Domestic violence has been a recurring evil in Nigerian society. Not that it is new, and not that it is peculiar to our society, but it is gaining currency because of the increasing prying eyes of the social media. We have no clear statistics to show it is worse now than before. Social media has however piqued us with its urgency.

It Is not always about spousal abuse, but its various forms have not failed to fascinate and puzzle psychologists and sociologists. It could be between father and son or daughter, mother and child, uncle and niece or nephew, or it could involve grandparents or aunts. But what intrigues is that it is happening in the smallest unit of the society, which is the family. When the family is in plague, the society at large is in pain.

This brings to the fore a recent incident in Akwa Ibom State involving a lawyer, Ekere Ebong. The man, on a recent night, subjected his wife, whose name is not in the public domain, to physical torture. The man, in the full bloom of a feral temper, inflicted blows on his wife, and the screams of the wife disturbed the neighbours. That aggression drove the wife outside the home, and forced out the neighbours who rescued her from her assailant.

They made pleas to Ebong to leave his wife alone, especially as the woman was screaming because she was writhing with pain. Ebong seemed to derive a sort of demoniac delight from threatening the woman by asking her to return home, apparently because he still wanted to unleash more assault.

The woman was half naked, and was bleeding on the floor outside of their home. Ebong defied calls by neighbours, all male, who first entreated him to restrain himself and later threatened to hold him to account physically. In fact, one of the neighbours found a perch for her to sit across the road, even as the woman sobbed. They started looking for clothing for her.

It was a naked show of machismo by a man who had no sense of propriety. It attracted the attention of the governor of the state, Umo Eno, and a statement by his chief press secretary, Ekerete Udo, described it as “a despicable act of violence and spousal abuse…from a man who otherwise should be the one to protect her.” The state government has therefore vowed to “ensure that justice is served in line with the provisions of the law against gender-based violence.”

On the governor’s order, the culprit was arrested, and his picture in handcuffs should be a lesson to all those who deploy immunity because they can exercise power. The state government has vowed to charge him to court, adding that Ebong’s primitivity was out of sync with “our culture.”

We also, like the governor, urge the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) to institute disciplinary measures against Ebong so that a punishment can show him that the professional should not act with such reckless rage.

Ebong belongs to a class of men with patriarchal hubris who believe the woman has no place in a decent home unless the man allows her. This is a hark back to a time when men were above the law, and their manliness and base instincts were the metrics of a real man. He did not show a good example of family in the presence of his children. A longtime neighbour said, in the viral video, that Ebong was a perpetual abuser and had been beating up his wife for years.

Ebong is not a good father or husband. He does not even deserve to be called a man.

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