By Kwabena Bibini Barima
Daddy Lumba, the Ye Ya aka Akwantuom hitmaker lived like the proverbial palm tree because of his multi-purpose benefits to society. Charlse Kwadwo Fosu a.k.a DL lived as an entertainer, adviser, a philosopher who also played the role of someone who brought lovers closer DL had a song about every aspect of human life and the life beyond.
Daddy is a special gift to us because unlike many mortal beings in the world, he has written his name in the realms of immortality by igniting another life after his physical transition to the world beyond. Whether we like it or not, DL is already immortalised so we as a nation honouring him by amending our marital laws and naming it after his name will benefit us the living (Ghanaians) than himself.
The singular act of Daddy Lumba’s death has brought a lot of issue concerning laws governing the types of marriages we have in Ghana to the forefront and the associated confusions and the seeming biases in the laws in the minds of both men and women. I was lucky to have my own confusion about the marital laws of Ghana cleared by Lawyer Ewusi Brown when he taught us media law and ethics in 2012 at the prestigious Ghana Institute of Journalism.
A decade later, I started the 33 Men’s voice Podcast to teach about gender dynamics and the negative effects of feminism on women, men, children and the society, my position as the host of the 33 Men’s voice Podcast makes it easier for me to interact with a lot of the people especially men in particular and after every interaction with them, I sense a feeling of confusion from these men and from time to time, I get the same sentiment from some women as well.
This confusion became very sad and alarming to the extent that, most of the men begun to think that marriage is a scam to the male human being, so I had to create an educational video specifically addressing this issue on YouTube that, marriage is not a scam in Ghana and most African countries. I explained that if one is talking about marriage in the west especially America, I can agree to a large extent but not in Ghana.
I further explained that what is causing the confusion in our head is our own lack of knowledge about the marital laws of Ghana, our lack of bolls to decide which of the marriages we are going for as men and our general weakness is the cause of our problems in marriage especially during divorce.
But the death of Daddy Lumba has exposed some serious educational, judicial and legislative confusion that need to be addressed before we lose the institution of marriage as acountry. Because, you tell me, a country without a strong marriage and family culture and I will show you a country at the verge of extinction.
THE EDUCATIONAL GABS
Tune in to most relationship show on social media and traditional media platforms today, and you will see the mentality of most men describing marriage as an institution created only for the benefit of women and that they add, “Marriage is a scam” especially if they have had some acrimonious divorce process before, there is nothing you can tell these men to understand that it is their lack of knowledge about the laws governing marriage, the problem and not marriage itself.
This notion of marriage been a scam is not only coming from the men. We have a chunk of our sisters also having the same notion about marriage, who also believe, marriage only benefit men and that, women are just unpaid slaves in that relationship. The first group of men who think marriage is a scam are the ones who have lost properties or resources during divorce and the later are young men who have not even married before but after listening to the sad divorce stories of their senior men they decided never to get married.
Whiles some men and women have somehow genuine reasons to turn their backs on marriage, majority of them have become apologetic for been born a male or female which is because of some of the negative effects of feminism and equality nonsense on them. Now, notwithstanding their source of confusion, the only solution is a massive education about our marital laws and a serious amendment to the existing laws.
For example, most men get very shock after they realised that, after going through all the elaborate customary marriage ceremony, the day they went to the court and signed, nullifies everything they did between the two families and that when the woman want to suffocate his life she only uses the court system and I tell them yes the woman has no choice than to use the court for all proceedings because after signing in the court, it is only the court who can end it or other wise.
THE PROPOSED LEGISLATIVE AMENDMENT IN OUR MARITAL LAWS
One may argue against an amendment to the existing laws governing marriages in Ghana based on the fact that most of the problems people find with the law, maybe as a result of their own ignorance emanating from the individual’s lack of knowledge about the marital laws of the land. Yes, this argument is quite valid but, if we as a country will take a futuristic view of the negative effects of citizen’s apathy towards marriage, we would realise that the socio-economic cost to the nation will be fatal.
Therefore, my counter argument is that the Ghanaian’s lack of interest in marriage is very alarming as a result of laws they say are confusing and the earlier leadership does something about it the better. For that matter, I call on the government, the legislature, the judiciary traditional leaders the churches and all stakeholders to help make some simple changes to our laws to make it clear for both men and women to understand without any ambiguity.
WHAT TO BE CONSIDERED IN THE NEW AMENDMENT
A. The new amendment should make it criminal (illegal) for a Ghanaian to conduct a customary marriage and then go for ordinance marriage thus, if they so wish to have an ordinance marriage
B. There should be a law to punish any licensed marriage officiating officer who goes ahead to conduct an ordinance marriage for any couple who have already gone through the customary marriage. Because this is where most of the confusion starts: the current law has a very demining and disrespectful way of presenting the customary marriage to the ordinary Ghanaian especially women.
Most women in particular, believe that they do not have any protection under the customary law or marriage which makes the PNDC law 111 a bit useless in terms of implementation and enforcement.
C. The amendment should, as it is in the ordinance law, where if a couple goes through the customary marriage and decides to have the ordinance done, the law automatically nullifies the traditional or the customary marriage. In the same vein, the new amendment should prevent couples who have done an ordinance marriage from having a customary marriage and vice versa. When this law is created it will force both the stakeholders in the traditional and the ordinance side to read and understand the marital laws before they get married especially the men as they are the ones who offer marriage to women.
D. Paternity fraud should be taken seriously in this new amendment; thus, paternity fraud should carry the same weight as rape and therefore have the same number of years rapist go into prison for rapping a woman. Also, any woman who commit paternity fraud against a man must be made to pay times 3 the amount of money the man spent in taking care of the child or children or go to prison.
E. Compulsory DNA at birth to help reduce the rate of paternity fraud in Ghana. For a long time, I have prevented myself from asking the government to make NDA test compulsory at birth but, after realising how weak the modern man is all because we are living in a week man’s era, I have finally decided to let the government come in. I am doing this because I know what men’s apathy in the family system means to the existence of a nation.
DNA at birth will not only stop paternity fraud but, will also make midwives and some nurses responsible as another source of paternity fraud cases is baby swapping as a result of laziness and negligence of some senior midwifes and nurses therefore, there must be a strong punishment for nurses who contribute to paternity fraud through negligence or laziness.
F. If a man does not take financial responsibility of his wife or family, there are laws to punish or deal with him. What are the punitive laws for if a wife refuses to cookor give sex for no reason especially in an ordinance marriage.
WHY GHANA NEEDS THIS AMENDMENT URGENTLY
Evolutionary and historically, the institution of marriage was created at a point in our evolutionary journey to solve a problem our ancestors were facing and by using marriage as a solution, they had a perfect solution for the human race that for many millennials later, there have never been a better solution to the problem they were face than marriage.
WHAT WAS THE PROBLEM MARRIAGE CAME TO SOLVE?
Before marriage was instituted, men and women were having sex with no idea of contraceptives in mind which meant that, men getting women pregnant was very easy at the time, but looking at the security structure at the time, where total security of women and children practically depended on a man.
A woman getting pregnant and the man moving on because there were no laws and institutions forcing him to be fully committed to the woman and the child, the security of both the mother and the child was at stake which made infant and most times mother mortality very high. Because the woman is physically weak then pregnancy further reduce her ability to fend for herself and the infant.
Over the cause of our evolution, societies universally observed that, having women alone raised children was not giving the best outcomes in terms of the quality of the offsprings they raised thus, when they compared the few men and women who got pregnant and by some reason stayed together to raised the kid, the society or community saw a better result as in the quality of the human beings raised and their benefit to the larger society.
Another problem marriage was instituted to solve was paternity-certainty: because, if both men and women could engage in what was know in the 17th Century as free love where both men and women can be with each other today and move on to a different partner tomorrow, how do you ask one man to take responsibility of a child from a woman who engage in casual sex in the community? Mind you the men in those days lived like the true men they were meant to be,living almost like lions where they could kill a child, they believed not to be theirs.
In summary, to give children proper care and benefit from the feminine and masculine essence, to give the man a reason to give commitment and security to the woman, marriage was created for the total wellbeing of the child. And this creation of marriage was very important to increase the world’s population as the survival of the child is the only sure way of adding onto the population of an area.
Now some can argue that I won’t get married but I will have a child with a man or woman then we stay our separate ways and take care of the child, my responds to these men and women is, America has done that experiment and the result is that: 9 our of every 10 prison inmates comes from a fatherless home, 70 to 80 % of all teenage pregnant girls come from fatherless homes most children from fatherless homes end up in poverty and the circle repeat itself over and over.
So, our traditional leaders, the legislature, the Church, the judiciary and all Ghanaians can behave like ostriches lying to ourselves that all is well with our marriage and family structure and not to do anything about our marital laws. The fatherlessness and single mother pandemic will collapse our country when we least expected.
About the writer:
Kwabena Bibini Barima is a socio-political activist, a philosopher by
passion a researcher on liberal ideologies and policies like feminism, postmodernism and its related subjects. He is the host of the 33 Men’s Voice Podcast on Tiktok and youtube.
Contact the writer @blaqnificentmedia@gmail.com
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