CHAT GPT INTERVIEWS LAILA ALI OTHMAN



Hello Hajiya Layla.



Hi there.



There’s been a huge outcry in the north over the recent interview you granted the BBC Hausa service. Would you like to clarify some points you made?



I do understand the controversy. This is not the first time I’m being interviewed by the BBC. This, however, has been the most vilified and the backlash has been the most widespread.



How so?



In the past my interviews had always centered on child neglect like almajirci in the north, early marriage, female empowerment etc. but this time around what shocked most people was that I declared that I was the one that categorically demanded for a divorce from my two previous spouses. That was a taboo in the north (men had always held sway when it comes to divorce) and what scared the men was that I could instigate a rebellion among their oppressed wives and the women folk too were terrified. Having being brought up to endure mistreatment from their spouses and also because they lack the skills and mental capacity for independence and a dignified existence. People hung to the fact that I said I couldn’t continue cooking for my spouse and demanded for a dissolution of the union. Cooking was actually a metaphor. It represented all my conjugal duties, not actually getting into the kitchen and making dishes. I’ve seen video rejoinders from the most absurd to the most pathetic. Some were professing love for me and that they can actually cook for me while one clown ( who is not fit to shine my toilet bowls) even claimed that he won’t marry me if he were offered a mansion and a car and money in the bank as if I am that desperate. Women are reduced to their culinary skills.



Could you outline what made you leave your former spouses?



In the the first marriage I was naive and went into it with rose-tinted glasses. Even though my then husband knew I was independent minded and entrepreneurial I guess he wasn’t prepared for the realities of a career woman. He started sabotaging all my endeavors and reneged on all the promises he made and arrangements we agreed on. I lost all respect for him and stopped my marital duties. He couldn’t say no when I demanded for divorce. I’ve seen this happen to countless women I personally know in the north. Women with good education (doctors, lawyers, lecturers, business women) whom were promised a rosy family life were they would be able to put their education and skills to good use. More often than not the men, out of insecurity and jealousy would deny their women a career and render their education completely useless. I’v e seen a lawyer using her degree to sell spring rolls because her husband won’t allow her to practice. Imagine a Phd holder selling baby clothes out of her bedroom. Since the men hold the key to divorce or out of social stigma the women have to stay in mirthless relationships.



What of the second marriage?



For my next marriage I was very meticulous. I made sure that my then spouse understood my peculiarity and the non-negotiability of my aim to pursue a career and entrepreneurship. He agreed to all that.



So?



But the union hit the rocks due to our divergent values. Over time I realized that the relationship was one sided. I was all in giving my 100 percent while he just did the bare minimum. When a partner can’t communicate or refuses to communicate and completely shuts down at times, the marriage can’t work. When your emotional needs are neglected or are met with defensiveness the connection you have is irreparably severed. Silent treatment is the worst form of abuse in any relationship. As I said I was all in and completely open in all my dealings be it financial, emotional and psychological. And I also respected his boundaries. But what I couldn’t stand was his secretiveness. There is a huge difference between boundaries and being secretive. Being secretive is when you hide important parts of your life. The parts that are non-negotiable, that will make us decide to be or not be in that relationship. (I made it clear that I can’t be in a polygamous setting) And as a successful entrepreneur and employer of labour you develop a sixth sense. You can read between the lines, after all that is one of the prerequisites of a successful business person. Imagine all the attributes you can’t tolerate in an employee being exhibited by your spouse and you can see through them a mile away. You immediately lost affection and respect for them. How can you allow a man below the qualities of your junior most employee climb on top of you or expect you to fix a dish for them. No way.


But isn’t that a mistake, to run your marriage like a business?



It depends on how you look at it. Entrepreneurs, I believe, are born not made. Apart from that, I am a creative. My furniture company is well known and has worn many awards. My restaurant has several branches and I invest heavily in real estate. That sharp instinct that has seen me through my journey as a business person can’t be divorced from my reality at home. And what are those instincts. Being able to detect bullshit a mile away. Being able to weed out the bad employees from the good ones. It its like a superpower and without it you can’t succeed in the world of business or in a high level executive role. Trouble is society wants women to settle. What qualifies a man is just a dick and that’s all. While a woman is expected to endure all the ignominy thrown at her but to possess the qualities of 35 angels. It’s high time we brought up our girls to demand for accountable and respectful relationships. But that can’t happen until we give them the tools to have a voice. Education and supportive parents and families is the beginning. The amount of women in pitiable marriages will shock you. And they have to endure to avoid stigma of divorce. And in spite of that they will still be kicked out of their matrimonial homes while their children are used as a tool of oppression. Either taken away by their spouses to torment them psychologically or left with them so as to burden the woman with feeding and clothing without any funds from their father. I have always been an advocate of marital reforms in northern Nigeria. The institution is geared towards making sex as easily accessible as possible, without consequences or responsibilities for the men. Recently a man went viral in Jimeta, Adamawa state. He had been jobless for years and had three wives with 18 children. Someone gave him 500,000 Naira to start a business but instead used the money to marry a 4th wife. Men with nothing to their name but a transistor radio and a bicycle have 4 wives and 20 children. We have to change our ways. I’ve seen men who are on their 15th marriage. One man married 32 women. Just peep in to the anonymous “hide my ID” posts on northern social media like Northern Hibiscus, Diary of a Northern Woman, Aunty Ray etc and you will cry. These are lamentations of women trapped and imprisoned in depressing marriages without a way out.



Why are you against polygamy?



Polygamy is unnatural and unhealthy.. It’s the most egregious system ever devised against women. That is why the Quran discouraged it even though it might be halal. The Quran said that no man can exhibit justice between women even if they tried. Women in polygamous marriages are over worked to exhaustion mentally. They can’t shut down their brain for a second. Their lives are shortened because of heightened mental and psychological state of the mind. A woman’s personal and intellectual development stops the moment she steps into a polygamous relationship because It’s a non stop 24/7 engagement, with women in depressive gloomy moods when their husband is with the other women. Their mind is preoccupied with nothing but the Machiavellian scheming of the polygamous setting to survive the next day. Family planning is also out of the question as the birthing exercise is as competitive as territorial because the more children you have the more bargaining power you wield. I’ve seen otherwise smart girls go into a polygamous marriage and come out as vegetative doting oldies at the age of 32 with 7 children in tow. A high school friend of mine came out no different than a teenager. Her development completely arrested and has no idea how anything works. Knows nothing about finances, mortgage, booking a flight etc. Nothing about infection, bacteria or basic hygiene not to talk of dieting and healthy living. With several kids she was no better than her own children. Why? She spent her whole life scheming and plotting just like her other co-wives.



But what is the way out? Does that mean educated or business women are difficult partners?



I don’t believe so. Maybe they demand more accountability and commitment and openness. We have to decide as a society what we want. We can not yearn for an educated and upwardly mobile women folk and still want them to settle. I can’t be making my own my money and expect me to fund your other wives. People have an erroneous idea of how finances work. Whatever resources I bring into the family is part of the collective income of that family. If you are stretched thin and I have to use my money for some of my needs that you should pay for, while you have multiple wives, that means I am indirectly funding your other families with other women. No woman wants to do that. Men have to understand that they have to shape up and realize that what hangs between their legs is not what makes a man. Sex is cheap. Love is expensive. Otherwise the situation in the north and Nigeria in general will only get worse. 10 million out of school children is a ticking time bomb. I wrote an article a couple of years ago in the Daily Trust newspaper. The points I raised still remain valid. Look at the number of marriages collapsing in the north. Kano state alone has a million divorced women. They even have a divorcees association with a leader. Some of the marriages are as short as three months in what we call “auren dandano” (marry her to get in her pants). I call them recreational marriages. These are women tricked into marriage by men who know they won’t give up the goodies without marriage and are discarded after consummation. The women are now so cheapened that they have to now give out themselves in lackluster abusive marriages. Some are engaged in semi-prostitution or what do you think a million divorced women are doing sitting around with financial and physical needs. Even if the government organize a mass marriage of 1,000 divorcees, there is still another 999,000 roaming the streets. A woman in her 5th marriage by the age of 25 is a psychologically damaged woman. Believe me, I’ve met theses women. How do you expect these broken women to bring up the next generation of confident and versatile leaders.
Do you think the marriage institution can be reformed in the north?



It is s herculean task but we have to start from somewhere. As I said yesterday at a conference on almajiri child rights we have to stop pretending that there is no solution to the problem. We have to start with legislation. Are we more muslim than other muslim nations? In Morocco for instance you will be jailed if you get a second wife without the consent of the first wife. One of the barriers to polygamy in most muslim countries is that your can’t house two wives in the same house as opposed to how the women are kept like chickens in a coop in northern Nigeria where four women will share not only one man but same toilet same kitchen same living space. Even animals are treated better in some societies. We also need better role models. Someone like Mallam Nuru Khalid. Our current mallams benefit from the dysfunction. They call it our heritage. How is that a good thing. One mallam was so out of touch with reality that he claimed the reason why women don’t get period during pregnancy is because the menstrual blood is nourishment for the fetus in the womb. How could any thing productive come from such a man. Our educated elites also should walk the talk. How could you be advocating for responsible parenting and family planning and monogamy when you proudly parade 4 wives in public with 24 children to boot. If you claim affordability as a wealthy person the poor too will claim affordability. It’s a relative term and they can afford as many women as they want from poor homes. We should also dispel the notion of an epidemic of too many women in the society and that it helps to marry more than one wife. That is a statistical fallacy. The number of men and women in any society in the world is roughly the same. What happens in northern Nigeria is this: boys and girls are brought up radically differently. Girls to be wives and birth children. Boys to provide for their future family. Girls mature faster than boys. While boys are still learning the ropes in life, schooling or learning a trade ( how many 16 year old boy can maintain a family) the girls have reached puberty. This is the excess of women who have no career or little education that the society is alarmed and scared off and instead of shipping them to schools chose to ship them into the arms of much older entitled men who feel they are doing the society a favor. They scoop them up and dump them right back onto the streets as divorcees because every day millions more reach the ripe age 15 looking for spouses. Only in northern Nigeria will you hear young girls saying they’d rather marry an already married man. As unnatural as it sounds it is a subliminal response to the scarcity of men their age and a way of lowering the barrier to getting a husband. Apart from the extreme power imbalance, these girls go into marriages with completely unrealistic expectations of what it means to be a second, third or fourth wife. In fact some realize in as little as a week that they have bargained away their own freedoms and happiness within a week after all the fanfare of the wedding is over. I call it the Serengeti effect. There is an annual migration of wildebeest in the Kenyan wilderness when they have to cross the crocodile-infested Serengeti river for pasture on the other side of the river. In spite of the crocodiles tearing the wildebeest aport, munching on their flesh and crushing their bones, let alone those being swept away by the river currents to eventually drown more and more still plunge in the river with the hope of having a different fate. That is how marriage is in the north. Parents and society pushing unprepared girls into the hands of wolves in spite of what they see all around them in the hope of some magical outcome in their own situation. People might scream that we are exaggerating but the data says otherwise. The millions of almajiri roaming the streets, a million women out of wedlock in Kano state alone is enough evidence without even digging too deep.



What are the qualities you seek in a spouse?



Contrary to what you might think, I crave for softness, compassion and tenderness in a partner. I am sapiosexual. I find intellect extremely attractive. But above all, I won’t settle for a spouse with qualities I won’t tolerate in an employee. It might work for a 15 or 16 year old with no life experience and thinks shoddy treatment is the norm everywhere. Go to my instagram page and watch the videos I made on the qualities of a good employee and you would see that they are noble qualities that one would appreciate in a partner. I don’t want subservience, I crave loyalty. My ideal partner has to be openly communicative and honest. A problem solver and brave to tackle any life challenges with my full support, of course. Not a quitter who dangles the divorce card like the sword of Damocles. I want respect and dignity from my spouse and I will reciprocate. I wish for someone who values women and doesn’t see them as rags that could be discarded at any time.



Another criticism is your charity work. People claim you show off too much.



That is not true. In fact only a fraction of what we do is showcased on social media. I have a foundation and we have a social media presence. I generally won’t listen to idiots who blame us for no reason. I just delivered a key note address organized by the Amajiri Child Rights Initiative which was sponsored by the Unicef and the Mac Arthur Foundation with the theme, Transformative Actions To Address The Situation Of Almajiri

In Northern Nigeria. Are we supposed to hide under a rock? How can you hide a medical centre from the public. My next project is to build an orphanage. Should we build it under the sea so people will not blame us for riya?



Whet does your philanthropic activities mean to you?



My charity work means the whole world to me. As I said earlier, entrepreneurs are born not made and it comes from a deep spirit of wanting things to get better to solve problems. You can’t be a genuine entrepreneur and be content with the dysfunction in any society. After all no business thrives in an environment full of chaos and uncertainty. Businesses thrive in peaceful and harmonious spaces and if you see a business person giving back to the society it is a sign of gratitude and appreciation of where there success come from and a hope that things would get better for everyone in that society.