Why men beat their women

Bovi-Ugbona

Go to any place where a wedding is taking place and observe the gaiety, excitement and beauty of the coming together of a man and a woman, you will promptly feel the urge to also walk down the aisle with someone.

Ordinarily, marriage is beautiful. God ordained it to be so. That’s why when the first man saw the first woman, he exclaimed: “This is the bone of my bones, and the flesh of my flesh!”

It is for this reason that the Good Book says that a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife to become one body and one soul. This also presupposes that the two are one and what affects one affects the other. It is also expected that love, trust, understanding and patience will be the oil lubricating the relationship to make it work and fulfill the purpose of God in instituting marriage: friendship and companionship for life.

Unfortunately, marriage does not always turn out to be like what God envisioned. And this is an all too clear reminder of the corruption that came into the world following the fall of man at Eden.

Today, you find some men transform overnight into a nightmar, and become a Mike Tyson at home, turning their wives, the same ones they fed cake at the wedding reception, into punching bags at the slightest provocation. Invariably, many sane people are left to wonder whether the couple are no longer one body and soul as God Himself originally planned.

The rampancy of wife battering has made social scientists ‘burn’ hours in research efforts attempting to explain why some men exhibit this aberrant behaviour. Though scientists have come up with findings on why and how this ‘twist’ occurs in the nature of man, turning once loving man into an unfeeling hard heart that relentless batters his wife, the fact remains that every environment has its peculiarities as much as America is completely different from Africa.

In the African setting what is responsible for this ungodly tendency of men to turn their wives into punching bags? We asked some notable personalities and what they said is quite revealing. Excerpts…

Story by Oge Okonkwo