In early September 2026, Lagos State’s Director of Public Prosecutions delivered a blunt public reminder that cut through decades of cultural assumption. A husband who forces sex on his wife after she has refused can be charged with sexual assault by penetration under the Criminal Law of Lagos State. The maximum penalty is life imprisonment.

The DPP was careful: It is not called “rape” while the marriage remains intact and the couple are “on good terms.” But once there is a dispute and the wife withholds consent, force crosses the line. Bride price, wedding rings, and “I paid for her” are not legal defences. Report the matter to the Domestic and Sexual Violence Agency, the state said, and the law will treat the act as a serious sexual offence.

That statement lands in a society still wrestling with the idea that marriage somehow creates permanent sexual access. It also lands in a landscape where some wives, wounded or angry, have discovered the new power of the report. Vengeful accusations exist. A spouse locked in a bitter dispute over money, children, or suspected infidelity can weaponise the threat of a life-sentence charge. False claims of non-consensual sex are not imaginary; they are a documented risk in any system that expands the criminal law into the bedroom.

The law must therefore walk a narrow path: protect genuine victims of force while remaining alert to the possibility that the criminal process itself becomes a weapon in domestic war.

Scripture has long spoken into this same tension, though from a different angle. The book of Proverbs is unsparing about the “quarrelsome” or “nagging” wife: “Better to live on a corner of the roof than share a house with a quarrelsome wife” (Proverbs 21:9; see also 21:19 and 25:24). The language is stark, almost comic in its exaggeration, yet it names a real corrosive force. Chronic contention drains affection, erodes trust, and turns the marriage bed into a battlefield of resentment rather than mutual gift. At the same time, the New Testament is equally clear about conjugal rights.

In 1 Corinthians 7, Paul writes that the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does—and likewise the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. “Do not deprive one another,” he says, “except perhaps by agreement for a limited time.” The obligation is mutual. Neither spouse is entitled to treat the other’s body as private property to be seized at will, nor as a bargaining chip to be permanently withheld in punishment.

The Lagos warning and the biblical texts together point to an uncomfortable middle. Force is crime. Permanent, spiteful refusal can also be a form of relational violence that starves the marriage. Consent remains essential; so does the duty of goodwill.

A healthy marriage does not require a husband to become a petitioner each night, nor a wife to become a gatekeeper who opens only when it suits her mood or her strategy.

It requires adults who understand that the body given in marriage is not a battlefield trophy and that the criminal law is a blunt instrument best reserved for genuine force, not for settling scores.

The practical implications are plain. Husbands who treat “no” as optional now face the possibility of life imprisonment under Lagos law. Wives who treat the threat of that charge as a convenient cudgel risk destroying both the marriage and their own credibility. And both spouses are reminded, by law and by older wisdom, that the marriage bed was meant for mutual delight, not unilateral claim or unilateral denial. In a state that has chosen to criminalise force even inside marriage, the wisest course remains the oldest: cultivate the kind of relationship in which consent is gladly given because the relationship itself is still worth protecting.

•E. C. Ngele, ESQ is a legal practitioner based in Aba.