Umar Tanimu Umar

The Westerners had colinised Nigerians and have succeeded in offloading their tradition onto us. More than four decades after Nigeria attained independence such traditions are taking their folds on us. The Westerners are made different from us, their tradition, culture (if they have any), demeanor, and mode of dressing, e.t.c., are quite different from ours. In an attempt to copy the Whiteman we have thrown our revered traditions to the dogs. The worst culprits are our women, and their “modern” ways of bizarre dressing h ave come under lots of criticisms from religious leaders, scholars, commentators and onlookers. It is sad noting that such criticisms seem to have the reverse effect, the wretchedness in our women’s mode of dressing keeps getting worst by the day.

The Nigerian woman of today aspire to look ravishing, sexy and be admired. Teenagers, schoolgirls, married women, and even old women! has joined in the crazy trend, and have inculcated a fake appearance from head to toe just to look like the white. The norm “black is beautiful” no more binds on our women, few dark complexioned ones maintain their natural skin colour. To most “black is ugly”, and they tend to dejectedly apply all manners of bleaching and toning concoctions in order to alter their God-given complexion. Majority of them by so doing end up having ugly spots and wrinkles which renders them repulsive. Girls, including older women, seem to compete on who parades the faires t of skins, as they felt men are most tempted by the fairest ones who look like oyingbo.

In the olden days, Nigerian women were recognized for their beautiful hair braids, such braids were the hallmark of Africa beauty. Nowadays almost every Nigerian female conditions, relaxes, fertilizes and uses all kinds of artificial creams to stretch the hair to make it look like that of the white. Even when the hair is braided they use all types of dreadful attachments and weavons just to give the hair an artificial bearing. Head ties have nowadays virtually become ancient. This is indeed a very sad development; religiously a woman with uncovered heal is stro ngly rebuked by both Islam and Christianity. We read in 1 Corinthians 11:5 that women ought to cover their heads during prayers, and in verse 6: “if a woman does not cover her head she should have her hair cut off”. The wisdom behind these Biblical injunctions are that women’s heads should be covered while in front of God. But it is not only while in prayers we stand in front of God: God is with us and watches us in everything we do 24/7, and so I will like to believe the verse implies that women should cover their heads all times. In Islam, women are enjoined to cover the whole of their bodies so as to veil their honour.

But all these divine injunctions were desecrated, our women bare all on the streets. You can’t go on the streets without seeing brazen nakedness, it is like X-rated films free on the streets, and you need to close your eyes or stay indoors to avoid the spectacle. Some of the girls choose to be pedestrians so as to catch the eyes of men. Sadly enough some mothers joins in, instead of rebuking the girls, and themselves dresses horribly and seem to compete with their daughters on who bares the most body parts.

In October 2004 I received avalanche of rejoinders for a similar topic I wrote, notably, and unsurprisingly, some of the rejoinders have condemned my counseling. One of such armchair critics, one Okafore, accused me of exaggerating the whole situation saying he grew up in his village in Anambra State “ watching women run errands without their top clothes all day long”. He added: “ I do not see anything wrong (with) showing flesh every now and then”. Okafore might have been born in ancient times when clothes were unavailable and the people were without religion. In modern-day Nigeria, and Africa in general, women are honoured with top and bottom clothes in place. And there is indeed everything wrong with exposing their body parts for everyone’s gaze. I received the fiercest backlash from an eccentric Usman Yerima Mantu who, like Okafore, saw nothing wrong with the display of shame by Nigerian women. He wondered if I understood what I was wrote and accused me of voyeurism, having given a detailed graphic description of the display of nudity by our womenfolk.

However ridiculous such cynics chooses to support the defilement of our cultural and religious ethics as shamelessly depicted in the trend of dressing by Nigerian women, the fact remains that no rightly-thinking parent, guardian or husband enjoys and feel comfortable seeing their daughters, ward on wife dressed in flimsy apparel that exposes all the vital statistics of womanhood. The present mode of dressing is such that most of them feel free to bare the tummy, cleavage, knees, thighs and lots more flesh so as to be noticed. It is very disgusting watching such on our streets and school campuses, I often wonder if these girls have parents at all. Sadly most parents encourage the nudity by buying all types of shabby dresses for their daughters. And for th ose whose parents are reasonable enough to refuse buying such clothes on cannot afford doing so, they easily turn to willing men, a springboard towards prostitution. In the quest to get in vogue many young girls have fallen victims to the evils of the society.

Many have pitched the reason for the debasement of the African mode of dressing by our women to the taking over of missionary schools by government. According to Dr. Onuarah, a Nigerian living in the USA, in the world’s leading democracy parents send their children to religious schools “ to get the decency we used to have but have now abandoned in our descent to damnation”. If religious schools no longer thrive in Nigerian educational system, our homes would very well serve as appropriate avenues where girls should receive the much needed admonition needed to discourage the moral decay in our society. From homes, the mess age should be taken to places of worship where, preposterous as it might sound, many female worshippers frequents while dressed as horribly as they do on streets and school campuses.

I still believe school authorities have a big role to play; they can help to stem the craze by imposing strict dressing codes. Of recent times I observe that girls in secondary schools have taken to cutting down the sizes of their uniforms, a starting point towards further nudity when they move on to post-secondary schools. And so, parents and school authorities should work hand-in-hand to instill the need for a change of attitude in the atrocious manner of dressing by our girls.

In whichever angle you tend to look at it, the bottom line is that Nigerian women have tossed aside our culture, have imbibed a foreign and reprehensive Western culture and are dressing as if they don’t believe in God. Nigeria is a country where religion directs all our affairs, almost all of us are believes in God belonging to either Islam or Christianity and guided by Qur’an and the Bible, both of which reprimands, in strong terms, the display of nudity by women. Although some, like one of my critics, Femi Adebajo, don’t believe in the regulations set aside in these Holy Books, we should stand firm by those rules. To Mr. Adebajo, the Holy Books are “ancient books of doubtful provenance”. He might probably be an atheist who will very well support a situ ation whereby women will be walking the streets of Nigeria naked. But presumably 99.5% of Nigerians are believers of God, and therefore we should all come out to reproach and condemn the bastardization of morals by Nigerian women