Dear Pete Edochie: We hear you, but…

Dear Pete Edochie,

You are a success story.

An excellent actor and most importantly a great person.

A family man. Married for 51 years. That’s something.

In an industry where actors swim in scandals. You have managed to sail respectfully.

Until you dropped the bomb recently and people who don’t know would decieve themselves to think you are doing it just so you can trend.

Trend?

They must not know you.

Edochie is not the regular item.

They must understand that you are not as shallow as they imagine.

You are a core professional and one full of substance.

But you took a subject most sensitive and trashed it.  Unfortunately, it didn’t sound romantic in the ears of many.

You said:

”Any young man who gets down on his knees to propose to a girl is not just an idiot, he is a bloody fool, a compound buffoon. We try to copy white people.

”I believe in the sanctity of our culture, the essence and the core of our culture. The white man kneels down to propose to a girl. You know what it means, the girl takes over the family. This is why whenever you disagree with a wife overseas, you are kicked out and your wife takes the house.

”Young men who should be in charge of their destinies hand it over to women. That makes you all fools.”

Complex thoughts there.

And how people manage to interprete it wrongly also amazes me.

Reading the lines with a good eye. I don’t see how the lines suggests that women shouldn’t be allowed to shine. Or where you spoke against the women.

You spoke to the men and asked them to be men enough for their destiny sake. And not hand it over to women.

You featured in a movie directed by a woman who has grown to become a celebrated figure in the industry. And you gave her all the support she required from you.

That doesn’t suggest, in any form, a man that is against the success stories of women.

All you did was ask that our men do not lose their destiny to women by copying the whiteman.

Kneeling to a woman is a whiteman’s culture. In Nigeria’s culture, it’s the woman that kneels before the man.

We see it in all our traditional wedding. Even the Yoruba culture that requires man to bow down flat before the woman’s family also ensures the woman kneels down before the man.

But nowadays, it’s become a thing to see men kneeling to propose love and marriage to the woman.

But sir.

You must understand that all these Nigerian men doing it are just doing it for the show.

They may have copied the style of asking the woman’s hand in marriage. But most just do it in complete deciet. It doesn’t really even suggest their submission to the woman.

Even some of the men who go ahead to frustrate the living existence out of the women they marry actually knelt down as well.

The women who have been in the news for killing their husbands also knelt down for their husbands too according to the culture you preached. So really the issues could be actually deeper than kneeling or no-kneeling.

But I understand you though.

Especially from the angle where you addressed how it affects most of our men in the whiteman’s land. There are a lot of sad tales from overseas. Where most men have become a victim of the system.

The stories are countless.

Where a woman arrests the husband over some argument. Where the woman uses her powers to put the husband in perpectual bondage over some family disputes. There are great numbers of black men in the whiteman’s jail for unbelievable marital matters.

I like to understand that culture can save Marriage. I lile to believe in the sanctity of our culture, the essence and the core of our culture. I like us to also review the culture as well.

The culture where the woman is victimized once the husband dies should be reviewed. And there are more dark issues about our culture too.

Humans are not perfect. Laws and cultures have also, over time, shown their imperfections. And marriage is about these imperfect laws, cultures and humans.

It’s good that a respectable figure like you join the debate. Even better that you have started it. From kneeling or no-kneeling, we can go deeper. And challenge the core features of the subject.

The whiteman thought us to run away from a marriage that could kill us or make us live depressed ever after. And so many Nigerians nowadays would rather walk away.

But the Nigerian culture encourages us to die in the dark marriage rather than quit.

So truly, we have many things to learn and unlearn.

Your No-kneeling spotter,

Ediale

#ForTheCulture

PS:  51 years in marriage!? It rarely lasts these days.

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