Ned Nwoko's Controversial Theses on Polygamy

[Moses Ebe Ochonu]

Controversial Nigerian billionaire and polygynist, Ned Nwoko, made the following points in his trending BBC Igbo interview:

1. Our (non-Muslim) cultures supported and at times even encouraged polygamy but European Christian missionaries quashed it.

2. It is better to practice polygamy than to have a hypocritical system of one man, one wife, and six mistresses.

3. There is a serious contradiction when a [patriarchal] society defines female honor and respectability solely in terms of marriage and yet insists on one man one wife [in a culture where women are prohibited from marrying more than one husband at a time. Unless men outnumber women by a large margin, which is not the case, the equation is grossly unbalanced].

4. In a society in which power, resources, and opportunities are disproportionately in the hands of men, marrying more than one wife if you can afford it may help to empower some women who may otherwise be socioeconomically disenfranchised and end up selling their bodies.

5. Igbo people (Southern Nigerians?) should marry more wives and have more children if they don't want the demographic gap between them and the Muslim north to further widen.

Apart from number 5, which is highly problematic as Nigeria is already suffering from the effects of overpopulation and because of its flawed premise of demographic competition, is any of Nwoko's points above in serious dispute?

P.S: I have taken the liberty to paraphrase his points and I have added clarifying additions in parenthesis.

[Gbolahan Gbadamosi]

The common vocabulary on Nigeria social media "streets" to respond to these 5 points is that Ned Nwoko is shaking a table and Moses is helping him to shake the table vigorously!

Gbola

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[Moses Ebe Ochonu]

This is my follow-up post on Facebook after the ferocious debate that followed my initial posting of Ned Nwoko's points and my own addendums.

Apparently, some of our people are surprised that it was the European missionaries, operating from their European-inflected Christian practice, who outlawed polygamy/polygyny and not the Bible.

Well, it was not only polygamy, which they saw as a backward and destructive African practice, that they condemned and prevented African converts from practicing.

The missionaries outlawed many other African practices they deemed "unChristian" but which in fact are not prohibited in the Bible.

They prevented African Christian converts from singing loudly in the church.

They prevented them from playing loud, "satanic" musical instruments, such as African drums, shekere, and others, in the church.

When African Christians wanted to connect with God at a deeper level through spiritual trances, loud prayers, and other transcendental experiences, European Christian missionaries condemned them as importing the incantatory and spirit possession rituals of what they characterized as African ancestral worship into the church and questioned the sincerity of their conversion.

And, of course, when African Christian converts insisted that they could be both polygamist and Christian, since their reading of the Bible did not reveal any prohibition of the culture, the European missionaries were scandalized.

Many frustrated African Christians voted with their feet and insisted on worshiping God in their African ways. Many left the mainline European denominations to found African Independent Churches (AICs), where they promptly introduced "loud" African music and instruments as well as vernacular devotional practices. Some AICs accommodated polygamy.

Others went more hardcore and founded spiritual or Zion churches that were known for spiritually transcendent practices, faith healing, prophesy, and other practices that are today common in African charismatic and pentecostal churches.

In other words, Africans have by and large de-Europeanized, or more appropriately, decolonized Christianity in many respects.

The last frontier of this decolonization effort is the opposition to polygamy.

I don't know why this last vestige of the European Christian influence is proving too stubborn even though like other previously condemned practices, polygyny is not prohibited in the Bible, at least not for lay Christians.

If decolonization and Africanization of Christianity is going to be complete, this unscriptural blanket opposition to polygamy has to go.

There are of course many pragmatic, emotional, economic, and even spiritual reasons why polygamy may not be for most people in this generation, but Biblical prohibition is not one of them.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/CACBXb0oiEhnrkKE2EMUbPV2Q04SX%3D5K4JikYRPepqLVWzHNWKQ%40mail.gmail.com.

[OLAYINKA AGBETUYI]

Many Europeans even in Europe today have mistresses and have children by them.  Some wives turn a blind eye to them.  Some sue for divorce.

Some English  pub land ladies take in a ' ' lodger' with the express knowledge of the husband who is well past it, who turns a blind eye because for them they have been together for so long they cannot imagine not being together and for them love is different from intercourse.

It is said that in the French Parliament if you dont have a mistress you are considered gay. (Many of them come like parliamentarians from England, from constituencies outside the capital where the wife resides, and they spend weeks on end doing government business away in the capital.)

I have more than ten years ago discussed on this listserv how  an American Christian family of a particular Christian denomination in Utah who promoted polygamy came on Oprah Winfrey show and the wives  said they were contented with it because they knew who their husband slept with.   It was like a commune.   They said half the men in the larger society were gay anyway ( reducing the mateable men in the pool) and the others had mistresses whose sexual health the women did not know.  They said it was more viable economically than having mistresses, just like Africans polygamists say.

I have also revealed how my mature Muslim Somali students in   a London class warded off a Christian Congolese male student who asked why they allowed their husband to oppress them by marrying another wife after them.

They replied that they wanted it that way and it was not without their consent.  I saw in class after class how they arranged who would go and pick the children from school on behalf of the other ladies.

I also revealed how someone asserted on a London radio years ago  that the global ratio between men and women is 1:7 and that without some form of polygamy some women will not be legitimately mated.  ( I told my mature English male student that a visual survey of babies in prams in the streets suggests this may be nearer the truth as the babies in pink far outnumber those in blue.)

Last year on another London radio programme it was asserted that up to 30% of ladies within the age to be engaged in a relationship are not involved in any relationship with the opposite sex.

We must also remember that the Biblical Abraham was polygamous.

Psychoanalysis reveals to us that the libido (in both men and women) as an instinctual drive reigns supreme anyway and will not be denied.  Also, it is not evenly distributed amongst partners.

OAA

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

-------- Original message --------

From: Moses Ebe Ochonu <meoc...@gmail.com>

Date: 04/12/2020 15:29 (GMT+00:00)

To: USAAfricaDialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Ned Nwoko's Controversial Theses on Polygamy

This message is eligible for Automatic Cleanup! (meoc...@gmail.com) Add cleanup rule | More info

This is my follow-up post on Facebook after the ferocious debate that followed my initial posting of Ned Nwoko's points and my own addendums.

Apparently, some of our people are surprised that it was the European missionaries, operating from their European-inflected Christian practice, who outlawed polygamy/polygyny and not the Bible.

Well, it was not only polygamy, which they saw as a backward and destructive African practice, that they condemned and prevented African converts from practicing.

The missionaries outlawed many other African practices they deemed "unChristian" but which in fact are not prohibited in the Bible.

They prevented African Christian converts from singing loudly in the church.

They prevented them from playing loud, "satanic" musical instruments, such as African drums, shekere, and others, in the church.

When African Christians wanted to connect with God at a deeper level through spiritual trances, loud prayers, and other transcendental experiences, European Christian missionaries condemned them as importing the incantatory and spirit possession rituals of what they characterized as African ancestral worship into the church and questioned the sincerity of their conversion.

And, of course, when African Christian converts insisted that they could be both polygamist and Christian, since their reading of the Bible did not reveal any prohibition of the culture, the European missionaries were scandalized.

Many frustrated African Christians voted with their feet and insisted on worshiping God in their African ways. Many left the mainline European denominations to found African Independent Churches (AICs), where they promptly introduced "loud" African music and instruments as well as vernacular devotional practices. Some AICs accommodated polygamy.

Others went more hardcore and founded spiritual or Zion churches that were known for spiritually transcendent practices, faith healing, prophesy, and other practices that are today common in African charismatic and pentecostal churches.

In other words, Africans have by and large de-Europeanized, or more appropriately, decolonized Christianity in many respects.

The last frontier of this decolonization effort is the opposition to polygamy.

I don't know why this last vestige of the European Christian influence is proving too stubborn even though like other previously condemned practices, polygyny is not prohibited in the Bible, at least not for lay Christians.

If decolonization and Africanization of Christianity is going to be complete, this unscriptural blanket opposition to polygamy has to go.

There are of course many pragmatic, emotional, economic, and even spiritual reasons why polygamy may not be for most people in this generation, but Biblical prohibition is not one of them.

On Thu, Dec 3, 2020 at 1:15 PM Gbolahan Gbadamosi <gbola.g...@gmail.com> wrote:

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/CACBXb0oiEhnrkKE2EMUbPV2Q04SX%3D5K4JikYRPepqLVWzHNWKQ%40mail.gmail.com.

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