Emir of Kano: Husband-Beating in the Divorce Capital of Nigeria!, by Abdulkadir Salaudeen

Husband-beating? This is strange! What people are familiar with is wife-beating. Though it is an abomination, wife-beating is known to be common in Kano State. Don’t get me wrong. There are thugs (I mean wife beaters) who glorify themselves as husbands in every state and in every culture. My focus here is Kano State because one of its emirs recently talked about husband-beating. I don’t want to say he encourages it, though one might not be wrong to say he does.

Domestic violence remains an abomination, no matter how immoral a society becomes. In a sane society, especially one that is deeply religious, wife-beating can only be a once-in-a-century occurrence. This is given the fact that no society can be absolutely free of ills. Yet, one begins to question how religious is Kano State if wife-beating has become a common practice among its people.

Few days ago, at the National Dialogue Conference on Gender-Based Violence (GBV) themed: “Islamic teachings and community collaboration for ending Gender-Based Violence” organised by the Centre for Islamic Civilisation and Interfaith Dialogue (CICID), Bayero University Kano (BUK), the Emir of Kano State, his Eminence, Muhammad Sanusi II, stirred the hornet’s nest by throwing his weight behind women who suffer domestic violence. Since Kano remains a patriarchal city, many of its men are angry over what the Emir said.

What did the Emir say that keeps tongues wagging? He said: “Beating your wife or beating your daughter or beating a woman is prohibited. It is a crime.” So why the noise? Isn’t it a crime to beat one’s wife like an outcast? If we (men) experience a surge in power and strength can’t we release them on bandits and kidnappers? Why would men unleash their superfluous strengths on their wives? This is criminal. The Emir is right. Those criticizing him should shut up.

Then the Emir further said: “Now I said it before, and I know I’ve been attacked for it, and I’ll continue saying it. When my daughters are getting married, I say to them, if your husband slaps you, and you come home and tell me my husband slapped me, without slapping him back first, I will slap you myself because I did not send my daughter to marry somebody so he can slap her. If you do not like her, send her back to me. But don’t beat her.”

Pshaw! Husband-beating! In a state where divorce is seen as an achievement!? Men will not take it. Not in the midst of this economic hardship which has already broken many homes. To ask wives to slap their husbands in retaliation sounds somehow. I mean it will be catastrophic. But before anyone jumps at the Emir, he spoke not just in his capacity as an emir but as an authority on Islamic Family Law.

He recently defended a “perfect” thesis in Law in the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. It is titled “Codification of Islamic Family Law as an Instrument of Social Reform: A Case Study of the Emirate of Kano and a Comparison with the Kingdom of Morocco.” Referring to his thesis, the Emir said at the conference: “They just slap these women and punch them and kick them and beat them. I just wrote a doctorate thesis on family law, and I did research on nine courts, nine Shari’a courts in Kano. 41% of the cases over a five-year period had to do with maintenance. 26 per cent had to do with harm. And out of those, 45 per cent were cases of wife beating, domestic violence.” 

He continued: “We had women whose limbs were broken. We had women whose teeth were knocked out. We had women who were victims of constant beating with sticks. We had women where the husband and his other wives beat one of the wives. We’ve had cases of Cardis having to send her sons to trial for criminal assault because of the nature of the beating against their wives. This is the common beating that happens.” 

And one expects an emir with on the spot PhD field experience on wife-beating not to advise his daughters to retaliate husbands’ slaps? Discussion on wife-beating can be found scattered over the Emir’s thesis. For the ugly statistics on wife-beating, it suffices to read from page 72 to 85.

As at 2009, it was estimated that there were over one million zawarawa (i.e. menless women) in Kano State. A research conducted in 2012 reports that; “32% of marriages in Kano State survives only a period of three to six months; that many young women divorced of age 20-25years are said to have gone through three marriages at least; that there are more divorce than weddings in Kano every week; that it is not uncommon to come across young women who are less than 30years of age who have not been serially divorced etc”. 

My source for the above quote is an article published in the International Journal of Social Science and Humanity, Vol. 5 (10) 2015, by Rohana Yusof and Amina Lawal Mashi. It is titled “An Assessment of “Zawarawa” Mass Marriage Programme, in Kano State, Nigeria.” Major factors identified as causes of frequent divorce from their research population sample are lack of Islamic knowledge governing rules of Marriage (35.3%) and abandonment of marriage responsibilities (43%). 

If that was the case about a decade ago, the situation should be even more complicated now that erstwhile responsible husbands are being unconsciously irresponsible due to the current regime which harsh economic policies do not encourage men to be responsible breadwinners.

However, when wives begin to beat husbands, these are some general consequences: 1) exponential increase in manless women—women searching, in futility, for husbands; 2) men will develop justifiable gynophobia—phobia of women—for fear of the unknown, 3) large scale prostitution, 4) manless ladies and divorced women who do not resort to prostitution might resort to self-help. That is also despicable. Self-help is euphemism for what I am too shy to mention. If you know, fine. If you do not know, your ignorance might be golden.  

I can see Kano State Hisbah working around the clock to salvage the state from being the worst place for men to marry. The state is already notorious for being the Divorce Capital of Nigeria. But now that married women in the state are encouraged (or is advice the right word?) to slap their husbands in retaliation, Hisbah would have more work to do.

Let me acknowledge that royal blood does not flow in me. I am not a moneybag. I don’t have good relationship with power brokers for not being a bootlicker. That means it is a wishful thinking for one like me to be an emir (not even a title holder in my village). But if I were to be an emir, my advice to my daughter who is about to marry would be: “Know the daughter of whom you are. If your husband beats you, run for your life. My palace can accommodate you pending the time that we get the matter resolved or God provides you with a sane and caring husband.”

Yet, I don’t think the Emir is wrong for encouraging women to exchange slap for slap. People should stop criticizing him. He is talking from royal perspective. Though I would have appreciated if he had limited giving that advice only to his daughters. Emirs’ daughters are “unique” in the sense that when they are divorced after beating their husbands, people still join a long queue to seek their hands in marriage. If a woman doesn’t have this kind of royal blood, I will advise her not to beat her husband. 

Responsible ladies whose good home training does not permit them to beat their husbands are finding it hard to get “sweet honeys” nowadays, much less someone who is divorced as husband-beater. Again, of all the 10 recommendations in the Emir’s “perfect” thesis, I checked, husband-beating was missing as a way to resolve marital dispute.

After all is said and done, if any married woman thinks the Emir’s advice is the best for her (especially in Kano State where divorce is discomfortingly ubiquitous), I wish her all the best.

Abdulkadir Salaudeen

salahuddeenabdulkadir@gmail.com