Punch
columnist, Abimbola Adelakun has taken a look at the controversial
charade by Lagos socialite, Pretty Mike who put two ladies on dog leash.
Pretty Mike and his ladies on dog leash
After weeks of chinwagging over Pretty Mike (Mike Eze-Nwalie Nwogu)
and the stunt he pulled – putting two masked women on a dog leash and
taking them to public events – the police finally had him stopped.
As media report hinted, it was the Governor of Lagos State,
Akinwunmi Ambode, that asked that Pretty Mike be picked up for such an
offensive treatment of women. The immediate former Lagos State Police
Commissioner, Fatai Owoseni, said the case would be treated as a
“criminal investigation” because what Pretty Mike did was not merely a
crime but also “a dehumanising act.”
Of his actions, Pretty Mike himself said it was a political
critique of Nigeria and its debasing treatment of women; that he thought
staging a live performance would attract more attention to the cause he
was promoting than if he merely talked. If Pretty Mike is to be wholly
believed (and from his interview, I found no reason to doubt his
sincerity), then he should get an A for finding a spectacular mirror to
reflect Nigeria’s shortcomings.
Pretty Mike talked about child marriage, domestic abuse, and the
several other ways our culture represses women and said he decided a
graphic representation of repression would prod our benumbed collective
conscience more effectively than a verbal campaign. The question now is,
did such a raw representation of the misogyny latent in our culture
cause male chauvinists to stop and reflect, or the point eluded them?
I admit I found it baffling that Pretty Mike’s unattenuated display
of female dehumanisation provoked a visceral reaction whereas ours is a
society where misogyny is a lived experience of many women, especially
the ones unprotected by education and social class. From the domestic
realm where women are subject to violence by men who want to enforce
their “constituted authority” to the public sphere where threats of
violence and actual violence are used to keep women subjugated, there is
a lot about Nigeria and its social constitution that are anti-women. So
what was it about Pretty Mike’s action that jarred the public when in
reality, female dehumanisation is a norm?
While I praise the social conscience the former Lagos CP displayed
on the Pretty Mike issue, I also think it is important not to get lost
in the symbolism of Pretty Mike’s actions and miss the stuff of reality:
Nigeria Police stations are one of the most violent and anti-women
spaces in Nigeria. Ideally, the police station should be a safe space
where a defenceless woman can walk in to report cases of physical and/or
sexual violence against her. The police station should be a place where
trained police officers, displaying utmost professional ethics and
empathy, pursue justice on behalf of a victim.
If a woman was held in jail overnight, she should not have to fear
sexual assault from male police officers who cannot hold the beast in
them in check. In reality however, police stations do not live up to
these ideals and the evidence is not exactly hidden. A 2014 damning
report on Nigeria Police stations by Amnesty International (titled,
Welcome to Hell Fire: Torture and Other Ill-Treatment in Nigeria)
identified female rape as one of the instruments of torture police
deploy against women when they have them in their custody.
Pretty Mike’s repelling show, if we look at it more closely, is
actually a parable that should teach us that a society that dehumanises
women does not benefit men in the long run either. In the video where
Pretty Mike put the women on a leash, one also sees the irony of his
act: he is as much a slave of the women as the women are his slave. To
keep the women on the leash, he has to hold tight to that leash. He
cannot let go for even a minute to enjoy himself at public gatherings
because he would then have to relinquish his hold on the women. His own
personal freedom is short-circuited as long as he holds the women down
with that leash. As a master, he is enslaved to his slaves. The women,
as his symbolic slaves, are also masters over him. There, therefore,
lies a lesson for societies with social structures that subjugate women
to second class citizenship.
When women are repressed, menfolk themselves will not progress
because their freedom is ultimately tied to that of the women they
cannot stand to see as counterparts. It is no coincidence that most
societies that dehumanise women because they consider them inferior are
also Third World. They are also the ones that tend to rank low on
developmental indexes. Societies that have evolved a consciousness that
does away with outdated ideas of gender, whether those misogynistic
attitudes are religious or historical, concomitantly evolve other
sophisticated ideas that result in social progressions. The men in
societies who rigidly hold on to dogmatic ideas of male superiority are
the ones who, like Pretty Mike, are themselves held down by the
enforcement of the inequality they perpetrate.
It is important to keep making this point especially because some
religious leaders like to pass off gender inequality as a value dictated
by their religion and which cannot be altered for any reason. One
recent example is the Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Muhammad Saad Abubakar,
and his rejection of the gender equality bill. The Sultan’s argument was
that a bill that seeks to equally share inheritance between male and
female scions is antithetical to Islam. While the Sultan is free to hold
his personal opinion on his religion, when it comes to legislation that
can affect the lives of millions of women – some of them not even born –
he needs to be called out. Seventeen years into the new millennium, we
can no longer wave religion as an excuse to deny women rights that
should otherwise be basic. I am sure if every item – material and
otherwise – that the Sultan adorns himself with were to be subjected to
historic and cultural deconstruction, we will find that part of the
philosophy that produced them are inherently antithetical to Islamic
ideals. If religion has not stopped us from embracing cultural
productions of societies that have embraced ideas of gender equality,
why should we continue to hold on ourselves on a leash in the guise of
protecting religious values?
What manner of mistake?
How does it happen that a Nigerian fighter jet would “mistakenly”
drop a bomb over an IDP camp and more than 50 people would perish (and
another 100 plus injured) just like that? How could such an
unconscionable act of violence have happened to people who have suffered
gross act of violence that has pushed them out of their homes and
landed them in a refugee camp? What manner of incompetence led to such a
massacre? Was it a matter of incompetence or a deliberate act of
psychopathy by an officer?
President Muhammadu Buhari has, characteristically, put out a press
release describing the unfortunate incident as “regrettable operational
mistake” and then prayed for the soul of the dead. As much as he has
said all the expected things, on this one, Nigeria needs to go beyond
“regrets” and question how this must have happened.
This incident deserves a far more serious enquiry than an aide’s
scribble of a soulless apology. Nigeria bleeds every day and there does
not seem to be a sense of moral urgency activated in dealing with the
many incident of violence chipping away the edges of our national soul.
From herdsmen violence to the killings in Southern Kaduna, Nigeria
cannot survive this relentless slaughter of her own citizens.
It is time to put off the automaton that drafts press releases in
the wake of disasters and show some sense of humanity in dealing with
these tragedies.
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