TONYE'S WORLD

Tonye David-West, Jr., Ph.D
[email protected]
Political Scientist
USA

Truth & honesty in marriage:
Are some Nigerian men really telling the truth when they go home to marry?
The stories of three men: Part II

ALSO SEE: PART I

s I delve into the conclusive aspect of this write-up, I must do what is right and accord Caesar what is due him. In this vein, I commend the three gentlemen, Emeka, Rowland and Julius for their willingness to share their experiences with the world. I salute them for their bravery, courage and maturity. It takes a “big man” to acknowledge his mistakes, accept responsibility and make amends through this medium and other more viable and not so public mediums. As we all know, such courage is rare amongst our people, all the more reason why these gentlemen should be the heroes of the day for their un-Nigerian behavior regardless of their current marital situation or mistakes. Prudence, at this juncture, warrants that I tell my readers how this topic and the articles, both parts I & II, came about. In the last several months, I and one Dr. Ibinabo Amachree, a colleague and a leading Nigerian neo political-sociologist [of New York] have been working on a research project to be published in a scholarly journal later this fall. The research focuses on the divorce rate amongst Nigerian couples in the US and the socio-ethno-economic variables responsible for such increasing cases of di! vorce amongst this population or variables that would warrant divorce were they to be manifest in a marital relationship.

I speak here of Nigerians married to Nigerians, not Nigerians married to persons of other nationalities. The results which I will share in subsequent write-ups were astonishing to aver the very least. It was in pursuit of this effort that the three gentlemen mentioned above volunteered to participate in our study and insisted that their stories be included in the lead-off article in hopes that their experiences might change a young man intending to follow the same path or might make a young lady in Nigeria ask more questions about her impending suitor to avoid getting into a wrong relationship, one based on deception and half-truths.

It is unethically, in my view, to publish these immensely personal experiences between two individuals without the willing approval of the individuals involved and without an understanding of how their stories might save another Nigerian marriage from hitting the rocks. If at the end of the day, we have enhanced the awareness of even one Nigerian or saved one marriage from the ruins, we would have achieved our purpose.

In an email to me after part I was published, one of the gentlemen mentioned in the article asserted,

“In some strange way, I feel that the healing process has begun. I hope that others will learn from my experience…”

I’ve learned much from the feedback I received from some one hundred and thirty-one [131] emails from Nigerians, Americans and Africans alike. I never dreamt that this topic was a hot issue in many African and Nigerian communities far beyond the United States. From the host city [Australia] of the last summer Olympics, wrote a man,

“In Australia, the Nigerian communities have been hit with divorce and separations in the last few years. Married people are learning more about themselves and the pressure of living in a foreign land is providing an added strain on relationships. Tonye, now in Australia, the divorce numbers amongst Nigerians is almost one out of five. You are free to confirm this. Only ten years ago, it was lower than this. Thank you for discussing this topic. I am waiting for the rest.” [28/7/2002, Sydney, Australia].

A confidant for many years, a very trusted friend provided this feedback to me via phone after reading part I. He brought to my attention a new angle I had not considered. He indicated that this trend of embellishment was not only peculiar to some Nigerian men, but also to some Nigerian women in the US who return home to find husbands. He further indicated that in his neck of the woods in the US, he could count at least half a dozen women who have returned to Nigeria to pick husbands and bring them to the US. I must confess that in all my years in the US, I have only come across one case where a Nigerian woman returned home to search for a husband, found one, married him and brought him over. In this case, it was the man who misrepresented himself to the young lady. Even when the tables were turned, the misrepresentation still came from the man, not the woman. Be that as it may, my confidant may indeed have a point. For the fact that I have not seen this trend does not mean that it does not indeed exist. This may be the case in other parts of the US where Nigerian women frustrated and unable to find suitable husbands in the US, return home to find and marry husbands. We speak here of women who had no boyfriends or suitors at home when they left for the US.

My confidant also indicated that I should make it clear that the point was not about arranged marriages, but about men who embellish their situations in these sorts of arrangements. I thought I was clear on this point in part I, but perhaps, not. And so let me state it again--- My focus in part I [and II] was not on arranged marriages, rather, on men who embellish in these situations. It does not surprise me that most Nigerian men who return home to pick wives are honorable and honest in this endeavor as we uncovered in the course of our research. They are responsible and caring fathers and husbands. I have no reason or empirical data to state otherwise and no one ought to split hairs over this point.

The ferry tale tellers I spoke of in part I are a minority group [as in numbers] who are soiling the image of the hard-working young Nigerian men overseas who may one day return home to take wives. Just as a few misguided Nigerians are giving the rest of us hard-working citizens of Nigeria a tarnished image with their involvement in 419 activities, drugs and assorted vices, so is the minority group in this wise polluting the image of young, single and honest Nigerian men in the US and other Western countries. This is the trend being discussed in this write-up.

Seemingly, part I jolted a lot of single Nigerian men in the US and UK and even as far as Germany, Japan, New Zealand! and even Thailand, according to the feedback I received. They were concerned that young girls in Nigeria reading my article would be asking more questions and seeking verification on a number of claims made by them when its time for them to go searching for wives. One particular guy said,

“Doc, I am sure you have picked your own wife from Nigeria, from your small enclave in Rivers [?] and you do not really care about the rest of us. Now you want the young girls back home to scrutinize us closely, to put us to a truth test. You should have waited until I picked my bride to publish this article. I don’t think I will ever forgive you if a young girl in Nigeria rejects my proposal because of your article.”

Another was even more comical:

“Tonye, thank you for putting “sand sand” in my “garri”. I hope my girlfriend in Nigeria is not reading this article.”

To these young gentlemen I simply responded, “say the truth and it will set you free.”

Part I raised a lot of concerns about our society. It underscored the level of honesty amongst the generality of Nigerians who read the article. While most were supportive and insisted that men [and women] ought to be transparent in these matters as marriage is not something to be taken lightly, others believed that it does not matter what a man tells a women during nuptial negotiations as long as he intends to marry her and bring her to the US where she would find comfort, peace and satisfaction. This position is interesting for a number of reasons as it has a propensity to rock a marriage even before it takes off. There is an assumption amongst the men who claim this position that the women would never be able to uncover their lies. Except these women are complete dummies possibly from the remotest parts of the village [no offense to villagers] or are suffering from mental deficiency, it’s a matter of time they would asc! ertain the true situation. Those men should know that America has a way of making people “wise-up”, even dummies.

Women are very perceptive and clever. Most men found this out in a very painful way and often when it’s too late. A comedian on HBO once said that when a man walking with his girlfriend or wife sees another beautiful woman, he often looks at her in an obvious manner without attempting to conceal his lust to the point that the girlfriend/wife would often notice and call him to order. But when a woman in the same circumstances sees a handsome guy she admires, she would say to her boyfriend/husband, “Look honey, doesn’t that guy look like Paul from church?” This way, both she and the boyfriend/husband are looking at the gentleman, but for different reasons. While the boyfriend/husband is looking at him to determine if he looks like Paul, the wife is looking at him lustfully, soaking in the sights. By the time the boyfriend/husband confirms that he does not look like Paul, the wife ! must have had her fill and moved on.

Women are clever in many other ways than we give them credit for.

When these women finally arrived in the US, the men should not forget that they interact with other Nigerians who may have known their husbands and may clue them in. They should not forget that there are various means of verification available to them, especially, in this age of internet and electron-ism. The options are endless. It becomes a sad commentary on our society when we cannot be honest in the rudimentary of things to our spouses on matters such as our position in our places of work, our level of education, etc. It thus begs the question amply, if the average Nigerian cannot fare well in this most important regard of human relationship, how do we expect our leaders to be honest with us and to eschew recklessness in favor of probity? Chari! ty, they say, begins at home. Isn’t that so?

Indeed, most of these men should use the truth as a barometer for these women in Nigeria. If a woman is less inclined to marrying a man because he is a janitor, nursing home worker or has not attained a white-color job, then perhaps, she truly does not love him and may have other intentions. A man should take that as a clue. A woman who loves a man would marry him regardless of his profession or level of education as love ought to be unconditional and without stipulations. But then again, I am reminded that love may not be in the equation in this sort of arrangement, at least, not at the onset. That may be derived later in the course of the marital relationship. Except of course, you are one of those who! believes in love at first sight.

And that brings me to another point:

It seems that some of our women in Nigeria are returning the favor to these men in the US and other Western countries. The women are wittingly looking the other way for their own reasons while these men are “ferry-tale-ing” them. On account of the unbearable economic situation at home, the joblessness, homelessness and hopelessness, most of these girls would simply play the fool just to “check out” of Nigeria and they could care less who does it for them as long as he has the right “ingredients” in the US, as one reader stated. Sometimes, it’s beyond economics and that is w! here it gets scary. Some of these women have their own secret agenda once they arrive in the US. Thus, they go through the motions, marry these men, wait however long it takes to get their own “ingredients”, only for the men to find out that they have been “419ed.”

When these women arrived in the US, they become magicians and disappear into the thin American air to further their original agenda, be it a waiting “paperless” [if I may use the word of one of my readers] husband somewhere in the US or boyfriend. There have been countless incidents of this and some of the emails I received have even confirmed this new trend. The men who seemingly fall victim to this new scam are those who get married hurriedly without taking the time to know the woman, her family, friends and what have you. They are left to rely on second-hand information ! from parents, friends, family members and others.

But again, how does a man truly know the woman he is marrying when he lives in the US and she lives in Nigeria and only sees her a few weeks at a time when he goes home to visit? Some women know how to comport themselves during those few weeks of togetherness, they [both the man and the woman] are all on their best behavior during this time. They usually will cook, clean and take good care of the man. Those who cannot even cook will take instant cooking lessons from their mothers and friends to impress the guy from the US. The couple tries as much as possible to maximize their time together with each putting up his or her best side, thus, denying each other the benefit of knowing the true character of the other.

A guy who went home to seek and marry his wife confessed that he had no idea that his wife did not know how to cook until he a few weeks after he married her. Whenever he went home to visit, this lady would rush to a nearby restaurant and buy all sorts of already cooked meals and bring it to the kitchen, add one or two items to it, to give the impression that she cooked. The guy further confessed that he enjoyed all of those meals and was happy that he was getting a great wife with fine character and qualities and a great cook as well. But after marriage, the good meals stopped and that was when he found out the real story about the restaurant, etc. The couple can now look back and laugh about it because they are in a very healthy marital relationship. But it could have been worse than that.

It’s tough for most single Nigerian men in the diaspora who intend on taking wives from Nigeria. It has become a high risk game compounded by the grinding economic situation in Nigeria. As they say in business, “buyers, beware.” Some Nigerian men just do not want to bother anymore. The insatiable demands of the in-laws and the hassle of trying hard to determine who is marrying them because of love and who is marrying them because they too want a chance to relocate to the US is just too much for them to bear. This is one of the reasons why some of them just end up marrying white women, islanders and our African-American sisters. They operate on the principle that “the devil you know is better than the one you do not know.”

Can you really blame them?

It is becoming increasingly clear that this game of “ferry-tale-ing” is not the exclusive preserve of some of our men. Some of our women are becoming first class players in this very game as well. Didn’t they say that “what goes around comes around?” Some of our men ought to be careful on how they present themselves in this type of situation. Misrepresentation of one’s self always comes back to hunt and that presents a needless stress on a relationship that is already struggling to cope with the rigors of the American society.

Now, to the conclusion of the stories of the three men in part I:

Emeka, 31!

Emeka’s wife arrived in the US and settled rather well. Her comfort was assured. What a nice guy! Right away, he taught her how to drive and bought her a fairly new car to assure her independence. Tell me the truth, how many of you guys would do that? She found in the nice home the comforts of life that most Nigerians in Nigeria are not used to such as a washing machine, a dish-washer, microwaves and other key appliances. Since she was an educated woman in her own right, she sought further education by enrolling in a Masters/Ph.D program at one of the nation’s landmark universities. As expected, she was beaten by the bug of friendship and she started making friends.

That was where Emeka’s woes began.

Somehow, this well-mannered and cultured lady soon discovered that her husband was not an architect neither was he a senior partner in that firm nor any firm for that matter. She also discovered that he was not a graduate of the top architectural school in the country as he had claimed. Rather, he had an associate degree [a two-year degree] in a related subject from a community college and was working in that architectural firm as a secretary to the "real" architects.

It all came to a head when a new friend told her that she and her husband were planning to build a house in Nigeria. Emeka’s wife then asked her if she had consulted her husband [Emeka] to draw up the blue-print or plan for the house since he is a well known and accomplished architect in that city. There, this new found friend sat her down and you know the rest. In spite of the revelation, the wife refused to believe this and set out to confirm from the website of the company. As awful as this may sound, had Emeka married a wife from his remote village, someone without much formal education, he would not be having his marital woes as she would not know what to do with a computer how much more search a website to confirm his position. But he wanted ! an educated woman and he got one and this is the irony of the whole situation. Anyway, the wife consulted the website and there it was--- “Mr. Emeka WHATEVER”, secretary to the “real architects”. This discovery is certainly a far cry from being an architect, a respectable profession that students usually spend anywhere from four to six years in the university for, some even more.

As expected in this type of situation, suspicion arose and the wife wondered where he got all that money to buy a car for her parents and expensive gifts for her siblings. She wondered whether he was involved in shady deals. She further wondered what else he was lying about. She was confused as to why he would mis-represent himself in this manner. All along, she thought she was marrying an architect, a graduate, a man who had a great profession going, a man who could care for her. She was very shocked to find out that she had more education than her husband who had been in the US for years. They had many fights as a result of this. Trust became an issue. Every claim of the husband was contested, every word taken with a grain of salt.

Emeka was wallowing in his darkest hour!

In his own defense, he indicated that he was intimidated by her education and wanted to place himself at a vantage point. He also talked about the pressure to please his in-laws and to make his family proud. Since this lady was very intelligent having earned a university degree with impressive honors, and was from an educated family, he felt the need to embellish his own situation to give the impression that he had not wasted his time [in the US]. He believed he could achieve this by painting an impressive self-portrait and by lavishing money on the in-laws. He thought at the time that she would never find out as he would support his claim with a huge [legal] financial settlement he got a few months before her arrival.

At the time of this write-up, they had since separated, living in different cities. But there is much hope in the air that they would be back together as man and wife having been through many counseling sessions and the intervention of a few well-meaning Nigerians in the US. Since this revelation, they both claim to have found the Lord, which according to Emeka has given him a whole new perspective on his marital situation.

I wish them nothing, but the very best.

Rowland [between 29-33]!

Someone ought to have loaned Rowland a calculator because he completely miscalculated his own circumstances. He thought by the time the wife's papers would be processed and approved by the US Consulate in Lagos, which usually takes an average of two years, he would have saved enough money to move into a better accommodation, at least, into something with the semblance of a mansion. In a situation where most men would leap for joy and celebrate the moment with friends and with several sweating bottles of Guinness, not to mention simmering bowls of pepper soup with goat meat, Rowland was rather disappointed when he heard that the Consulate had approved his wife’s papers months before anyone expected such to happen.

It was a miracle, but it was one he would rather not have.

He panicked and looked for means to delay his wife’s relocation to the US. He knew he had to come up with a legitimate reason and so he told her that he had been sent to Brazil by his real estate company for a three-month training course. More lies! During these three months he was supposed to be in Brazil, he was in the US working three odd jobs around the clock trying to gather enough funds to improve his living situation. But all to no avail! He just could not work enough in three months to cover his lies of owning several houses and living in a mansion!

And so after the three months of shall we say “grace period” elapsed, the wife arrived in the US expecting to go straight from the airport into an already made mansion complete with maids and servants of the Mexican kind. Instead, she moved straight into the basement [underground] of a house which the husband was renting and sharing with some four-legged and multi-legged creatures such as rats and cockroaches, a sub-standard basement that suffered floods whenever it rained profusely.

As though that were not enough disappointment for this dazzling beauty, she had to do all the cooking and cleaning as she did not see any Mexican maids. Instead, she discovered much to her chagrin that her husband was the butler for the owners of the house whose basement he was renting. In exchange for lower rent, he had agreed to take care of the lawn [of the house] and to clean the huge mansion every so often since the couple who owned it was aged and no longer capable of engaging in such strenuous chores. She also found out that her husband had no “real” job or education, that he worked several odd jobs in addition to his responsibilities to that elderly couple.

Disappointed, feeling cheated, frustrated and lied to, the wife who had lived in far better conditions in Nigeria, separated from her husband within a few weeks and moved in with some relatives. In spite of the intervention of some respected and influential individuals in her life, she was determined to end the marriage and did just that several months later. At the time of this write-up, she had already walked the “aisle” again, this time, with someone who owns and lives in a real mansion, a medical doctor, closer to her age, I was told. Thus, leaving Rowland of the supposed “real estate” business, in a “real state” of dejection and utter hopelessness.

It truly pains my heart.

Julius, 33!

Julius had a smoother ride than the other two gentlemen in the sense that his marriage lasted for sometime before it hit rough waters and capsized. This marriage which we all thought was made in heaven, descended to earth when the wife discovered that her husband had two other children with an American lady he was married to. The wife’s grouse was not the fact that he had been married before or that he had other children, but rather, that he concealed this crucial fact from her even in the face of direct questioning.

Julius’s fate was by no means helped by the way the wife found out about the other children and ex-wife. She [the new wife from Nigeria] had taken her two young children [fathered by Julius] to a children’s amusement park on a given weekend so they can have some fun. The kids, being playful as they were, started playing with other kids at the park as the mother watched on with admiration. But her admiration was short-lived as one of her kids got into a “fight” [for lack of a better word] with another kid over one of the fun toys. As expected, the parents of both kids immediately intervened and advised them on the need to share and not to be selfish. It was at some point during this advisory session with the kids that the new Nigerian wife and the e! x American wife, not having met before and being totally unaware of the existence of each other, became friendly, exchanged information and discovered that one man was the father of their children.

This was where Julius’ happiness ended and his sorrows began. According to him, the “s” in his name stood for “sorrow” from this point on.

He again denied the fact when confronted unaware of his wife’s discovery. From this point on, it became a matter of trust for the wife. She just could no longer trust him anymore. Naturally, she was disappointed, heart-broken, all along thinking she was the first wife and the first woman to bear his children. He not only had one child with another woman, but two. She cried for days, weeks, months. She confessed that she did not know the man she married. She admitted that she would have still married him if she had known this fact before the marriage. She indicated that she loved him the first instance she saw him. [He is truly a likeable guy]. She was not the kind to hold his past against him. After all, she said, there was nothing wrong with marrying and having kids, but when that fact is denied or concealed, the character of the man has to be questioned.

In his own defense, Julius indicated that he was afraid to divulge such information to her because he thought she would no longer be interested. He said, he had planned to tell her at some point in the marriage when he was sure that the news would less likely interfere with the marriage, but as time went by and as he noticed that she was romanticizing with the idea of being his first wife and being the first to bear his children, he did not know how to disappoint her with such a revelation.

At the time of this write-up, this marriage has since ended for almost two years now with Julius paying alimony to two women and child support for four young children!

Ouch!

ALSO SEE: PART I