TheCable

The groin is perhaps where providence hid the bomb that will detonate mankind. Even in ancient history, for a tiny drop of seminal fluid, nations have gone into war with nations and a whole city lay in ruins just because one man wanted to engage in the animal desire of hoisting his erect flag in an island that is just a fleshy void. Biblical account of the murder committed by King David simply because he desired Batsheba, wife of Uriah, his army commander, illustrates how coitus killing is as old as man.

Some Chinese Emperors reportedly believed that they could gain immortality by having sex with as many women as possible. Thus, it was the duty of the empire to organize the Emperor’s sex life so as to ensure the well-being of the entire Chinese empire. Chinese calendar clocks of the 10th century, according to some ancient Chinese historians, rather than being used to keep track of time, were used to schedule the time of rotation for the women who slept with the Emperor. Their Secretaries reportedly kept records of the Emperor’s sex life and this they did by dipping brushes in imperial vermillion, an ink of a brilliant red colour.

Ligali Mukaiba, late Epe-born Yoruba Apala musician, put the woman mystique into modern perspective. In his album entitled Epe Ogunmodede 2, the musician with a unique feverish voice said he had searched the whole world and could not find any misstep that a woman cannot railroad a man into, or a target she cannot get him to shoot, once she works his libido to the top of the artillery range. He called that point a deadly moment, which in very deep Yoruba he rendered as, (asiko) t’o ba n dun (mon) ni, to n j’araba eni. According to Mukaiba, if the woman, at the zenith of a man’s desire to sleep with a woman, asks him to embark on a journey as far as Sokoto, have painful incisions etched on his head or have him take deadly decisions that will ultimately destroy him, kurukere, (sheepishly) the man will willingly do so. Mukaiba’s counsel is that, if a man was in his right senses, he will flee from women, whom he derogatively calls anipele because, once she takes him to the top of the mountain, she can lead him to his fall and thereafter, flee.

From ancient times, many men have been led to their destruction simply due to the mere desire to drop a tiny ounce of seminal fluid in the woman. This was probably why the French devised the phrase femmes fatale (destructive female). Sociologists who refer to the point of a male’s desire for sex as a point of animal desire are right on target. When a man desires a woman, it is like the total casement housing his brain has dropped down to his groin and his erect member dictates the geography of his next action. That is why a man sleeps with his dirty housemaid and men sleep with girls far less attractive than their wives at home. President Clinton’s Almighty presidency almost crashed when his misguided libido led him to a voluptuous White House intern, Monica Lewinsky. People in positions of power have sex with their secretaries, assault hotel maids for sex (ask ex-IMF boss, Strauss Kahn) and sleep with nannies. Some even sleep with their daughters at that moment of uncontained or uncontainable sexual affliction. It is a moment when certain recklessness and even unscrupulousness takes control of man.

Thus, when Nigerians began to seethe in anger at the viral voice recording of a Professor in the Accounting Department of Obafemi Awolowo University, (OAU) Richard Akindele, which ostensibly got leaked in a sex-for-marks scandal, three things jutted out. One was a naked exhumation of sex which has since inception been a seemingly intangible crisis that bedevils the academia; the second is our collective hypocrisy and self-righteousness as a people and third, our failure to acknowledge that Akindele merely entered into the ancient animus that destroyed our forebears, emperors and nations.

In trying to understand why what appears the ugliest part of a woman should be the most attractive, psychologists easily escape into the works of psychoanalyst, Sigmund Freud. According to Freud, all human actions are motivated by illicit reasons of sex. According to them, sex possesses value like currency. While money has such a powerful value that can be used to purchase sex, sex, especially from the perspective of the female gender, can be used to get money. In its own right, access to power, while it mints money and thus gives wealth, also gives its owner easy access to sex. Attractive women in society easily transform the primacy of their sex appeal into a currency that can be spent. From ancient times, women use sex as a weapon of getting what they want from men, turn decisions in their favour and get undue advantage in government, diplomatic circles and the highest decision making level. If you are in doubt, check how biblical Queen Esther deployed her sex appeal to get King Ahauserus to lift up the golden scepter and grant her reprieve from an offence which attracted death penalty, as well as getting him to hang the tormentor of the Jews, Hamman.

Western Carolina University associate professor and author, Saheed Aderinto, in his book, When Sex threatened the State, writes on how sex easily becomes a commodity and how it reflects in virtually all encounters of man. This follows Michel Foucault’s discourse of sexuality as an object of power. Because men in power are also composed of flesh and blood which are bound to submit to the sex appeal of attractive women, many decisions are made that are significantly borne out of the desire to satisfy sexual instinct than to favour the mass of the people or political constituents. A powerful writer once said that no library in the world smells as beautifully as when a man is exploring the sacred pages of a woman’s body.

Even though traditional African history is silent on the influence of women in decision-making process, it revealed that those who underrated the sex appeal of the female gender in decision-making processes in pre-colonial society did so at their peril. One illustrative story of this was that of a king simply referred to as Olufimon Akoko. His newest queen, curious about what transpires when the Oro cult was in session, persuaded him to bring her to the arena of the cult initiation process. Alarmed by this unprecedentedly dangerous demand, the king was reported to have spurned the queen’s request but her constant seductive overtures won. So he devised a strategy to smuggle her into the royal stool, veiled from the public’s glare. However, the kingdom, which relied strongly on divination, and fazed by the discordant tunes emanating from the Oro initiation, consulted the Ifa oracle which divined that the king had committed abomination. She was subsequently beheaded.

There are arguments as to whether modernity and technology have made sex spread like the metastasis of cancer. My personal opinion is that sex had always been a menace and is even less rampant now due to awareness of the incurable diseases that trail it. In those days, inside those face-me-I-face-you houses, illicit sex was rampant. Men slept with their neighbors’ wives when no one was in sight and the rate of incest was high. Agreed that promiscuity is helped by the near nakedness on display today on the social media and flagrantly naked women on the streets, the dilemma of sex has posed a problem to man from inception.

Having said all the above, some men, even from ancient times, overcame the dangerously powerful mystique of women. Though the story of biblical Joseph and Portiphar’s wife could be a fable to modernity, there are many Josephs in history who looked at that seemingly irresistible groin of a woman and moved on. Such stories are however far between as any man who has blood flowing in his groins and overcomes the temptation of a woman deserves to be beatified. So how come Professor Akindele couldn’t? A Lagos Pastor once confessed that he leaves his doors and windows ajar when counseling women to prevent being tempted.

If any man who cannot resist women works in a Nigerian higher school environment, he deserves to be pitied. Suggestive dresses and the prevailing and growing culture of students not studying, yet desiring to pass, are combining to make lecturers in particular victims of rampaging girls on campuses. When a girl like the girl in the viral audio fails to read and pass her exams, scoring less than 40, she makes herself prone to sexual hyenas like Professor Akindele. This writer was once told of a girl who failed her exams; who walked into the lecturer’s office, turned the key, unbuttoned her blouse and brought out the two devils therein, asking “Oga, are they not beautiful?”

Men are biologically wired to be stronger than one another. While some are afflicted with the god of eros, so much that they are impulsive about sex and can sleep with a dog, some can withstand its affliction. It is the latter who should be sent to Nigerian schools. The Akindeles suffer affliction in their groins and such are the dangers to society.

Our collective societal hypocrisy is however in singling out the Akindeles in the academia and fail to address the fact that it not only permeates society, it is the burden we all carry. I read a very powerful submission in this regard on the social media during the week which says that since time immemorial, lecturers have always slept with their students, doctors with nurses, managers with secretaries, pastors with church members/choir masters etc and this is one of the mysteries of life. The OAU scandal broke probably because the girl in question told her jealous boyfriend who instigated the expose. The truth is, a thousand and one other sexual escapades roil on campuses without anyone being in the know. Illicit sex transactions of this colour on campuses will always transpire once there are two people lawyers call offerees and offerors – offerer and one being offered. The only way to eliminate it is for the girls to be atop their intellectual games by scoring high marks in their exams and being ready to petition higher authorities if such sexual hyenas, disguised as lecturers, demand sex, using marks as collateral.

Buhari’s Gadaffi

Thank God that the arguments on whether President Muhammadu Buhari will seek a second term or not have been settled in the affirmative. He declared to the whole world last week at the All Progressives Congress (APC) National Executive Council (NEC) meeting that he will run for a second term in office. Now, we all know that Buhari may be a phenomenon that Nigeria will grapple with again from 2019 – 2024. Since it is a possibility, we all should guard our loins and be prepared for the eventualities – either positive or negative – of that decision.

Having completely known what Citizen Buhari stands for, judging by his actions and inactionetinyr scrus of the last three years or so, it becomes very easy to project what we will grapple with between 2019 and 2024. We do not have to visit necromancers or seers to tell us. God willing, next week, this column will try and go ahead of time into that pending administration and do a psycho analysis of what lies ahead of us.

However, on Wednesday last week, while meeting with Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, at the Abuja House in London, Buhari claimed that the marauding killer-herdsmen were trained by the late Libyan leader, Muammar Gadaffi.

That claim has elicited several commentaries, including uproar in the Senate. Since the herdsmen attack is a major issue to be interrogated in Nigeria today, the President’s comment cannot but be subjected to tougher scrutiny. Why did Buhari choose Gadaffi, a dead man who cannot reply, as object to demonize over the killings? Why choose a Libya which is a country without a government at the moment, to hang this governmental failure on? Didn’t government tell Nigerians early this year or so that ISIS had a hand in the herdsmen killing? Was Gaddafi also responsible for visible governmental failure to condemn the attacks? Did Gaddafi also get President Buhari to compare the dead in Taraba with the dead in Benue? Curious and curiouser, apologies to Olatunji Dare.