Davido’s marriage becomes our business each time the award-winning singer hits the headlines with a new two-timing accusation. Last week, Davido’s wife, Chioma (@thechefchi), trended on X, formerly Twitter, for the right and wrong reasons. She was celebrating her 29th birthday, a happy event that should have invited good wishes from relations and fans of the power couple. Her celebrity husband flew her to Montego Bay in Jamaica for a lavish birthday treat.
• Davido and wife, Chef Chi
Unfortunately, this sweet gesture from Davido did not impress naughty netizens. Majority in fact forgot their manners; they did not wish the black beauty a happy birthday but, instead, chose her happy day to offload on her husband over his most recent philandering accusation.
Ordinarily, the sexual peccadilloes of celebrities are no longer news. Netizens latched on Davido’s latest escapade to overshadow what should have been positive comments on his wife’s offshore birthday bash. Rather than congratulate her for nearing 30, many choose to focus on why Chioma should continue with a marriage “where she is serially disrespected,” as one of them put it. It is this question that intrigues me.
Why is she staying on in the marriage? The simple answer could be, “yes indeed, why is she?” but it could also very well be, “why not, why should she quit?” Let’s interrogate the matter.
Marriage and divorce are complicated matters in Nigeria. The laws are there to protect women from husbands with roving eyes and capacity for action – and protect men from married women with hot pants. However, these laws are circumvented in our country by peculiar customs, conventions, and convictions of faith. Sometimes the three factors combine in one marriage to explain the tendency for extramarital relations.
It is a sad reality that in our country, how many women a Nigerian man marries or has affairs with is a function of religion and custom, wealth, peer pressure, and a couple’s ability to procreate and in an equitable gender ratio? Religious faith and local customs permit a man to marry more than one wife. Wealth emboldens some men and women to seek outside liaisons,and consequent extra marriages, an ancient African tradition. Society will encourage a man or woman who is unable to have a child with their spouse to try other things, which may include adultery, to overcome the disability. These are our African realities, which we often conflate with the ephemeral issue of roving eyes and hot pants in our commentaries.
Religion, which we often cite as evidence that a man should stick with one wife, is not so clear cut as the opposition to polygamy would want us to believe. Let’s take Christianity as an example. For the offended Christians, assuming that Davido is the biblical adulterous woman that her people wanted to stone to death, how many of us dishing out unkind remarks and hurting Chioma’s feelings on her birthday will throw the first stone if Davido is physically dragged before Christ? Religious leaders who commit adultery are regularly pardoned.
In this respect, shouldn’t we pardon Davido too? After all, everyone knows that his religion is music. Isn’t he like a high priest with a mammoth congregation of over 56 million followers on X (formerly Twitter), 40 million plus on TikTok, over 23 million on Instagram, and over nine million on Facebook? Who will be surprised if the followers one day wake up to tell us all to buzz off and quit touching their anointed and doing their music prophet harm, as regular Christians do when their “prophets” are similarly accused? Don’t we know what happens when philandering pastors such as Apostle Johnson Suleiman and Pastor Biodun Fatoyinbo become the accused?
Another sad reality of our situation is that the laws are on the side of men, even when they were made to protect women. Correction: The laws are on the side of men like Davido, even when they appear to be made for the likes of Davido’s wife. In our law books, adultery is a criminal offence everywhere you go in Nigeria. In Northern Nigeria, the punishment for adultery is imprisonment, fine or both imprisonment and fine. Nevertheless, this same law – the Penal Code of Northern Nigeria – looks away as men jump into extramarital affairs, including marrying more than one wife as commanded by custom or religion. Marrying more than one wife at the same time is bigamy, another serious local offence which, on conviction, carries a maximum sentence of seven years imprisonment (Section 370 of the Criminal Code Act). There are only two cases of bigamy prosecuted in Nigeria and this happened during colonial rule, long before Nigeria’s independence in 1960..
The situation in Southern Nigeria is not much different from what obtains in the North. In Lagos where the Adeleke couple lives, the Lagos Matrimonial Causes Act allows a wife to file for divorce if her husband commits adultery but on two conditions. The first condition is that the wife must determine that what the husband did is of such gravity that she will find it “intolerable to live with him” anymore. The second is that she has three years to make up her mind and approach the courts for a divorce – or forever lose the opportunity! This piece of legislation puts women under tremendous decision stress, in addition to the psychological stress of having to deal with a double-dealing spouse. That’s a double jeopardy.
There could be any number of reasons why women will decide to live with an adulterous husband. In the Islamic world of northern Nigeria, women use religion to pardon their husbands’ serial infidelity. In the customary and material world of Southern Nigeria, we often hear young women say, on matters of adultery, that “it is better to cry in a Mercedes Benz than a Keke NAPEP.” Beyond material considerations, women consider values such as commitment to children upbringing in a stable home, the love they have for their men, and the happiness that marriage brings to them in our peculiar setting. Some might even borrow from the Good Book to paraphrase and answer these two questions: How many times must a wife forgive a husband who has wronged her? Seven times?
Before the morality police come after me, let me quickly withdraw and confess that my opinion on the matter may be different. Nothing that I say here should therefore be construed as an endorsement of extramarital sex. Adultery, committed by husband or wife, is an unfair burden cast on the partner at the receiving end. When exposed, it strikes an impactful blow on mental and psychological well being. The discovery that a partner is unfaithful evokes a sense of emotional betrayal, anger, and unhappiness. Because this is a breach of trust, adultery breeds suspicion, insecurity and jealousy, all of which go to destroy harmony and peace that a home hitherto enjoyed. It is not recommended and I shouldn’t be seen to be endorsing it for whatever reason.
My final take on the subject is that infidelity in a marriage should not be the end of the world for any spouse.
The bottomline is happiness in marriage.
Faithfulness alone does not guarantee this happiness. Majority of marriages survive and thrive in our country despite the presence or public knowledge of a cheating spouse, especially because it is often a temporary madness that will soon end.
Finally, women and men have testified that, despite their spouses’ irresponsible conduct with loose women, the adulterer will often not trade a side-chick or toyboy for the jewel at home. Who knows whether this is not the case with the celebrity musician and his beautiful spouse?
Belated happy birthday,
@theChefChi.
