You want to marry two or more wives? You can relocate to Lagos State to fulfil your heart's desire as bigamy is no longer a criminal offence there. There is no chance that you would be jailed again.
THISDAY can report today that the state House of Assembly has silently amended the Lagos State Criminal Code and expunged bigamy from its statutes.
When next the clerk tells you at the Marriage Registry that you risk seven years in jail if you get married to someone else, you can smile and tell her she's behind the news.
The old Criminal Code of Lagos State Cap C17, section 370 stated: "Any person who having a husband or a wife leaving, marries in any case in which such marriage is void by reason of its taking place during the life of such husband or wife is guilty of a felony and is liable to imprisonment for seven years.
"This section does not extend to any person whose marriage with such husband or wife has been dissolved or declared void by court of competent jurisdiction, nor to any person who contracts a marriage during the life of a former husband of wife, if such husband or wife, at the time of the subsequent marriage, shall have been absent from such person for the space of seven years and shall not have been heard of by such person as being alive within that time."
The state Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice, Mr. Adeola Ipaye, confirmed the development, saying the old law was no longer useful.
Ipaye said it became necessary to remove bigamy because the state government found out that there was no need to criminalise the offence.
He nevertheless said bigamy would now be treated as a civil offence and such a marriage would simply be dissolved without any criminal proceedings being instituted against the offender.
Ipaye did not however say under what law such marriage would be dissolved since bigamy, technically, no longer exists and there is no prescription for remedy.
"Yes, bigamy was expunged from the amended criminal code. It was necessitated by the need to decriminalise it. What this means is that it is no longer a criminal offence when a man or woman who is legally married to contract another marriage. Instead, the marriage remains null and void," he said.
But speaking to THISDAY last night, a legal practitioner and Chairperson, Women Empowerment & Legal Aid, Mrs Funmi Falana, said the organisation was already in court to challenge the decriminalisation of bigamy.
"In any case, bigamy is still in the federal law. So if Lagos fails to prosecute you, the Federal Government can take it up," she told THISDAY on phone.
Prof. Konyinsola Ajayi (SAN) said it became necessary for the state to remove bigamy from the criminal code because in the last 40 years, nobody had been charged with the offence.
He said what the lawmakers simply did by removing the act from the law books is to decriminalise the act.
Human rights lawyer Ebun Adegboruwa said if it was true that the state House of Assembly had expunged bigamy from the state criminal code, it was long overdue.
Adegboruwa noted that for over 10 years now, there had been pressure on the state government to expunge the act because it was not enforceable because of the peculiar nature of the Nigerian society.
Bigamy was introduced into the Nigerian law books by the British during the colonisation of the country and Nigeria is not ripe to fully practise the act, he said.
Adegboruwa said: "These days, because of the cost implication of prosecuting divorce and the time it takes, couples prefer to quietly go their separate ways and remarry and this weakened the law and made it ineffective and unenforceable."
Also, Dr. Joseph Nwobike (SAN) commended the state lawmakers for expunging the act from the state criminal code, saying that since 1914 when the law came into force, it had not recorded any conviction.
He argued that since the law is inconsistent with the country's values, the best thing to do is to discard it.
Nwobike said though the act is no longer a crime, it is an offence under the Marriage Act which is one of the laws of the federation, but wondered where the offender would be the prosecuted.
Though some Lagos lawmakers chose not to comment on the issue, but a member of the House representing Eti Osa 1 constituency, Hon. Yishawu Gholahan, told THISDAY that "bigamy, to be frank with you, is a way of life among Muslims. There is nothing government can do about it. We should just let it be."
Nevertheless, bigamy only applied to those who married under the Marriage Act. Those who choose to marry under customary and religious laws are excluded from prosecution.
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I am going to pose an hypothetical question to the Nigerian crowd who read from these pages. Is it also possible for women to marry as many husbands as her husband is able to marry more women? Women's libido should be just as much charged as men's are.
What I find insanely wrong with this law, even though I know that men would glorify the removal of such laws on the books because of its criminal implications is the one-sidedness of the law. What is good for the goose should be good for the gander, right?
With the legitimising of bigamy in our society, our government did not also institute a proportionate responsibility for the man who calls himself a husband, and has no idea of what it means to raise the children he produces, but would rather relegate such responsibility to the State in terms of education, psychological counselling, nurturing and making sure that the children are properly fed and cared for. Bigamy in our culture definitely creates unintended consequences. Whereas, the man may feel he's conquered what he might feel was societally imposed moral limitations, he, on the other hand, may not in the short term, realise the enormous responsibility attached to producing too many children who may eventually see themselves in the long run as "un-wanted".
So, what is the economic benefit attributable to having too many wives? How could this man, who may not live very long, be able to share his true love with his wives, let alone the many children he may eventually claim to have? And, how could he be sure that he is actually satisfying the sexual desires of his so-called wives? What does this actually say about the state of women in Nigeria? I've watched with utter dismay Nollywood's treatment of Nigerian woman, and I am not impressed. It seems that they have ascribed no values for the Nigerian women, since the end product of any plots involving women has to end up in bed with sexual activities. There are no moral lessons that can be drawn from these movies since it would appear, the script writers place no ethical or moral values to the women who are seen to be raped constantly without any recourse. In fact, the producers seem to glorify such acts, as they have seemed to also poorly replicate by giving colossal legitimacy with the village rulers complicity to the plight of Africans who were taken slaves during this very dastardly illicit human trafficking.
I would've loved to see scenes in these movies where rapists are criminally prosecuted and sentenced, or at least given the preponderance that the Nigerian legal systems decry the brazen abuses which women go through in our society. I would like to see for once, our Police force not engage in blatant acts of bribe collecting, and be able to cite some criminal codes with which anyone arrested can be informed of the crimes they committed. The screen writers to these Z-Rated movies should attempt to tell nigeria's story without constantly denigrating the role of women in our society. It is probably through bigamous laws in the North that led to unloved children like Mr. Abdul-Mutallab to seek inspirational refuge from a total stranger who saw him as impressionable, and decided to convert him into a terrorist. If a father had quality time to spend with his children, there is no way Mr. Mutallab would've sought any sense of direction from a total stranger.
While we are dwelling on this issue, did the Lagos State Government under Gov. Fashola consider the likelihood of the spread of HIV/AIDS, since the harem would now have unprotected sex with many of these women? Has the State made provisions for the causal relationship between having unprotected sex with women who would now be officially sanctioned to die and the likelihood of the exponential spread of HIV/AIDS? Or, is this law just limited to the fun and machismo of the Nigerian male? What sort of examples are we setting for a country where illiteracy and poverty seem to have have a perfect corollary? With the Nigerian population exploding at an alarming rate and our land mass becoming increasingly overtasked to produce the foods we would need to eat to maintain sustenance, I find it quite absurd that Gov. Fashola would allow this law to even receive a legislative reading in the State Assembly. Why do we think less of our women? What Fashola should be doing is to seek to introduce such laws as One Man, One Wife whereby many Nigerian men should learn to live with what they have, and maintain them properly. I can see also a need to strengthen Divorce Laws so that neither the man or the woman is forced to live in an untenable family situation. Right now, there are too many children born out of wedlock in our country, and our legislators both at the State and National levels are ill-prepared to confront these issues. Perhaps, because many of these children born out of wedlock have never felt loved, many of them do see being trafficked as the only way of finding legitimacy. There are news flowing through the media that Nigerian children passing through the Arab world are often accosted in the desert where their organs are forcibly harvested, and are left to die. Our government, of course, has no proper accounting of how many Nigerians are forced to leave our shores in search of survival through child slavery. It is time we really woke up to our responsibility as Legislators equipped with the legal tools to protect Nigerians of all walks of life, and stop glorifying bigamy in the 21st Century.