The Economist an English magazine has shed light interestingly on the rarely explored world of Nigerian marriages and divorce.
Marriage is seen as a sacred institution in Nigeria and the statistics back this up with there being a measly 0.2% for men and 0.3% for women divorces according to the National Bureau of Statistics and well under 1% of couples admit to being separated.
Chief Robert Clarke, a lawyer states that this does not take into consideration that many are not married under modern law.
When one considers this and then looks at divorce rates, then they might not look as small as they used to and some of the reasons given are quite interesting.
Take Joseph Aduwo for example who sought to have his marriage dissolved because, “My wife…fought with nine persons in a day on our street, wearing only bra and underpants. She is a shameless streetfighter,”
Then you have to consider the North where there are a huge amount of Muslims. Their tradition allows them to marry as many as four wives and divorce is ludicrously easy as all one has to say is ‘I divorce you’ thrice for it to be considered as valid. There’s also the age matter to consider as many wives in the North are under 18 and can be acquired and discarded quite easily.
In the South the divorce rates are higher as education means women are a little more empowered and can ask for the dissolution of a marriage. According to Olayinka Akanle, a professor of sociology at the University of Ibadan, women in the south demand separations more readily than in the north.
The reasons for these separations are diverse; One Lagos wife had her marriage dissolved on the basis that her drunken husband confused their cooking pots with the toilet. Another woman complained that her banker spouse spent too long stuck in traffic.
As for the men, they also demand separations quite easily with one quoted as saying “I detest those small-size boobs, It is better to end the marriage.”
Another was unimpressed because his wife didn’t bring kitchen utensils from her father’s house.
The truth is, the stats are misleading, education in the South and West and religion in the North has made divorce a lot more commonplace than we might originally like to think with couples flippantly breaching the sacred vows of marriage with impunity.