All my life I heard the excuse that men are polygamous in nature, I never for once could understand why the male gender was allowed to get away with some acts of indiscipline, but of course, many women believed it, in fact as a teenager, my friends in secondary school would reaffirm the same thing and then say that once a man provides for his family, what ever thing he chooses to do for his amusement was not his wife’s problem; we were being trained to be contented with the attention and provision we get from the male gender and to never complain about it, that was supposed to be our role and some men loved it, it was in their nature to cheat, they said, but really, was it?
In the year 1984, British geneticist Sir Alec Jeffreys developed a process for DNA profiling while working in the Department of Genetics at the University of Leicester and that development changed the narrative of what infidelity truly is across the nations. By 1988, paternity test became available for public usage although it came at a high cost and only few people could afford it , as years passed by, more companies took on the production of paternity test kits and this exposed the true behaviour of both genders.
It is known that culturally, African women are bound to stay faithful to their husbands regardless of whatever treatment they pass through, (it is in recent times that domestic violence became a just cause to walk away from a marriage), but it was believed that African women of old never cheated on their husbands, or their betrothed, they believed that our women did not have the moral justification that allowed them to become indisciplined; women were raised from childhood to keep their emotions and voices in check, and this included their sexual expressions.
I had a friend from Arochukwu local Government Area of Abia state, who bragged to me that women who committed adultery in his place were reported to have died under mysterious circumstances, not because they were killed but because there are certain laws guiding the land and one of such laws was death for any woman who committed adultery while married to any man of that land, the gods of the land never forgot to take vengeance on such women.
In the Benin culture also, women married to men from such places had to be careful to not do anything that would cause the gods of the land to be against them, in the middle belt area of Benue state, there are also tribes with gods that slew women who committed adultery or took the lives of their husbands and children when the women do not confess to their sins.
For years, the female gender had lived her life in oppression, she had been told that her sexual expressions could be tamed, either psychologically or physically using genital mutilation, either way, there was always a way to curb it. But as education and globalisation took place, so did the hands and limitations of culture become very exposed, paternity test soon began rocking the continent strongly from the year 2019, and soon men became to discover that the women they had thought were saints actually gave them children that was not fathered by them.
In the year 2021, a High court judge discovered that he was not the biological father of three children after DNA test, this was after he had raised the children as his for the most part of his life. Daily, paternity test reveals that some women never stayed loyal after all; does this not allow the reasoning that fidelity in truth has nothing to do with gender but more with the persons.
This also reveals the probability that even in our history, before the advent of paternity testing, “smart women” may have eaten their cakes and had it without the fear of their secrets being displayed in the open, this may have been the situation in some marriages where the husbands was impotent or had low sperm count, but we can never tell for certain.
The cultural excuse that men are polygamous in nature should by now begins its journey into dying a natural death as DNA begins to show that both genders are equally capable of infidelity, what the culture needed to emphasize a long time ago was the importance of sexual discipline which should have taught that fidelity was not the ability to not get tempted, but the ability to choose to not give in to or to resist temptation.
In the present generation, sexual immorality has reached its all time high with a great tendency that it continue to increase day by day except something is done to curb it and fast. The marital vows no longer hold water for many young couples and this impacts the values passed down to the next generation, it is time for our traditional rulers, our religious leaders, our teachers and parents to come together to teach the right narrative, sexual discipline is not about the gender, it is about the person and it is possible, this is the only way we would restore sanity to the moral decaying society.
By Ajayi Titilope
