By Bagudu Mohammed
Not long ago, a video stormed the Nigerian social media space. A young lady, visibly pushing past the natural blush of shyness, made an impassioned plea: men, she argued, should be allowed no, encouraged—to marry more than one wife. Her reasoning? There are too many single ladies languishing in loneliness. Her delivery was fiery, emotional, and tinged with desperation. In a voice trembling between conviction and despair, she claimed—rather dubiously that Muslims were marrying more than six wives, and that even the Bible gave a nod of approval. “Government should do something,” she pleaded over and over, her cry echoing not just through WhatsApp forwards but through the peculiar longings of a society that has always danced uneasily with the subject of polygamy.
When I shared that video, it wasn’t because I swallowed her claims whole. Far from it. I shared it because it offered an alternative perspective to the stiff orthodoxy that paints monogamy as wholly good and polygamy as wholly evil—as though life were simply a battle between angels and demons. Aristotle once said, “It is the mark of an educated mind to entertain a thought without accepting it.” That was precisely my stance. I even wrote, almost sarcastically, that in this age of economic hardship, the greatest obstacle to polygamy is not law or religion but money. Who, after all, wants the burden of a large family when even feeding a small one has become herculean?
Of course, my post drew the predictable backlash. Some things, in our social spaces, are treated as “no-go areas,” and polygamy is often one of them. A netizen, dripping with exasperation, sneered: “These are the kinds of videos that go viral in Nigeria. Meanwhile, we blame government for lack of development while our people are obsessed with sex, food, and luxury.” Others, like Gbolaga Tija, simply shook their heads and asked: “What’s the point here?” I couldn’t resist replying: “Every day I see posts going viral that have nothing to do with marriage. Why is this issue suddenly irrelevant? Does it not affect real lives? Is she not calling for legitimacy and dignity, rather than immorality?”
The debate deepened, as debates always do. The commenter insisted the woman’s call for “one man, six wives” was unserious in a nation wrestling with collapsing railways and failing infrastructure. “Modernity,” he argued, “is first and foremost a value system. A serious society judges people by their contribution, not by their marital status.” Another respondent countered, accusing him of Eurocentrism, and asked: “Didn’t the West, which glorifies pornography, still develop? Why pretend polygamy is the end of civilization?”
The clash of perspectives fascinated me. Then came another video, this time shared by Sa’adu Nupechi, a respected influencer. It showed quarrels in a polygamous home over “other rooms,” with a cheeky caption suggesting such crises are common in Hausa land and “elsewhere.” I couldn’t resist teasing back: “Haven’t you seen worse in monogamous homes—even in Bida?” My jab was playful, but it opened another door into the discussion: are the dysfunctions of polygamy any worse than those hidden behind monogamy’s closed doors?
It was at this point I realized something important: polygamy is rarely discussed in balance. For some, it is a desperate refuge, a lifeline against loneliness or infertility. For others, it is a symbol of chaos, rivalry, and ceaseless quarrels. Both sides are partly right. Polygamy, by its structure, invites competition: wives vying for the landlord’s favor, children sometimes entangled in rivalries. Yet, as life constantly reminds us, there is no single formula for happiness. To insist that one path—monogamy—is the universal cure is to deny the wild variety of human existence.
Think of it this way: some see urban life in Abuja as paradise, yet others find their deepest peace in rural villages without power or good roads. To many, boxing is madness—men trading lethal blows for money. Yet Tyson Fury once confessed that boxing gave him the only purpose that worked in life. Mike Tyson admitted boxing saved him from a life of crime. If such unconventional choices can lead to meaning, why should polygamy be dismissed outright? Its greatest strength lies in offering choice, another pathway to joy.
Indeed, polygamy has produced unexpected stories of resilience. Consider the lecturer who took in a widow as a third wife against the protests of his household. When he died, leaving two jobless wives and school-age children, it was the widow—his third wife—who became the family’s savior, funding the children’s education and housing them, despite not bearing a child of her own. Her quiet heroism turned whispers of scandal into songs of gratitude.
There are countless other testimonies: barren women who conceived after a co-wife arrived, families that avoided divorce through this alternative, children who grew up with a stronger web of siblings to lean on. Even politics has drawn from its lessons. Atiku Abubakar’s polygamous household—spanning Hausa, Yoruba, and Igbo—helped him forge a pan-Nigerian image, shielding him from charges of bigotry in ways few politicians manage. Some would argue that the emotional intelligence required to manage multiple wives is not unlike the skills needed to govern a multi-ethnic country.
Of course, polygamy is no utopia. It has its bad ambassadors, its abuses, its failures. But so does monogamy. Divorce, infidelity, baby mamas and absentee fathers—these are hardly absent in “one-man-one-wife” societies. In fact, the proliferation of “side chicks” and secret affairs suggests that the monogamous ideal is often more aspiration than reality. As one scholar quipped, “We live in a world where people are monogamous in theory but polygamous in practice.”
And so, the real question is not whether polygamy is flawless, but whether society is willing to grant people the dignity of choice. For some, it is a nightmare. For others, it is therapy, an anchor, even a source of pride. Nigerian demography complicates the conversation further. While Nigeria actually has slightly more men than women—contrary to the popular myth of “scarcity of men”—social patterns of mortality, migration, and cultural expectations often distort this balance. Thus, the “polygamy question” is not just statistical; it is cultural, emotional, and deeply personal.
In the end, what polygamy teaches us is simple: there is no single road to happiness. Families, like societies, thrive in diversity. I have visited polygamous homes that exude harmony, synergy, and warmth—memories so pleasant they remain etched in me. As much as critics insist polygamy is synonymous with conflict, reality shows another side: one of resilience, of unexpected healing, of love that somehow stretches across differences.
For clarity, I have one wife, and I am content. My interest in this debate is not advocacy but curiosity, not promotion but perspective. If democracy teaches us that choice is sacred, then marriage too should reflect that freedom. As John Stuart Mill argued, “Genuine worth can only be tested when people are free to choose.” Polygamy, for all its flaws, offers that choice—another way of being, another way of finding strength in the unpredictable theater of human life.
