Does anyone remember that ‘only in Nigeria' injunction issued by a military administrator in the good old days of FESTAC to wit: "All breasts must be closed." The minister, navy man by the name of Admiral Fingesi, if I recall correctly, was calling attention to his desire to introduce some modification into the cultural fare our international visitors would be entertained with.
All dancing maidens were to cover their chests with suitable apparel hence the admonition to close breasts.
I suppose one interpretation of this could be you do not allow a first time visitor into your bedroom. To paraphrase John Donne in, ‘To Mistress on going to bed', it was an act to stop the eyes of busy fools, in this case ignorant strangers: busy because they lacked the knowledge or decorum to focus on anything else. The Second World African Festival of Arts and Culture held in July 1977 was literally going to turn the country into a very very big parlour indeed.
Southern Africans still adhere to this particular aspect of their culture. Bare breasted Zulu maidens wear their nudity naturally and proudly during their traditional rituals and there is nothing lewd about it.
But out of that circle of language and understanding, which we refer to as culture, those maidens are translated to something stripped of purity on the websites of prurient foreigners. The pictures of the Swazi Reed ceremony that fly across the internet attest in this particular instance to that famous quotation by Shakespeare's Hamlet: "there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so." How far we have come. One hopes that Mrs. Ekaette Ufot's ill considered Anti nudity Bill will soon see be as closed as the Admiral's command, and for good at that.
But just how, one wonders, does the Senator envision such a law would be enforced, and by whom? That is the real question. Policemen at checkpoints or belligerent area boys ordering, "comot dat your wrappa mek I show you how you suppose for tie am;" or," the registrar cannot sign your certificate if you wear that blouse." My earliest recalled contact with rural life, were those annual Christmas expeditions from Lagos heading east, a four day journey that navigated the treacherous roads from Lagos to the hinterland breaking the journey from one catering guest house in Benin, to the other; camping out on the untarred jetty in Asaba in the long wait to make the ferry crossing to Onitsha, the Niger had not yet been bridged.
Then it was on to the warm embrace of long missed aunts and uncles in Enugu, Aba, Port Harcourt, venturing through, Uyo, Ikot Ekpene, Oron to Calabar, where pioneering maternal grandparents had made their abode. My father would be at the wheel, my mother at his side, and four of us as we numbered then, squeezed in the back, between bags and boxes of chin chin and Gem biscuits.
Sometimes we would have to disembark and wait for hours for the road to be repaired, the wooden bridge to be reinforced and the car eased along while we followed on foot.
Imagine making that journey today, dodging kidnappers all the way! I learnt instinctively from the behaviour of those around me that one did not see the breasts of elderly, bare-chested women, because you knew that it was simply disrespectful to do so. Our male ancestors did not run around like wild dogs in heat panting at the sight of young girls with their breasts uncovered.
There were no guards stationed around the tree-curtained stream where I, along with other women and young girls went to bathe. No one would dare crane a neck over the gully to sneak a peek at the section of the same river that ran through the nine clans, where the men took care of their ablutions. The rules were understood and respected. It had nothing to do with a romanticised picture of an idyllic past. It was simply the way people, our people, us, lived and ordered their lives. The dignity of one was the dignity of all.
How far we have come.
Youthcorper Grace Ushang is gang raped and murdered while on national duty in Borno State. Somali ‘hardliners' are whipping Somali women in the streets for wearing bras, making them jump up and down to see if their breasts jiggle. The brassiere today, it may be pants tomorrow, is now an enemy weapon of indoctrination and men can only be men if they are inflicting their mad will on a woman.
But our federal legislators who are contemplating the passage of the Mrs. Ufot's Indecency Bill survey the whole terrain of Nigerian dysfunction and are exercised by one thought, to disempower Nigerian women and degrade Nigerian men.
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