By Omoh Giwa
Dear Nigerian Woman,
Permit me to write to you not as a stranger but as a fellow survivor of the curious carnival called womanhood in this country. I have, without portfolio or election, appointed myself your spokeswoman. My feminism, however, is selective like a woman in Mile 12 market choosing yams with the precision of a surgeon. I will clap for the sisters marching but forgive me if I do not wave rainbow hashtags or bare my breasts in protest. Call me conservative, call me cowardly, even call me confused but you must also call me honest. I like my feminism fully clothed, with hair colours still found in nature and minimal piercings.
But honesty demands that I also admit this: the order we inherited is rotten. It reeks of centuries of women shrinking themselves like suya left too long on the grill. I was reminded of this while re-listening to Beyoncé’s Flawless (the version with Chimamanda’s famous excerpt). Why, Adichie asks, must women shrink themselves to make men feel tall? Why must ambition be rationed like kerosene in wartime? Why should one’s brilliance come with an apology note? And why, in the name of NEPA, must anyone dim their light so another doesn’t squint?
We know the script, don’t we? We were trained for it before our milk teeth fell out. Sweep like this, cook like that, sit like so because “what will your mother-in-law say?” Our future mother-in-law has been haunting us since childhood, a ghost fiercer than ayamtanga itself. Every act was judged, not by its efficiency, but by how it would look in a marriage audition. You could invent a faster way to cook egusi, but heaven forbid efficiency replace suffering. “Is this how you’ll do in your husband’s house?” The in-laws became a shadow curriculum, shaping us more than algebra ever did.
And yet, even before you say “I do”, you are already three goals down. Some of us were born into penalty shootouts the moment the midwife announced, “It’s a girl.” If your father had hoped for a boy, that was an own goal. Every time an aunt corrected your posture, it was another goal conceded. By puberty, the scoreboard read Nigeria vs Brazil and predictably, we were Nigeria.
Winning as a woman here is not as simple as motivational speakers make it sound. It is not only about “believing in yourself” or chanting affirmations. It is a Herculean task. Marriage doesn’t end it, it merely relocates the battlefield. A friend of mine, thirty-five, working, independent, was chastised by her mother-in-law because she called her husband’s four-year-old niece by her name instead of “Aunty.” Imagine being bullied by a toddler’s title! I heard of a woman who was ordered by future in-laws to take a fertility test before they could “come for her hand.” She dragged her fiancé along and guess what? He was firing blanks. Yet somehow, they assumed she could be infertile. The marriage? Cancelled. The blame? Hers. The logic? Nigerian.
This is not a random madness. It is systemic. Every word, every choice, every ambition is held hostage by those invisible judges called “tradition” and “what will people say.” Even your parents may betray you when you push too hard. Complain about your husband, they whisper, “Endure.” If you outshine him, they warn, “tone it down, don’t disgrace him.” If you dare to want more, society calls you greedy. But let’s be frank: greed is not a woman wanting more; greed is society insisting half of humanity remain less so the other half can feel tall.
Some would call me a rabble-rouser but I say this because I know the ache of shrinking. I know what it is to think your whole destiny is wrapped up in “wife” and “mother.” Noble roles, yes, but not the entire picture. A woman can build bridges, win Nobel Prizes, run companies and still sweep her living room, but God forbid she sweeps without bending correctly, for mother-in-law is watching!
Dear Nigerian Woman, stop orbiting your life around men like a loyal moon. Men are important but they are not the sun. Your self-worth is not a bonus point; it is the ground beneath your feet. And if that ground shakes, rebuild it in concrete.
I know this seems daunting. Do not think asking for independence is easy. When our fathers wanted independence from the British, were all the uncles in agreement? Did some not whisper, “Let the Queen rule, she knows better”? If men could rewrite the nation, then women should be allowed to rewrite womanhood.
So while I will not join nude protests or rainbow parades as they unsettle me, I will still raise my voice. I will insist that being female is not a curse. That shrinking is not our destiny. That wife and mother are roles, not identities or life sentences. That the Nigerian Woman deserves to live loudly and unapologetically. Because if we do not claim our light, we will keep handing candles to daughters already born in the dark.
Yours in defiance,
Omoh Giwa from the Department of English, University of Lagos.
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