Wife beating is a sickness but has an effective cure in my village

By Anayo M. Nwosu

Uyanwa had borne the grief and indignation for so long without telling anyone. She has decided to tell her relations before her husband kills her.

Her decision to report the matter to her brothers paid off. Her husband no longer beat her after one course of an age long administration of treatment.

When Uyanwa reported the 7th beating by her husband to her brothers, little did she know that her brothers were waiting for that one more report to put all that to a stop.

She didn't know that the neighbours who wanted her to remain alive had been reporting the regular battery by her husband to her people.

Uyanwa didn't know that her brothers would react so quickly.

They arrived the next day and performed what is referred to as correctional beating treatment on their brother-in-law.

In so doing, they ensured that they didn't disfigure him with well measured blows which kept come all angles until Obike, Uyanwa's husband, swore that he would never beat his wife again.

The correctional beating is usually done in the presence of the wife as the humiliation of crying before one's wife or a wife seeing the husband crying like a baby as he is being roundly beaten or subdued to a helpless situation are part of the treatment.

Expectedly, a wife would love it as it begins but would be terrified as the rain of blows from her angry relations increases.

Many a wife would throw themselves  in between their husbands and the assailants brothers to force a respite but they are shoved aside. Sometimes, the actions of the victim-wives are half-hearted.

The wife would be internally happy that a boxer himself is being pelted with multiple blows.

At the point of total humiliation, the wife of the thoroughly beaten husband would start begging her brothers to spare the life of her husband.

About four or five able bodied men are selected for this mission. They are those known to have wrestled or boxed in the market square with very intimidating physiques.

Job done, the pulverized man is now left for his wife to nurse as the inlaws leave with a warning of a greater beating if their sister reports any pushing that is below the level of a slap.

Whenever I hear that a man constantly beats his wife, I ask if there are no longer young men in the wife's family.

In the Nnewi communities of the old, no man was allowed to habitual beat his wife.

Such stupid wife battery tendencies were corrected manually in the same language the man spoke the beatings to the wife who is also a darling sister and a precious daughter to someone else .

The permissible beating of a wife allowed in my village is that in which the man and the wife being beaten would cry or scream of joy and happiness in the heat of the fighting; and that beating which doesn't result in pains but in the increase of the family members.