Four weddings and a Fulani

A few weeks back The FameWorks had the great privilege of visiting Kano, in Northern Nigeria.  We escaped the craze of Lagos at dawn and an hour or so later,  landed in a sedately sweltering desert city.  We negotiated the lanes of this ancient trading hub and marvelled at the streetlife, the  immaculate robes, irridescent in the sun.  We went in search of insight.

One woman we spoke to introduced herself as a second wife.

If you’ve not grown up in a tradition of polygamy, it’s hard not to feel a little sense of shock on hearing such an introduction, but it’s pretty normal there.

The Emir of Kano, Lamido Sanusi II,  is latest in a royal line of 13 Fulanis that goes back to the mid eighteenth century. He’s an educated man, son of a diplomat, formally Governer of the Central Bank of Nigeria, and husband to four wives.  One is still at university and won’t be joining him at the Palace until after graduation.

Some Western commentators have taken him to task on this.  He recently told an FT columnist,  “In Britain today, you can have relationships with any number of women. You can have six partners. If they agree and you’re not forcing them, you are not committing any offence. But if you decided to marry them, you’d go to jail. If a society does not criminalise adultery, it has no business criminalising polygamy.”

It’s a neat line of argument.  Though as some on these shores might point out,  the Britain that doesn’t criminalise a man for having multiple concurrent sexual partners out of wedlock, will also (in theory at least) countenance a woman sowing her own wild oats.  The society that doesn’t criminalise polygamy, by contrast, takes a dim view of such women.

We didn’t get into any such discussion with the young junior wife.  We were happy enough just to be there.  And for that we had the Emir to thank… travel to Kano has become a relatively safe business for foreigners thanks to his well publicised defiance of Boko Haram.

Some things are complicated.