Conspiracy of consent -By Sesugh Akume

This matter of domestic violence is one I’ll never understand. Except one is in a forced marriage, they once liked someone before accepting marry and live with them. If therefore the thing isn’t working why not simply part ways and live happily ever after, than act as beasts?

The other part I don’t understand is people living with this. A lawyer, humanitarian, philanthropist just died after 28 years of torture, battering, and humiliating. What is it worth? I don’t get the silence over this issue either. The humanoid who pretended to be married to her is a senior advocate, and former president of the Nigerian Bar Association. How a known wife beater and philanderer became a senior advocate beats me, and even he went on to become president of the NBA! I get it that one gets ahead with honours and winning elections because they’re good at their job, and what they do in their private life is nobody’s business. What a shame. No society is guided by rules and laws alone, what guides further even when there are rules and laws are morals and ethics. People who misbehave are simply shunned however good at what they do or not.

And so in a discussion with Aisha Yesufu yesterday, I was made aware that the domestic violence thing is more mainstream and prevalent than we shudder to admit. A Supreme Court justice is a known wife beater. A serving senator is living in continuous domestic violence with the beast she’s pretending to be her husband. Why is there a conspiracy of silence on this? Do people accept domestic violence as a normal fact of life? If highly placed women, victims themselves, with standing in society and voices keep mum on this it means there’s more to this than meets the eye. If even they ‘endure’ this bestiality what is the woman in Zuba, Okitipupa, Gbem supposed to do about the constant violence she faces at home?

No wonder when that white-bearded thug in the senate said publicly on the floor of the senate in plenary, in front of TV cameras that he’d batter, rape and impregnate a colleague and nothing would happen, nothing indeed happened. There was no outrage. Zero. None. No authorities acted on it. He further went on BBC Hausa Service to dish out more expletives and unprintable words. I recall people laughing and dismissing the matter. The Federation of Women Lawyers huffed and puffed for 1 day, the senator herself whimpered for 2 days and that was it. It’s a closed case, we moved on.

Chidi Odinkalu said yesterday that as chair of the National Human Rights Commission even Boko Haram didn’t give him sleepless nights. Domestic violence did.

We are not a normal society, we desperately need healing.

Sesugh Akume wrote in from Abuja. Follow him on Twitter [@sesugh_akume].