Thursday, January 30, 2014

Danfo Chronicles: When masquerades go to church and gays become criminals

It was a few years ago, at the time citizen news reportage was gaining traction across the nation, that news of masquerades meting out corporal punishment on miniskirt and trouser wearing young ladies somewhere in the Nsukka  axis reached social media.

As usual, the Nigerian social media reacted true to type with that outpouring of anger that occurs whenever vestiges of the ‘devilish’ past of our ancestors appear to be in conflict with the sacred untouchable manifestations of the new religion.

Caught up in outrage, most of us missed the big story, which was not that masquerades enforced a dress code, but that this dress code stemmed originally from the Christian church.


You see, the church in Igboland, because of the colonial missionary inspired and now widespread belief that traditional religions are of the devil (and the falseness of this needs repeating), has tried severally to stamp out the practice of iti mmanwu—masquerading—in Igboland and elsewhere. As such, it is commonplace across Igboland for church going youths to spurn the coming of age rites that in the past were a mandatory step in the road to adulthood. At the moment, having convinced the majority, in principle, that the way of the cross is the one right and only way, the church—especially of the Pentecostal variety—has taken the battle to the physical manifestation of the old gods; destroying shrines, totems, sacred trees and animals, wherever they are found—this is ongoing in today’s Igboland.

In the face of this history, one wondered what an mmanwu was doing enforcing a dress code set by a general misapplication of an Old Testament passage by Christian preachers. (Note that it is the nature of the Mmanwu to enforce—in the glorious days of our father’s, some varieties were used extensively as law keepers and enforcers.)

The answer is not as complex as many may think. To get to this answer, think about culture, how it is said to be dynamic, to have the ability to adapt and how without these attributes a people’s culture stops growing, and dies. In this particular instance, the Igbo, as many warned for years, have slowly, but surely, absorbed aspects of the Christian Culture in such a way that even those who try to hold on to cultural practices  end up becoming champions, albeit unknowingly, of these imported values.

If you consider how much of our culture we have lost and how much of western culture we have imbibed, you will understand the mindset that drove masquerades to enforce an archaic Christian value.

What holds for the Mmanwu Society, does too for the Nigerian government, which finds itself the most recent defender of a bible based belief: the one that holds that being homosexual is against nature and thus offends God. It is now a crime to engage in homosexual activities in Nigeria and jail terms of up to 14 years is expected to be a deterrent—the new law echoes but does not replace a colonial law that criminalises sodomy.

Once again, social media is abuzz. Armchair critics are finding enough reason to back the government or decry what they see as infringement on people’s fundamental human rights by a backwards thinking government.

Once again, social media activists stress points for and against the new law—depending on which side of the debate the person falls on.

Many claim the government just took us back to the dark ages, but I don’t agree. The government is hardly living in the past, at least not the past that our father’s lived in, for those ancestors of ours never claimed homosexuality was a crime against the gods. Yes they saw it as an aberration, but beyond scorn, they never jailed or banished anyone for homosexuality.
I still don’t understand how a man can give up the beautifully contoured shape of a female in prime for the male form but my thinking has evolved over the years and I believe people should be left well alone to love as they please.

However, I know that the majority of Nigerians support the government’s stance against homosexuality. As such, with democracy in practice, the money bags in Abuja can be said to be heeding the voice of the people. However, the question should be asked; do the people worry about homosexuality enough for it to constitute a problem in need of a new law to tame?
Looking away from the Nigerian state, one notices that beyond imprisonment and other sad elements of the new law, we are actually not too far away from the West when it comes to gay rights. In America you can sleep with who you want but most American states are yet to agree to gay marriage. Britain is a little ahead of America, but they are missing the beat by forcing Christian ministers to marry gay people—the right to ones belief should also be part of human rights, egbe belu, ugo belu.

On the question of where homosexuality ranks within the realm of culture/custom, I think of nudity. Now one hears claims of nudity not being part of our culture. Like our fathers didn’t have sense enough to wear what suited the prevalent climate here: very sparse clothing? It wouldn’t do to be alarmed, take a peek at old photos and see if our fathers and mothers didn’t run around half naked.

For a fact, homosexuality is not one of those western imports we always mention, but discrimination against gay people is. The colonial government introduced the first anti gay law to what became Nigeria; this new one is mostly a response to aggressive gay rights activism from the west, and the counter of Western style Pentecostals, I reckon.

Therefore, like the masquerades enforcing the church’s laws, we, our government, are actually enforcing the norms of a culture alien to ours. We do this with all sense of righteousness, the sort that comes from feeling you are defending the memory of your ancestors.

Perhaps, what we need to do is stop for a moment, to ponder: would our pre-colonial fathers stand with us to punish men for being thus inclined? This is very important, especially as the cultures from whom we assimilated the dread for homosexuality now say it okay for like poles to attract.

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