PERSPECTIVE

Pa Bello and his 86 wives; Religion and my society.

By MONDAY UWAGWU

YEARS ago, I can’t really remember how long ago that was, one of my friends, a local chief from one of the clans in Aniocha South council area had converted to christianity.

He had been an African traditional religionist and had been married to two wives. On conversion, he was told that he had to change: he was free to pick one of his wives and divorce the other, if he was truly intent on becoming a christian of the catholic sect. And he was in a dilemma. But he soon overcame that, using common sense: he preferred to keep his two wives, and not partake in the holy communion administered by clerics, on those classified as faithful adherents. He was later to tell me that his choice was governed by the fact of his deployment of wisdom in dealing with a problem he felt could otherwise have threatened his family of two wives and several children. Who was he to divorce and for what reason? Would it not be better to avoid the social consequences of sending away a woman who had toiled with him for more than two years and had given him children, some of who were already in tertiary schools? As I said, my chief friend later told me that he could not sacrifice his family for any religion (as distinet from godliness and spirituality).

My friend’s experience is not in isolation. Many, many others, most unheard of, are in much the same situation: And of course, it is easy to cite the subsisting case of Pa Bello Abubukar Masuba, father of more than 170 children (living and dead) and husband of 86 wives. Ever since the NTA, the self-styled single biggest television network in Africa beamed its searchlight on him, the self-professed muslim, has never had peace. In frustration, he has gone to court, seeking its servention to save hise life, after the death sentence fatwa was passed on him by the Etsu Nupe Alhaji Yahaya Abubakar, the Etsu Nupe, emirate and the Jamatural Nasir Islam (JNI), for the desecration of Islamic doctrines (by marring more than four wives.

And what a tragedy!

In the suit No. FHC/Abuja/499/08, Pa Bello is seeking the order of the court to prevent any of those listed above, or their agents/privies or servants or indeed, anyone else, from carrying out the death sentence, or expelling him from the emirate, for reason for his alleged offence(s).

Agreed that every game has its rule of engagement. Agreed also that every religion has its doctrines and dogmas. But what religion permits one to kill another, or to expel him from his abode, extra-judiciously?  Is religion above the law of the land?

Pa Bello married his wives from their families: On the NTA news, both the wives and children said they were happy with their husband and father, of whom they spoke glowingly, in respect of his fatherly care and husbandly responsibilities. He has not abandoned them: he does not discriminate against any and, in other words, he is even-handed and lacks nothing in his care and maintenance of them. What, then, is Pa Bello’s alleged offence?

It can be said that Pa Bello can be a bad example to other religionists, especially those who might be tempted to believe that marital promiscuity is permissible. This is more so when, it is said, Pa Bello is a highly respected muslim leader, an opinion leader of sorts. In net, the worst for which Pa Bello can rightly be charged, successfully, is social irresponsibility – by engaging in act capable of encouraging sexual promiscuity and branch of Islamic tenets.

But, honestly speaking, does that justify the pronouncement of fatwa? What law gives the JNI, or Etsu Nupe, or the Nupe emirate, or anyone else for that matter, the right to call for someone else’s head? If, indeed Pa Bello’s apparent poor use of discretion and his excess lasciviousness amount to a sin before God (Allah), is it apt for humans, as the Etsu Nupe, or leadership of JNI, to act to pass judgment on behalf of God and to seek to encourage people to execute the judgment and take the ‘convict’s head?

With all due respects, Pa Bello’s fate is a reflection of the cultural conflict between traditional African valuves (culture) and those of the emergent society. It is a sad reflection of how foreign cultural values, especially religion, have impacted on African society, living most of its human elements confused, disoriented and in extreme self-doubt.

Rather than see Pa Bello as an importunate, sinner, undeserving of life, the religionists have chosen to hang him, for failing, in their view, to keep faith with their faith. For that, he has to suffer the fate of a   cocktroach: death, in a swift, callous way. Pa Bello’s fate is the direct effect of his effort to coagulate and synthesize his traditional African values (where polygacy, even of the extenrity as he has exhibited, is allowed, and the alien values of a mid Eastern culture (where islam originated after being founded by Prophet Muhammad), which, in the name of a sub-variant of its culture (religion), permits of a maximum of four wives per husband. It is a different ball game, altogether, if he succeeded in doing so (blending the cultures), by embracing Islam but, apparently rejecting its restraint on the number of wives he could marry as a professing muslim. In this sense, Pa Bello is a mere victim who should be pitied, (like most Africans now suffering religious and other forms of cultural conflicts and crises), rather than being crucified.

Advanced societies – societies made up of spiritually enlightened and active personages – would understand Pa Bello with a view to learning how better to handle this cultural conflict that now threatens his God-given life.

Related to this crisis is this, as I had listed above: at what point does religious dogma take precedence over the law of the land? Is it not sheer ignorance that neither the federal nor state governments have spoken, in caution, against the fatwa imposers and their supporters: How long will it take the police and the government to warn the JNI, Etsu Nupe and others that encourage the death sentence on a harmless poor man, that, their religion is not superior to our laws, and that on no account must Pa Bello’s life be threatened, for reason of his marital status? Can anyone see the religious crisis we now face – such that threaten a harmless citizen’s life?

But that is not all. How long will we, as Africans, hold our cultural values inferiour to foreign ones? Has our enlightenment, especially the cultural elements of it – not shown as that polygamy was introduced in Africa  long afo or by our sagely fore bears who considered it (in the light of yawrning demographic imbalance) a better option that the western marital format of one man, one wife, even when, as the world knows, the man ends up with legion mistresses, outside of matrimony? If, as events have shown today, the gender balance is becoming more positive, due to people having better procreation awareness that enables them to space, and even determine, the sex of their children, does it make  it an offence for those engaged in what was once efficient valve for handling the huge social problems of simultaneously having legion of marriage-age women out of matrimony?

And, anyway, which would be a better option for Pa Bello: Keep the women or throw 82 wives out of matrimony in the name of divorce, (even when, in their words, they are happy with him), with all the truma and other social consequences for then and the larger society? Is it not better, as Africans used to hold, for a woman to be a second or even fifth wife, rather than be inconsequential girlfriend to him.

Above all else is this poser: Is marriage a spiritual, Good-made institution: Or, is it a man-made institution for the regulation of sexual relationship in any given society? Is there not only the God of creation – who made all of mankind and put each race and nationality in environments where their peculiar circumstances dictate their culture and other essences?

Why can’t our people learn from the Biblical accounts of Solomon (who, inspite of marrying a legion wives was not punished for that by God), and Jesus’ response to the question of who will be the true husband of the widow who was inherited by her late husband’s many junior brothers in quick succession? What of the good lesson inherent in Prophet Muhammed’s marriage to Khadija? What of the lesson in the Biblical parable of the Good Samaritan as told by the Lord Jesus Christ? How long will it take people to appreciate that religion is man’s invention to meet his needs, and that it (religion) is aeons of light years away from godliness and spirituality which both Jesus and Muhammed practised and admonished their followers to emulate?

Pa Bello has committed no sin against the society and no one should ignorantly, take him to the grave, premature. All men of conscience and the government must ensure his safety and well-being. Is marriage not longer a voluntary union of mutually consenting adults? Religion and people!