A new folio was last month added to the existing ‘encyclopedia’ on women that are suspicious of their husbands. The page contains the bizarre misconduct of an Iranian woman that forced a Qatar Airways aircraft to make an emergency landing at India’s Chennai Airport en-route Bali from Doha. The woman, according to Hindustan Times, was travelling in company of her husband and child. When the husband slept, the wife used his hand to unlock his fingerprint-protected phoneand discovered messages that suggest her husband was cheating on her.
Angered by the discovery, the wife reportedly started to hit her husband. The intervention of the cabin crew failed to calm down the enraged wife and the spiraling fracas eventually forced the pilot to make an unscheduled stopover in Chennai where the couple and their child were taken off the plane.The aircraft thereafter resumed its journey to Indonesia.
About a week after the Iranian woman’s hysterical show of skepticism, her frenzied admirer in Wuse II, Abuja, allegedly murdered her husband Bilyaminu Muhammad Bello, son of a former National Chairman of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) Dr. Bello Haliru Muhammad. Reports said Bilyaminu’s wife, Maryam Sanda, had earlier in the evening of the fateful day, Saturday November 18, 2017, fought with her husband and insisted he divorced her. Maryam was purportedly angered by the correspondences she found on Bilyaminu’s phone; accusing him of chatting with his girlfriends on his phone. Few hours after Bilyaminu’s friends mediated between him and his wife, destiny took its course as Maryam allegedly stabbed her husband in the chest and abdomen. Maryam reportedly drove Bilyaminu to Maitama hospital where he was confirmed dead.
Five days after Maryam’s alleged murder of Bilyaminu, another house wife, Hauwau, in Zamfara state, Nigeria, stabbed her husband, Bilyaminu Yusuf, with a broken bottle. The infuriated woman committed the alleged crime in Filin Jirgi area of Gusau metropolis. The victim was rushed to the hospital in blood-stained clothes where he was admitted. While a source said she committed the act because her husband was planning to marry another wife, other sources gave a different version of the story. In any case, Hauwau stabbed her husband.
The weird approaches to the (mis)management of matrimonial crises in contemporary Nigerian homes have, in recent times, assumed frightening dimensions. When I first attempted to analyse the trend, I perceived the obsession as a consequence of excessive jealousy among today’s young women. However, I later found public opinions that link this tragic development to the influence of hard drugs and substances more diagnostic than mine.
As affirmed by medical sociologists, it would be difficult if not impossible for a normal person in his normal senses under normal circumstances to attack a fellow human being with a weapon or instrument that could lead to death. It becomes more difficult if the target is related by birth, fosterage or marriage, to the perpetrator of the crime. This means a violent attack cannot be carried out with a knife, broken bottle, machete, gun or Improvised Explosive Device (IED) without the attacker losing his sanity or coming under the influence of hard drugs or substances.
Reports confirm the presence of Shisha in the Wuse II residence of late Bilyaminu. This suggests that Maryam Sanda must have (Allah knows best) acted under the influence of drugs. Shisha, which is an Arabic word by origin and also called Hookah, is a single or multi-stemmed instrument for vapourising and smoking tobacco or cannabis. Its vapour or smoke is passed through a water basin (often glass-based) before inhalation.
The endemic abuse of drugs among Arewa youths in the country has becomea topical issue. This column expressed concern over this ruinous phenomenon that threatens the future of Arewa when it published “Another socio-economic threat to Arewa” on this page in the October 7, 2017 edition of Daily Trust on Saturday. Many concerned individuals and groups from this part of Nigeria have recently been lamenting over the worrisome level of drug addiction among Arewa youths. Just last week, the Northern Traditional Council in a communiqué issued at the end of its General Assembly in Kaduna also expressed concern over the increasing effects of drug abuse on youths and married women in Arewa.
Easy access to so much money has been linked by criminologists to drug addiction among youths. Nothing, of course, stops a young man or woman who has unrestricted and unmonitored access to stupendous wealth that is excessively greater than he requires from seeking ways (some of them illicit) to use up the colossal cash. On the other hand, sociologists say efficient correlation exists between abject poverty and deviant behaviours including drug addiction.
Jeremy Frank, a Pennsylvanian mental health psychologist, asserts that many drug addicts believe that illicit drug consumption helps them to forget their problems which may include unemployment, limited access to basic necessities of life and lack of parental love or care. If these postulations are true, one would wish not to be too rich or too poor because of the far-reaching consequences the two extreme situations could have on ‘innocent’ children. The terrible fight sometimes engaged by heirs over inheritance could also justify this moderate position. While poverty could be virtuous, a middle course between it and affluence would suffice for individuals that cherish contentment. Some readers, I guess, would not mind becoming the richest person no matter the conceivable risks such portends for today’s children that often lack close monitoring and access to moral training.
Tackling this menace requires a genuine regional collaboration between northern states’ governors, local government chairmen and the council of northern traditional rulers. This proposed synergy should produce an all-inclusive strategic plan that will exclusively focus on Arewa youths. Besides capturing approaches to tackling their generational challenges, the document should also give details of policies that will create diverse political, economic, educational and recreational opportunities that will cater for their needs. By all-inclusive, I mean it should not be the usual political fiat handed down by state governors to and for implementation by LG chairmen and royal fathers. As stakeholders, they should be part of the process that will prepare the suggested strategic plan.
While this is being awaited, the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) is encouraged to continue to work hard to break the jinx of hard drug marketers. Beyond this is the need for parents to give the training of their children the attention it deserves. May Allah (SWT) make our children the comfort of our eyes and not the source of our woes, amin.
