”Your Husband As The Right To Do Whatever He Wants With Your Body” – Presenter, Tope Mark-Odigie – A couple of days back, a Nigerian doctor shared the story on Twitter about how a husband in Festac Lagos connived with his doctor to remove his wife’s womb because he doesn’t want her to have more children.
The hosts of TVC’s show, The View, discussed the issue this morning and one of the presenters, Tope Mark-Odigie, was of the opinion that as long as a woman has gotten married to a man traditionally, he has the right to do whatever he wants to do with her.
According to her;
”We cannot behave like the western world. We are in Nigeria and we are in Africa. We are a people that will tell a man to prostrate for hundred times to marry one woman. We are the one that will ask a man to bring a million Naira, to bring a goat, to buy everything possible because you are giving over that woman unto the man to take care of her, to make decisions for her, as long as you own her. As long as we still live within that rule, we cannot begin to form westernized. We cannot begin to form modernity. We cannot begin to form feminism. Except we want to expunge traditional marriage. So, we are going to do legal wedding which means that I am bound only by the laws of this marriage. Then if my husband does anything contrary to my legal rights, of which we have shared everything in the marriage 50-50.”
“If you want to do culture, do culture. If you want to do modern 21st century family setting, then you focus on that. But you cannot eat your cake and have it. In our country, we have prioritized culture more than any other thing.”
“A man has a right to decide how a woman should look.If he wants her to be slim or be fat he would say add weight. He would tell her I have bought you. I own you. So I tell you how to look. I tell you how I want your body to look. I control your life.”