Nigeria Content Online

Amidst the myriad of problems that confront the Nigerian state, it is interesting that the feminist poet and writer, Lola Shoneyin singles out polygamy as the problem that is profound enough to engage her. Shoneyin’s critics may squirm at her choice; at such a narrative that seeks to place at the core of our discourse a social problem that is not as pervasive as diseases, hunger, homelessness, the personalisation of power and the erosion of the social needs and entitlements of Nigerians who have become mere watchmen and women, watching over their thieving rulers.

Some critics may also argue that she exaggerates the problem while others might posit that she interrogates a subject that is a chimera of her mind.

That will be unfair! If the family is the bedrock of society, and the social institution of marriage founds that rock, then Shoneyin is right to seek to provide a clearer understanding of that institution as well as the ontological space or social domain which constitutes the framework for interrogating social relations. Thus, to Shoneyin the social domain is culturally gendered and the consequent inequalities and violence that define polygamous marriages permeate the society in so many ways, in spite of the fact that the extent to which they are internalised within social structures take different forms.

Regressive inheritance

In ‘The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives’, Shoneyin comes across as one who views polygamy as an aspect of economic relations, a regressive inheritance as well as a practice that lies at the heart of our cultural milieu; that is if one accepts that polygamy is pervasive in contemporary Nigeria. She is right. And she is also right in other respects when she sites the culture that legitimises polygamy at two levels. First, as given – ‘as a set of attributes or contents of a locality, denoting its symbols and practices in their general and external manifestations’, to which polygamous marriages are one of its many manifestations. Secondly, she takes culture as ‘patterned ways of knowing and doing, institutionalised within hegemonic processes and structures, where transgression of the central core elements leads to forms of regulation, prohibition, exclusion or banishment’.

Baba Segi, in Shoneyin’s narrative, individuates that hegemonic space or what the scholar, Floya Anthias describes as ‘the hegemonic structure’ that subjugates and is profoundly anti-woman. There is no question about his authority. He deploys his repressive powers to entrench fear. He disciplines and punishes whoever transgresses the patterned ways of knowing and doing!

Rich tapestry

What then is ‘The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives’ about? The book’s blurb tells us that the central character, Bolanle, a university graduate, marries into a polygamous family, where she is the fourth wife of a rich, rotund patriarch, Baba Segi. However, beyond Bolanle, the plot is a rich tapestry of life, intricately woven with threads that connect with everyday Nigerian realities. It is indeed a brilliant narrative on the human agency, violence, inequalities, same-sex tyranny, inferiorisation and the democratisation of biology. Here, the wives play by the rules set by Baba Segi in order to earn the full enjoyment of sex. Thus, what emerges is a fierce competition for the ‘libidinal space’ that no one wife truly owns or inhabits. Each wife serves Baba Segi according to his own sexual needs. Shoneyin narrates how life is politicised and how it is shaped by women who become the narrators of the very condition that diminishes opportunities, promotes disputes and struggles, erodes solidarity and makes existence complex.

Male-female relations

The beauty of Shoneyin’s narrative lies in the way she sheds light on the ‘undoing’ of the ‘grand recit’ of patriarchy and how women become defenceless against its dominance. She helps us understand how polygamy should be understood; how the dominant male performs his role and mediates the male-female relations. She isn’t entirely misogynist in her narrative. Baba Segi is a loving father, exclaims the literary critic, Ikhide Ikheloa in acknowledgement of the fact that Baba Segi is cast in the mould of a father who loves his own and provides for their needs. It is a nod to Shoneyin’s genius that she suggests, as Fukuyama does in his ‘Great Disruption- Human Nature and the Reconstitution of the Social Order’, that the male role is also ‘fragile and subject to disruptions’. We observe this fragility as Baba Segi comes to terms with his surrogate status. Hear him, ” I have called you today because I am full of words, words that threaten to tear my belly apart if they remain unsaid… I will not pretend the words that struck my ears at the hospital have not preyed on my mind the way hunger preys on the mind of a motherless child. I have been deeply wounded.” How broken can a man become when he discovers a terrible secret at the heart of his family?

Concluding, ‘The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives’ is an important contribution to Nigeria’s literary oeuvre. It is important for many reasons but for the purposes of this commentary, it is worthy to note that the work reveals much about the transactions that take place within marriage and how those transactions help to construct identities. In Bolanle, we glimpse a woman flailed by her husband, abused and rejected by her womankind; she is the barren one who becomes the ‘other’. However brilliant Shoneyin’s work is, it does not disarm polygamy neither does it offer fresh insights into how subjugated women can question dominant cultural practices and recover the ontological space for radical feminist political action. ‘The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives’ does not serve as a reference for radical feminists but it sure provides understanding of how marriage encounters its limits through polygamy and why most women stick out repulsive marriages, even at the point of death. Iya Segi tells us why, “My Lord, I know you want to send me off into the wilderness but I beseech you to have mercy on me. My eyes have already seen what no mother’s eyes should see. Forgive me, for I seek nothing else but to stay by your side, serving you as I have always done all these years.”

Abdul Mahmud is an Abuja-based lawyer and poet. He writes poetry under his pseudonym, Obemata