End times; Spousal terrorism raised to power N!

On 5/10/22, I wrote on ‘Spousal Terrorism: The men also CRY.’ It was consequent on the death of Osinachi Nwachukwu, which brought to the front burner the scourge of spousal violence, which I upgraded to terrorism. People were so embittered that they would have ‘finished’ Peter Nwachukwu if they could lay hands on him. Others blamed the beastliness of men in general, saying, ‘It is in their character.’ However, it also became obvious that men were also victims, indeed more victimised than imagined. Unfortunately, many, even officials funded from the public purse, focus only on the violence against women. Ekiti State pronounced immediate dismissal for any male civil servant who sexually assaulted the female counterparts. Its Head of Service, Mrs Peju Babafemi, declared that “We will encourage our women generally to speak out against any gender-based violence’ Case closed: only women were sexually and physically assaulted; the men were the aggressors! Incidentally, in the Osinachi case, everybody condemned the husband, but one professor, Anthony Oha, was a lone voice, recalling how women terrorise men with their venomous tongues, daring them to ‘touch me if you are man enough.’ When women are involved, we condemn. However, when men are on the receiving end, the comments, mostly by women, revolve around ‘who knows what he must have done.’

I started from the previous article because public officials, unfortunately, still see gender-based violence as an offence against females. On 28/1/25, the Enugu State Commissioner for Gender Affairs et al., Mrs. Ngozi Enih, condemned “violence against women and girls in any form’ and severely warned anyone intending to commit acts of violence against women, promising to build a society where women and girls can live without fear, where their voices are heard, and where their rights are upheld. As Zeburudaya Okorigwe Nwobo would say, ‘fa-fa-fa FOUL’! This is a wrong narrative, and this one-sided perspective will not yield a holistic solution to the scourge. Incidentally, ALL heads of GBV-related MDAs are women, and I think we have to revisit this. After all, the Nigerian contingent to the Beijing Women Conference was led by a man. Funny enough, I have never heard of any news conference whenever men are the victims!

Back to the issue at stake, the extent of spousal terrorism across the globe has reached an unbelievably deadly and bloody crescendo to the extent that I start wondering if the perpetrators were human at all and how they could have done this to people with whom they once shared their whole lives. What led me to conclude that it was an end-time affair and that it had moved to the power of N was the man at Abagana who set his wife ablaze with fuel and said that he never thought that she would die. Two days later, a woman poured scalding hot water on her husband while he slept. They had an issue, and the man thought that they had settled it and went to bed, and then… It happened. Not long after that, Sunday Echeghi of Ibagwa Nsuka crudely amputated the wife’s hand for suspected infidelity. Before then, Joshua Nwafor of Nsokarra at Ezza South LGA beat his wife to death over yam…just yam!

Read also: Spousal terrorism: Men as endangered species and the danger of a single story

In Ibadan, Comfort Olajumoke stabbed her husband to death over a disagreement, while in Ogun State, Yemisi knifed her husband’s genitals, but luckily, the thing was still hanging there. In Kudan, Kaduna State, the wife amputated the husband’s (Idris) penis while he slept… after just 4 months of marriage. In the FCT, one Salamathu murdered her paralysed husband and was fleeing with his possessions before she was arrested, while Aminu Abubakar beat his wife to death for planning to marry another man. In India, Gurumuthy murdered her wife, cut her into pieces, burnt her to ashes, and threw everything into a nearby river. In Florida, Sarrah Boone sealed her partner in a suitcase, taunted him as he suffocated to death, and videoed the episode while in Baguio, Philippines; a woman cut off the husband’s penis for mentioning another woman’s name while they were ‘doing’! Somewhere in Kenya, the womenfolk declared a war against their men who ‘waka’ too much, and some genitals were lost before police intervened. This forced an entrepreneur to design a purpose-made iron genital protector!

So, what has gone wrong? Why should the chant change from ‘if I don’t marry her, I will die’ to ‘if she doesn’t leave my house, I will kill her,’ and that is within a twinkling of an eye? Drugs? Social media and peer influences? Are they bound to violence? Did the devil himself descend to earth, or is it evidence of end times? Poor anger management? Socio-psychologically ill-equipped couples? Wrong expectations from marriage? Or all of the above? This is becoming a worrisome scourge. It is obvious that the socioeconomic foundations of marriage as we knew it have collapsed. Even the Catholic Church, which preaches till death do us part, is now preaching some distance if violence is involved. Chiwetalu Agu sensibly argues that ‘divorce is better than rest in peace.’. For the men in particular, I advise that they wear the Iron Penis Protector (I am the sole distributor) and take out some genital-protection insurance policies (which I have designed for some insurers!).

However, despite all this, the marriage industry is lucrative in Nigeria, as Minister of Interior Dr. Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo disclosed that the FGN N2.4bn from marriage registries in 2024. That is Nigeria for you!