, it is a stigma to be born without a known father. It is even worse if the father is known but is not the husband of the child’s mother.
There are two main rivers in Osun State. One is Oba, the other is Osun after which the state is named. It is a taboo, actionable before the throne of Olodumare, to hand over the child of the goddess of Oba river to the goddess of River Osun. That is what the woman in the Osun State story has done. With the fingers of her womanhood, she tied the occiput hairs of her husband to the strands at the foreheads of lovers outside. Everywhere something like that is found to have happened, there was a war. And there is in this case. The husband is crying murder, red and blue. But there are questions: What kind of man lived under the same roof with a woman for sixteen years and none of the four children from the union is his? Was the wife right to have claimed publicly that she went to “another village” to scoop seminal deliverance because the cock she had at home could not get her to lay eggs?
People who follow the Osun story see sizzling drama, a tragedy with a catharsis that purifies nothing. I see two shameless adults dancing naked in the marketplace. What Yoruba word, other than òdóko (a flirt), describes a married woman who births four children for four different men outside her matrimonial home? And where is the wisdom in what the man has done, going on radio to disclaim all he had ever called his children? Shouldn’t he have gone quietly into the night with a divorce while attempting a rebuild of his life without, particularly, the children knowing why? Besides, the children are all grown. The first of the four children is sixteen years old; the others are eleven, eight and five years old respectively. Why would His Lordship, the husband, suo motu, go for DNA tests and climb the rooftops to broadcast the results? Some elders wonder where the man’s sense had been since 2007 when the journey started. They ask why the man wrecked himself with a DNA test – seeking to know the content of a snake’s pregnancy. They say the children already called him father and knew no one else as father. They quote Chinua Achebe’s Ogbuefi Ezeudu as he warns Okonkwo about Ikemefuna: “That boy calls you ‘father’, do not have a hand in his death.” Okonkwo did what he was warned not to do and never recovered from its effects. Going to a radio station to ditch those innocent children so openly has social and mental consequences for the children, and, more tragically for the man himself.
Now, what kind of woman acts the part of the lady in the centre of this storm? Between 4th January, 1988 and 9th July of same year, Elisha P. Renne, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan, was in the Yoruba part of today’s Kogi State seeking answers to questions about marriage, fidelity and divorce. At a point, she asks an elderly Bunu Yoruba woman: “If a woman is married and has a lover and has children by this lover, and if the husband dies, who will get custody of the children?” And the woman answers: “Once a husband has accepted a child, even if the man dies, the child belongs to his family. It is the husband who takes the child, not the lover.” But why would a wife do that to her husband? The woman adds: “If it weren’t for ojúkòkòrò (greed) you wouldn’t have a lover to help you have children. Before you have a child for a lover, there must be reasons. The reason why women had lovers in the old days was if a woman was with her husband for ten years and had no children. It may not be the husband’s fault. It may be that God doesn’t join them together. In that case, a woman may have a lover in another village. If God accepted her prayer, she might go to another village and become pregnant. If she became pregnant after living with her husband for ten years, she would not tell the husband (that another man was responsible) but would continue to be with him, and the husband would accept the children as his own. And the secret would remain with the woman. When the husband saw that the wife was pregnant, he would kneel down and thank God, and the woman would never tell the lover she had become pregnant by him.”
Professor Renne isn’t done with her questions. She asks the old woman again: “What about a woman who has children and still takes a lover? “It is ojúkòkòrò (greed),” the woman responds, sharply, and continues: “If it is a woman who easily has children, she won’t be taking a lover as a woman who doesn’t.” She blames men for losing concentration on their families and everything around them. She declares that before òlàjú (civilization), wives were never left for wolves to devour: “They wouldn’t be doing in the old days what they are doing nowadays. Your husband would be watching you; you would be afraid. They would do things together with the husband’s family, with the wife’s family, so the husband or the wife would not be alone and be able to meet a lover.” The seminal conversation did not end without the old woman telling the Oyinbo researcher that in her days, “if you were a child of a lover, you would not like to hear that you were an omo àlè (bastard).” Even today, to label someone an omo àlè is to murder them (See Elisha P. Renne’s ‘If Men are Talking, They Blame it on Women: A Nigerian Woman’s Comments on Divorce and Child Custody’, published in Feminist Issues/Spring, 1990).
Everyone is sitting in judgement over the serial adultery in Osun; even notorious sinners are part of the jury. No one is giving a thought to what becomes of the innocent products of the waywardness.

SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER NOW
Support MATAZ ARISING’ journalism of integrity and credibility.
Good journalism ensure the possibility of a good society, an accountable democracy, and a transparent government.
We ask you to consider making a modest support to this noble endeavour.
TEXT AD: To advertise here – Email ad@matazarising.com
Nigerian asylum seeker is stabbed to death in ‘barbaric’ attack just off Dublin’s main shopping street – as concerns over knife crime in capital spread
MaTaZ ArIsInGDallas, Texas A Nigerian asylum seeker was stabbed to death in a ‘barbaric’ attack just off Dublin’s main shopping street, as concerns over knife violence in the Irish capital spread. Quham Babatunde, 34, a Nigerian national, had reportedly been attending an Afroswing gig at a nightclub in the Irish capital the evening of the…
New Lagos Speaker ‘Under Pressure’ To Resign As Lawmakers Protest DSS Invasion
MaTaZ ArIsInGDallas, Texas The Speaker of the Lagos State House of Assembly, Mojisola Meranda, is reportedly facing intense pressure to resign, with sources indicating that she may step down this Monday. The development came after the operatives of the Department of State Service (DSS) and other armed security personnel stormed the premises of the Assembly…
USAID: Ndume urges probe of B’Haram funding
MaTaZ ArIsInGDallas, Texas Former Senate Chief Whip, Senator Ali Ndume, has called on the Federal Government and the National Assembly to investigate allegations by U.S. Congressman Scott Perry that the United States Agency for International Development has been funding terrorist organisations, including Boko Haram. Ndume made the appeal during an interview on Channels Television’s Politics…