OPINION: Don’t Pray To Have The Kind Of Father-in-law Like Mine

By Anayo M. Nwosu

Chief Obiabaka was a captain in the Biafra Army. He was one of those lucky soldiers not consumed by the civil war.

The man has only one daughter who combined the beautiful features of his wife and his height to become a paragon of beauty better described as “Enenebe eje olu” in Igbo language.

Right from childhood, Chief Obiabaka who was himself a seasoned player while a student and as a military man, ring-fenced his only daughter to prevent marauding men or boys from having access to her.

He would personally take the girl to school and would bring her back as dutifully as a chaperone. He saw it as a committed task.

For the high chief, boarding school was a no-go area as the daughter went to secondary school from home.

He also would even visit the girl at her university campus in Abia state virtually every week to ensure that his priceless asset was in school and had not followed some bad friends out on escapades.

A visit from school to relations without his approval was banned. All avenues for corruptive influences were nipped.

While the daughter saw her father’s overbearing protective acts as a show of love even as her friends kick, the man believed that there was no crime in securing his daughter.

He didn’t want any fellow man to “kill a python atop his high yielding palm tree” that is, “truncate his daughter’s bright future”.

The smart father succeeded in making the daughter believe that adolescence love affair was dangerous and career-truncating while securing the young innocent girl’s promise of to always discuss all male advances with him for guidance. This created a high obstacle for master toasters who met in Miss Obiabaka a girl that had raised the dad to a deity.

The Chief was so impressed that the daughter became born again while in the secondary school and continued in the university even though he himself was a normal Anglican with respect for Igbo culture and tradition.

In her very first day on campus, the young Miss Obiabaka become a member of Nigerian Federation of Evangelical Students (NIFES). This made her a triangular student (i.e hostel-class-library-and back to hostel).

That was how the young Miss Obiabaka graduated from the university without a feel of engaging in an intimate boy-girl relationship except some occasional accompanied visits to a christian brother in his hostel with a fellow sister.

In those days when a “sister” visited a “brother”, the born-again brother would desire to “tell the born-again sister something” but would be afraid that the christian sister would not agree or would be scandalized to discover that the christian brother had backslidden even though the christian sister had desired the brother and was wishing earnestly to hear something and was ready to agree “to do something”.

In the manifest aura of adolescent holiness, a lot of sperm turned into to a lake of starch on the night pants or bedsheets of the christian brothers just as a river of slimy gums were seen in those of their female counterparts as they dreamt all night long in the bosom or alms of each other just as those other sinful students do in reality.

While the born again christian university female students lived in dreams and in the hope of waking up in the alms of super sexy but God-fearing men or husbands, their worldly counterparts or some moderate christian sisters had less of wet dreams.

They were made wet by men or fellow christian male students who also made them cry for ecstasy, pregnancies or sexually transmitted diseases.

My own experience was different as I started early.

I was one of those boys caught and punished by Nnanyi Ozuomee, my uncle, for practicing “aja aghugho” or “unauthorized play” after peeping through a keyhole (or climbing into the ceiling roofs and looking down through holes we had early perforated) to watch our unmarried uncles entertain their female guests.

Growing up as a child, I had learnt that sex was an “aja aghugho” or a “reprehensible act” which was done in the secret. Open rehearsals were punished with strokes cane and children made to mock the culprit with “onye ajo aghugho!” chants.

Sex was never discussed openly in my childhood days except amongst my naughty friends as we converged to discuss our peeping exploits but in hushed tones.

A later education that marriage offers a licence to have sex between a man and a woman didn’t quite blight my childhood perception of sex as a “shameful or reprehensible” act until I married Chief Obiabaka’s only daughter.

My wife made an error of telling me how protective the father was and how the man embarrassed some dare-devil boys that braved it to visit her at home.

According to my wife, men from her fellowship called “brothers” or pastors were forbidden from visiting her at home during vacations or any other time.

I also gathered that the father maintained three huge dogs that scared away both thieves and those plotting to steal the daughter’s heart.

Even though I finally passed my father-in-law’s hard examination and screening to marry his only daughter, I tried not hurt his feelings by appearing romantic to his daughter in his presence.

In my utmost respect for my wife’s father, I had asked my friend, the priest officiating our wedding to skip “you may now kiss the bride” at our wedding.

The protective actions of my father-in-law that arrested his daughter’s boy-girl relationship experience have now created a problem for me.

My wife thinks that I’m her boyfriend now. How can that be? A titled man like me!

Perhaps, we shall get married soon!

But in my wife’s quest turn me into a modern day lover boy, I still care about the feelings of her father.

I feel that the old man would be wondering how I start the new car of a daughter he gave me; how I engage the gear, rev up the engine, my speed, my mileage, how I cruise and the car’s sounds as I do all that.

I’m now the prisoner of my past and my imaginative conscience.

My childhood worldview of romance, sex and outward show of endearment is still rioting in my head.

You can now imagine why I avoided my father-in-law throughout the period my wife was pregnant with our first child.

I was afraid that the man might not be able to contain his emotions. He might be hurting. I was afraid that he might killed me.

I didn’t have to show that I did it.

I reasoned that it was better for my father-in-law to guess what I did and still do to her precious daughter than to escort my wife, my victim, with a bulging stomach to visit him.

I thought that such visit was like triumphantly brandishing a proof or evidence that could provoke a man who loves the only daughter with his life and had sacrificed a whole lot to make her an untampered queen of heart that she truly is.

You may never know the real reasons why most fathers cry as they give away their beautiful daughters in marriage and the real reasons why some fathers-in-law don’t like their daughters’ husbands.