Although the majority of men in Nigeria share the same residential addresses with their children, a significant percentage of them are in reality not socially and morally present in these kids’ lives.
They sometimes win the bread through which the basic biological and growing-up needs of their children are met and very often exercise the veto on key decision points around housing, assets acquisition and major travels within the household.
But more often than not the typical Nigerian father is minimally involved in the socialisation of his children on such life-shaping matters as school work, feeding habits, ethics, friendships, health-seeking behaviours, sexual development and intimate relationships, conflict prevention, anger management, and other life management competencies that are critical to their successful transition into adulthood.
Several economic, cultural and social factors are, of course, implicated in Nigerian men’s growing shirking of their parental responsibilities,
including the near-permanent state of economic crisis the country has been in since the early 1980s, which has rendered so many of them unemployed or poorly paid.
One of the most important of these factors is, however, men’s identity crisis associated with their self-centred and irrational quest to be simultaneously modern and traditional.
So, despite being modern in physical appearance and a few inconsequential habits, the typical Nigerian man remains a die-hard traditionalist in relating with his children and their mothers to such an extent that he unwittingly creates a harmful social and emotional distance between himself and his kids.
To worsen matters, men’s parenting deficiencies that were so easily made up for in the past through the unsolicited involvement of neighbours and relatives in the socialisation of children, are now more difficult to offset because of the increasing urbanisation and individualisation of society.
The typical Nigerian man still thinks and acts like a 19th century patriarch around the home, projecting values and norms of aggression, gender discrimination, violence, reckless risk-taking, monopoly of knowledge and wisdom, rigidity, secretiveness, unaccountability and emotionlessness.
The patriarchal mindset that results from these norms of traditional masculinity accounts for why so many men do not seriously seek and factor in their children’s and spouses’ views on matters that affect them much more directly like the choice of place to live, school and career choice, content of the household budget, and even purchase of household labour-saving devices.
It is also the beliefs and attitudes that derive from the domineering male ideology that explain the frequent use or threat of violence by a lot of men in their belated attempts to instil discipline in their children whom they have made little or no effort to routinely communicate with or guide, as they learn to deal with the emotional and social challenges of growing up in Nigeria.
The generous resort to violence is also often extended to the resolution of disagreements with their spouses which further alienates the children. These same men then wonder why their children retain closer bonds to their mothers and become increasingly uncaring towards them as they grow older.
Put bluntly, too many men in Nigeria are absent when it comes to the positive socialisation of their children, but are actively present in negative ways.
It is through this failure in responsible and wholesome fatherhood that men in Nigeria are contributing to the persistence and escalation of all manner of social pathologies among our youths especially the consumption and peddling of narcotic drugs, cultism, cybercrimes, armed and petty robberies, gangsterism, and commercial sex.
And we do know that boys and young men constitute the majority of the youth caught up in these forms of deviance, setting the stage for the inter-generational transfer of irresponsible fatherhood.
There is therefore a critical need for men who believe in and adhere to a gender equitable and responsible model of masculinity to begin to educate the boys and men within their spheres of influence about its benefits.
Such efforts could then become the nucleus for the creation of a ‘men for gender equality and responsible fatherhood’ movement in Nigeria as has long been achieved in places as diverse as Kenya, Brazil and Indonesia.
It is also in the interest of the women’s movement in Nigeria to strategically link up with such efforts if the progress that women have made so far in their struggles to access educational, economic and decision-making opportunities are to be sustained and built upon.
As more Nigerian men begin to adopt a lifestyle of shared responsibilities and active involvement in responsible parenthood, their much improved quality of life will make it easier to persuade conservative men to change.
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