PLACE OF CULTULTURE, RELIGION AND MODERNITY ON MARRIAGE, POLYGAMY AND CHILD LEGITIMACY IN NORTHERN NIGERIA: A CRITIQUE OF RAZINAT’S THE TRAVAILS OF A FIRST WIFE

Abstract

Like any part of the world, Northern Nigeria, has its fair share of
challenges in marriage, polygamy and child legitimacy. And like all
the colonized nations, its polygamous home is greatly influenced by
the tripartite cultures of African traditions, Islamic tradition and the
Eurocentric or Greco-Roman Christian tradition, which has come
to be termed as modernity. It is to these challenges of polygamy that
this paper turns to critique Razinat’s The Travails of First Wife, with
a view to see the powers of the tripartite cultures in shaping the
thinking and the final decisions of women in matrimonial
polygamous homes. The thrust of the research is to expose how
much has the confluence of African culture, Islamic teachings and
modernity imposed some hybridised culture on the so called
modern or westernised woman and to also see how much the
Islamic and African ways give husbands of the average Hausa homes
the prerogative of male chauvinism or what the African womanism
prefers to refer to it as male powers against the feeble and powerless
Hausa woman who always suffers from 3Ps; pregnant, poor and
powerless. Little or no options are left for a woman character to
chart a course for her devoid of a man!