A few of months ago, the social media was agog with the video of a 25-year-old lady, who was fighting her father for wanting to remarry after the loss of her mother several years back.
She was not only objecting because her father wanted to remarry; she was battling because her father is the love of her life.
At the age of 17, she claims, her father deflowered her and began sleeping with her; since then, she has had no experience with men other than her father. After being rejected by four suitors, she was devastated to learn that her father was making plans to remarry.
The woman assured her father that for as long as she was alive, he would never marry another woman and that the two of them would live together as husband and wife, raising children.
At the same time that Nigerians were attempting to make sense of this weird public display of humiliation, a video of a woman who had been sleeping with her son and wished to end their immoral behavior went viral.
Mrs. Nweze wanted to stop having sexual relations with her son, who she called Obinna, since she was weary of it. Her kid, she claims, tricked her into doing it. He claimed he was involved in a dangerous industry that required him to sleep with her in order to make any headway or perish.
After several years of the incestuous conduct, the lady’s husband discovered it and left her in shame, wrath, and frustration. The mother claims she gave in to his amorous demand because she loved her kid and didn’t want him to die. She had two more kids who were as furious and ashamed of her conduct, so she sought professional assistance to reconcile with God and her family.
Nasarawa State, 2022: Matina Agawua’s account of how she conceived a child by seducing her own son is still vivid in everyone’s mind. Herdsmen attacked Matina’s home in Benue State, killing her first husband and the father of her first son.
The story states that she and her second husband, James, were unable to have a child despite being married for a long time. Due to the lack of a child after six years of marriage, pressure from her in-laws, and her husband’s threats to marry again, she opted to have sex with her son from her first marriage.
Many people have grown increasingly concerned about the rising prevalence of sexual engagement between relatives.
Daughters are getting pregnant and bearing children for their fathers, and mothers are doing the same for their sons, despite the fact that sexual intercourse between father and daughter, mother and son, or brother and sister is normally taboo and abominable. Sisters get pregnant for their brothers, just as uncles sleep with their nephews without let or hindrance.
In July 2023, a 46-year-old father, named as Jude, was arrested by the police for allegedly impregnating his two daughters in Ikwa community, Zuba Chiefdom, in Gwagwalada Area Council of the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja.
A neighbor named Idris said that word of the incident spread after one of the daughters told her police officer fiance about it. Minna is located in Niger State. The arrested father was previously suspected of conspiring with his wife to terminate their unborn children.
While the man’s wife tried to keep quiet about the situation at the police station, the neighbor said, “her daughters opened up and told them how their father had been sleeping with them and how they aborted their pregnancies.”
Abiodun Oladapo, 43, was arrested by the Ogun State Police Command in March on charges of having impregnated his 19-year-old daughter.
Oladapo, who was apprehended after Oluwatoyin Idowu filed a report at the Mowe Divisional Police Headquarters, claimed that he was possessed by the devil.
The pregnant woman told police that her father was to blame for the pregnancy. She was five months along at the time. Since February of 2022, her father had allegedly been having sexual relations with her, and she claimed he had threatened her with death if she told anyone.
Every culture in the world condemns the act of having a sexual relationship with someone who is a close relative, such as a parent or sibling. Offenders receive severe retribution from both God and society, including incarceration, exile, and even the death penalty in some regions.
Despite the fact that both God and society punish those who commit evil, it appears that such behavior is on the rise. Many women have conceived children for their fathers, while others have secretly had multiple abortions with their fathers because the practice has grown so widespread.
In an interview with HEALTHYSPOT101, Dr. Leonard Okonkwo, a consultant psychologist at the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital in Ikeja, suggested that the fact that sexual desire is innate may be at the root of this despicable behavior.
According to him, sex is a biological phenomenon that is yet subject to social standards.
“So,” he continued, “people grow up learning different ways to respond to sexual instinct.”
According to his interpretation of psychoanalytic theory, a daughter develops a strong relationship to her father around the age of three, and if her father is unable to cope with this, he may feel compelled to do the same.
And if he tried to return the favor, he said, “it would lead to sexual liaisons.”
Explaining the notion in detail, he said: “This theory talks about different psychosexual stages of growth. There is a moment when there is a form of attachment between father and daughter; about the age of three.
“At that age, a daughter and her father form a strong emotional bond. The electra complex is the name for it. Because sex has biological, cognitive, and psychological components, if the more experienced father does not know how to handle this scenario, the father and child may develop romantic feelings for one another.
The shift from communal to solitary lifestyles, he argued, was also a driving factor in this most recent transformation.
According to him, this has allowed a dad to serially defile his own daughter without anyone else finding out.
He made the following comment about sexual behavior and societal norms: “You learn to react differently as you get older to sex. Society establishes some restrictions on individuals’ actions, if not, a lot of incorrect things will be going on. Incest is not unique to our generation. It’s always been there, like in the biblical story of Lot and his daughters.
So social standards have served as a check on incest, but you will agree with me that they have been weakened with time.
People are becoming more self-centered and less committed to shared cultural norms. They must rely on their own discretion, strategy, and approach as a result.
As an illustration, “back in the day,” when people still lived in close proximity to their extended families and neighbors, “everybody knew what was going on with the other person and things like that served as a check for some of these restrictions placed by society.” But it’s clear that some of these constraints are relaxing; people are becoming more and more self-sufficient. They have no one to answer to except themselves, so they can commit incest without repercussions.
Of course there is a law against that, but then again, who makes the law? Unless there is a complaint, the police will not be going door to door asking people if they’ve seen somebody who might be sleeping with their daughters. And where are the gripers to voice their displeasure? They disappeared because modern society promotes individualism.
He added that the prevalence of Western culture and the promotion of fantasy were to blame for the epidemic, as they led criminals to believe their actions were acceptable.
The erosion of societal norms, he argued, is also to blame for this immorality. People are actively encouraged to engage in fantastical thinking. That, together with the pervasive presence of similar films, has served as a major inspiration for the crime.
“Many of these make it seem like there is nothing wrong with the act, especially those from the West. That’s why there’s been a boom in, say, pornographic content. You’ll find that it’s the most popular website out there, and that many pornographic sites have scenes like this one, in which a parent engages in sexual activity with his daughter.
Making it appear as though there is no issue is another issue. That just gives fuel to the fire, feeding the belief that “there’s nothing there, so why not do it?
If criminals are convinced by their fantasies that their actions are justified, then why do they want to cover them up?
“Even though fantasy misleads them to believe there is nothing wrong with the act, their conscience still tells them that it is wrong; besides, there is a law against it,” Dr. Okonkwo continued. It’s a crime, and if they’re detected, they’ll face consequences.
In addition, he analyzed the way that sexual liberty was treated. He said this “has not helped matters,” but if that’s the case, then why isn’t everyone doing it if these problems are so widespread?
“The issue of sexual freedom being propagated by some groups today has also accounted for why homosexuals are bold enough to come out in the open and say they have the right to do that.”Dr Okonkwo added: “Homosexuality didn’t start today; it has been there. It is an age-long habit and throughout the while, it has been a condemnable practice but it started gradually with people stepping up to identify and fight for their rights.
Lobbying efforts by the gay community and its allies led to the removal of homosexuality as a mental condition from the International Statistical Classification of Diseases.
Maybe someday open advocates for fathers’ rights to have sex with their daughters will emerge. You can’t just come out and say, “Hey, I do that,” because it’s against the law. If you come out, you will be caught and prosecuted; therefore it is not something people can come out and say we are doing it.”
Many women freely sleep with their fathers, despite the fact that some men have been known to sleep with their daughters under coercion in the past.
Some women who are legally married also sleep with their fathers.
First of all, you must recognize that these things happen predominantly with kids,” Dr. Okonkwo told this group of women. So, first and foremost, it is rape whether or not consent was given.
However, it is difficult for those who do so voluntarily, but as you may be aware, the problem began when they were little. I explained how, if not addressed, attachment developed throughout the psychosexual stages and developed into obsession. And it goes on and on like that.”
But may mental illness have contributed to such a horrible act?
He said: “Well, when you come to that, you ask: what is mental illness? Mental illness is abnormal behaviour. Anything out of the ordinary is abnormal.
If a guy slept with his daughter, would you think it was normal? If a woman slept with her son, would you think it was normal? No, that is abnormal. Therefore, if this is not the norm, assistance should be sought. Not all people with mental health issues are insane.
On the other hand, “there are issues that have to do with behavioral abnormalities, particularly when there is an uncontrollable urge to act in a particular way that is not normal, then you need help; it is an abnormal behavior.”
