African Men:Polygamous in Practice; Monogamous in Principle

By Ogiri John Ogiri

Before the advent of Christianity, monogamy was alien to Africa while polygamy was a highly domesticated and cherished practice among many African men who were largely traditionalists in belief and practice. Then came the European incursion into Africa which also brought with it European Christianity. This new culture required Africans to submit themselves to the abandonment of their age-long established and cherished culture of polygamy in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the award of the special status of a true believer in Christianity.  In other words, polygamy was relegated to the dustbin of detested African practices in favour of the newly introduced culture of monogamy, which was subsequently elevated to the hallowed chamber of accepted practices in the new African Christian practices. Today, monogamy is sanctified while polygamy is demonized in African Christian communities.

But an African man will always be an African man. In order to appear monogamous in the eye of Christianity, he legally marries one wife to whom a bulk of his economic expenditure is directed, and then engages a Harem of concubines that attends to his polygamous appetite as a true African. To this, his financial commitment may be superficially shallow or deep depending on the level of the relationship. This does not, however, imply that an African man, by so doing, is evil, he is only being himself- an African.

I have listened to a lot debates and read a lot of articles arguing in favour of monogamy but against polygamy. The women have been more expressively vocal than the men. I understand how difficult it is for them to have to live with other women in the house under one man. Some have had tortuous upbringings in polygamous homes while some were conditioned to demonize polygamy by stories of failed polygamous marital relationships but that will not suddenly change the fact that Africans are not culturally Monogamous but polygamous. 

Personally I do not demonize polygamy. What I detest is polygamy that puts the lives of women and children in unnecessary financial, moral and psychological jeopardy. Whoever can afford the financial cost, emotional intelligence or psychological maturity required to run a polygamous family should be left alone to choose polygamy. At the end of the day, we can only follow the dictates of our conscience and the cost or otherwise to our comfort, to choose whether to marry more than one wife or to stay with only one.

The fact is, whether we like it or not, an African man will always be polygamous. We can choose either to accept or reject this fact but we are only pretending if we reject it. An African man is polygamous in practice but Monogamous only in principle. But a man who practices monogamy is not more acceptable before God than the one who practices polygamy. Polygamy is a choice, not a moral aberration.