Mr. (Alhaji) Bello Masaba is no ordinary man. A multibillionaire in naira (Nigeria’s legal tender), he is not only rich in money, but also in women, in wives.
Until recently, he had kept one of the world’s largest harems. He is a ladies’ champion indeed. With his empire of money-spinning businesses, it was never difficult for him to get a woman to agree with him. So he kept marrying. A few weeks ago, when he became a news subject, he had 86 wives; all legitimately married; comfortably housed, clothed, and fed.
The religion authorities in Niger state played out their funny reactionary faith. While they were there as he accumulated a harem of such magnitude, woman by woman, they did not prevent it or teach the women of their communities to stop giving Masaba their hands in matrimony. Instead, they let the women settle down in the gregarious comfort of Masaba’s home before "remembering" that Islam forbids more than four wives.
Where will the ‘extra women’ go, now?
Whatever made the extra women eagerly, voluntarily, join a harem with already too many women?
The religionists issued an ultimatum, got Masaba arrested and detained. It was like a joke. But a fatwa (death sentence according to shar’ah) actually dangled at Bello Masaba’s head. Just for husbanding many wives.
They succeded in enacting disengagement between Masaba and 82 of his 86 wives. This is the religionism of the religionists. Formalism.
While maintaining the label (facial purity) of their religion, their action constitiuted a great fertilizer to the seeds of corruptness in that same religion. I’m certainly not an advocate of Masaba. I only would like to know which is more reasonably holy: 86 wives, or 82 prostitutes, or 86 widows (forced into widowhood just for the sake that the last 82 of them were married)?
In the convolutedly blind (actually blind, deaf, dumb and lame, yet aggressive) shar’ah systems in Nigeria, holiness is the "professed aim" while scandalous sinfulness is the "living way."
Some years ago in Maiduguri (the capital of Borno state, the most northeastern part of Nigeria), when sharia was introduced there, many women were disengaged from their maigida. The words of Isaiah 4:1 got fulfilled with a reverse consequence. Women roamed about like Roman citizens; messing up like Messopotamians; desperately imploring any male who listened to them to allow them live by his name; that they would feed and clothe themselves (by sex trading), only let them take shelter in his home or in his name. Reproach was multiplied and added, not subtracted. This was in an enclave that was legislating and enforcing holiness! Kaduna and Kano weren’t dissimilar. In fact, ko da me ka zo Kano, anfi ka (With whatever (implying goodness or badness) you come to Kano, Kano is greater at that than you).
To me, true holiness is illegislable. It is an ethical and moral amalgam, and is of the conscience, from the inner self. If I were them, I would train the conscience first, and exemplify things in praxis. Holiness would voluntarily issue forth. Persons shall not be deprived or oppressed into taking a resort to unholy living. "Harmlessly unholy" people should be left alone. Well known is the fact that most people, when forced, refrain from evil by fear or by incapacity, not by conviction. But enlightened hearts and trained hands differ. One cannot rightly blame a woman who surrenders herself to a man that pledged to stand for her, even if he is already standing for many women. That certainly is holier than "marrying" any man that came by daily. Besides, Bello’s wives protested that they were not forced into the marriage; therefore, forcing them out of it is not a favour, not welcome to them.
Some publicised harems I knew In Nigeria
1.Oshoffa, a founder and pastor of a pentecostal church in Lagos. He had 34 wives, 150 children before his death in a road accident.
2.Tor Tiv (ethnic Tiv traditional chieftain) in Taraba state. In 1997 or ’98 he left, at his death, 27 wives (some younger than some of his granddaughters) and 127 children.
3. A private ethnic Tiv man in Benue state. He had 14 wives and nearly 60 living children. One of his grown daughters volunteered some information (unpresentable here) on how her father kept his harem conjugally satisfied.
4.Fela Anikulapo Kuti. Legendary musician, dissident rights activist. He once wedded 27 women on the same day.
5.A man (Muslim) in Kwara state. He had 12 wives.
6.A native medicineman in then Abia state. He had 28 wives. This man, not as wealthy as Masaba, was the cleanest traditional ploygamous man I had ever seen, apart from Bello Masaba.