Domestic violence is on the increase in millions of homes in Nigeria and families are worried and disturbed about this ugly trend.
Indeed, domestic violence has claimed an unspecified number of lives, while efforts to stem the worrisome tide are yet to begin to yield fruits.
In this interview, the Founder, Spiritual Head and Grand Imam of Shafaudeen-in-Islam Worldwide, Prof. Sabitu Olagoke opines that the ugly trend is a product of the inability of the powers that be on the one hand and other stakeholders in society on the other hand to uphold principles in child rearing and marriage sustainability. Excerpts :
Cases of domestic violence are on the increase in Nigeria, why is this so ?
Domestic violence is a manifestation of the system’s, society’s , community’s or nation’s failure in the area of child rearing principles and marriage sustainability concepts because we fail to uphold them.
For example, a woman and a man interact naturally at platonic love instance, when this moves into emotional state, the love creates a magnetic field that attracts the positive and negative to become one.
This would now lead to marriage after undergoing some customary and religious rights which are expected to have given the proposed in-laws opportunities to esoterically research into some issues of both medical and emotional importance. For example, the family record of values on past activities would assess the visibility of such marriages, if the research was objectively carried out without bias or unnecessary attached values based on wealth and influence only.
This is because marriage is purely a concern between the couple.
Unfortunately, the home producing couple care less today, while the religious homes expected to process and manage the couple may lack the teaching and learning principles in guidance and counseling, thereby making the marriage to be susceptible to unguarded influences. This is based on the misconceptions about the personality traits of the couple, who would manage the home front.
Every home, new or old must be fortified with a strong foundation. To this extent parents have to play a critical role before fixing the marriage, by assisting the couple to have a successful courtship period that must have assessed the strength and weaknesses of the intending couple as well as assisting them to maximally, explore the areas of opportunities as regards control of the possible aspect of threats.
This may run through the economic standing of the couple and their medical compatibility status to avoid future pregnancy delay and blood and genotype challenges to avoid possible sickle cell anemia for expected offspring, which may be frustrating to manage, if at all we could manage it, in a way that would not break the existing love between the couple.
A natural safety guide, in terms of societal, religious and cultural acceptability of virtues, is virginity or abstinence from casual sex before marriage, for the marriage to be sustained without any suspicion.
The management level of marriage consummation demands that couples must have signed Memorandum of Understanding, that there is no perfect man or woman on earth and that there is a limit to which we can correct our weaknesses, hence the couple must accept each other as the best perfect mix, for the holy matrimony to be kept intact.
For sustainability of the marriage, the following virtuous codes of life must be upheld by the couple in their day to day relationship. For example, love must not be allowed to diminish. The couple must assist each other in the home project. They must equally share things in common.
Also, timeliness must be their watchword in carrying out activities. In addition, honesty must be the bedrock of living together, while respect must be reciprocal in the home between both parties.
When all these virtues are upheld, the possibility of domestic violence based on disagreement or a possible hidden agenda would be highly minimized.
In the running of the home, another phase of life would emerge, manifesting in the arrival of children that would demand and challenge the responsiveness and responsibility of the couple, in their activities at the home front.
Child rearing principles, must therefore address the following to ensure a strong foundation for the child, which should also be perceived as a universal concept that must address, 1)the need to reduce infant and maternal mortality rate. In this regard, government on one hand and the parents on the other, must therefore uphold the culture of observing the seven(7)codes of child rearing viz, 1)Value 2) Protection 3) Safety 4) Respect 5) Inclusiveness 6) Hearing or giving attention as well as giving freedom to manage the growth of children from infancy to adolescence or early adulthood.
If the process of achieving the above is religiously followed, the home would be devoid of domestic violence, this is because to produce a virile and versatile youth, that would be capable and competent to offer service, such a personality must have been given true direction and sacrifice as basis for leadership in good governance which happen to be the correlation between the home and society.
Our failure to observe these concepts of marriage sustainability and child rearing, is often hinged on poor parenting, divorce cases or broken homes, with the resultant penalty of recycling cases of domestic violence based on solvable and avoidable mere cases of misunderstanding which in some cases resulted in the death of one of the two parties, which would definitely affect the welfare of the children, in terms of peer group and hostile environment influence.
The society will benefit, if we are all trained to realize that we should look before we leap, when it comes to the issue of marriage to be able to have a perfect mix for a happy home formation.
We should equally learn from the experience of older parents, whose marriages have been successful to produce the best and renown actors and professionals in the world filled with competitiveness, to shape our focus on the essence of good custody for the child.
It is important for nature nurturing of the adolescent, so as to effectively manage and adequately cater for a possible emerging crisis of the regime using the stated concepts and codes.
Above all, aberrations in our lives must be made to subside on entering marriage, while child rearing success demands the need for role models who possess impeccable character and exemplary lifestyles.
Products of the home are the leaders in the nearest future, that would hold forth, the basis for the continuity of society.
Government must help us by enabling all socialization agents to be able to assist us in influencing positively the running of our homes to be devoid of acrimony, woman battery, rape, pedophilia, divorce, murder among several others.
The society, on the other hand, must be assisted to have the core values of integrity restored, to influence better home support and management.
Domestic violence is destructive, hence there is need for all of us to control our anger and emotions, while we must equally avoid drugs as a panacea to the control of emotions. Let us all say no to domestic violence.
Domestic Violence, Nigeria, Government,
Comments