By Funke EGBEMODE
(egbemode3@gmail.com)
Funke, do you know that a man’s manhood also needs recharging?
Excuse me, is a man’s manhood a phone or a power bank?
It is both.
What kind of corruption is this on a Monday morning? I muttered.
Daddy Abe is a man with white hair and I am just a woman. I have a few strands of grey and I do not possess ‘manhood’, even though some people think I am a suspect. Whatever, I am not a man and I don’t want to be a man. Anyway, I was curious. I wanted to learn more about this ‘manhood charger’.
“Here is how it works. When a man has to sleep with the same woman, year in, year out, his manhood gets bored. It needs another website to surf. What I mean is a man who has to keep to one wife for decades, sleep with only one woman for 30 years, for instance, all in the name of one-man-one-wife is a man who is susceptible to erectile dysfunction. He needs another woman, a fresh body and all his problems will disappear.”
Oh wow, all that preamble just to justify getting a new wife! Men and their upside logic. Why was Daddy Abe determined to spoil my anointing and disrupt the flow of my creative juices with this kind of narrative, and on a Monday too? I was already sorting my thoughts on a king being chased out of his palace before the ’old man’ came up with this penile charger story. True, I was struggling with finding enough words to remind us all of a new angle to our national woes (and there are weekly angles in this sweet country), this suspicious charger being introduced was an interesting diversion.
I do not believe that a new wife is the much-awaited cure for erectile dysfunction. There is no science to prove or back it up but Daddy Abe insisted he knew what he was talking about. He is the man, he insisted. Men who are reading this, does getting a new body wake up a man’s retiring giant? Do be truthful and speak and share from experience.
Most Nigerian men are closet polygamist. They are pretending to love the wives of their youth forever while their eyes are roving to and fro seeking a woman or women to devour. They would do anything to even make it law or even mandatory like NYSC. Tufia kwa! It will not, never, happen. But wait, is it not already happening via something now elegantly called side chic? A man marries one wife with funfair and white frills and some years down the line, he strays into another bosom, stays for as long as he wants, clandestinely doing his unsanctioned doings. Then he strays again, and again. One wife at home, and three outside or worse still, he acquires and discards in multiples of three.
He is constantly charging his manhood, all over the place but has it ever stopped a man’s manhood from timed or untimely retirement? None that I know of. I have not heard, either, that men who keep their harems in plain sight, I mean the openly polygamous, are still able to perform their husbandly duties as they used to. The men who have four or five wives to pick and choose from every night, do they not suffer the consequences of diminishing returns even when they are charging and recharging their things in different sockets? Or are they also looking for something new, something different from their Type-C chargers? You never really can tell what is going on in the heads of men now, can you, especially when it is about keeping their side dishes out of sight?
Because a man can produce millions of sperm does not mean he is “designed” for many women. That a man can satisfy four women in his 40s does not mean he will still be able to rise to the occasion each time he is called up for duty when he is 60. Isn’t that why some men stay back in the living room to ‘treat files and catch up on work’ when their wives tell them to come to bed? If they can fix it at home and away at 50, there is no proof that they will be able to at 70. Oh okay, let me not speak for all men. Raise your hands if you are 65 and are still able to ascend and descend like you used to 20 years ago. I don’t see many hands up. Yeah, they ain’t getting it up so fast now, hands or third legs.
I think this polygamy thing is more cultural than biological. That charger logic is just men around here wanting to dominate.
Across history, many societies permit or celebrate male polygamy, openly or secretly even in the year of our Lord 2026. That is why nobody is arresting the man who takes one bride to church (because the bride’s parents are Christians), takes another to the registry, and then observes Nikkah for two more and he lives with all of them in one big opulent compound. Marriage around here is most often tied to inheritance, lineage power and wealth, patriarchy and control of women’s sexuality.
Over the years, all of that have gradually hardened into a myth: “men are naturally polygamous.”
But culture is not nature. A culture that excuses men’s infidelity and punish women for the same behaviour tells you the argument is less about design and more about dominance. Argue with that, if you can.
Have you also noticed that men who sing ‘men are polygamous’ do not want their daughters to become second wives? No, they do not want their precious daughters to bring home married men as suitors, ah ah. Think deeply about that too.
Some men seek multiple women not because they are “designed” that way, but because of ego, insecurity, fear of intimacy or access without accountability.
Plenty of men want one woman who feels like home. Others want many women because they are running from themselves.
Most moral and religious systems that value responsibility insist on discipline over desire. Even where polygamy is allowed, it comes with heavy conditions—fairness, provision, emotional responsibility—that most men conveniently ignore while chanting “nature”.
The inconvenient truth is this; if men were truly designed for many women, commitment would be unnatural. But they want commitment, in fact, ownership. Monogamy would collapse universally and jealousy would not hurt so deeply. Betrayal would not wound men so badly.
Yet it does. No man, whether he is a man of God or a man of the gods, wants or can share. Even when they cannot satisfy their women, they don’t want their fellow polygamists to stray into their plots of land. What is there is theirs even when their chargers are no longer charging.
What is the reality?
A man is capable of desiring many women but he has to choose and live with his choice. He must charge his equipment according to the manufacturer’s specification. If he overcharges, there will be consequences. If he spreads himself too thin out of greed, his grid can collapse. If he collapses with his grid and greed, other men will be called up to continue the service. But men don’t like to be told that they can expire and that blue pills and bottled concoctions can even lead to forced leave or retirement. They love what they love and prefer to die in active service. And when they do, you will think their successors will learn from the mistakes of their ancestors. No such luck. The cycle must go on. Even Daddy Abe won’t agree. He insists that a droopy dangling modifier can be brought back to life by a new woman.
No man who loves a harem will go unscathed. It is just sad that they realise it too late. Think of the emotional burnout, the trouble and exhaustion of mind and soul trying to please different women. Managing multiple relationships requires maturity many men lack. Just looking at the physical satisfaction angle alone is totally unwise. There is more to a relationship than just firm ‘fronters’ and ample derrieres.
What about the financial strain, desire that multiplies faster than income.
Finally is the loss of legacy and support of children when charging comes to a final bus stop and the once desired fine man becomes old and dependent. The children do not forget. They remember daddy’s absence, mummy’s pain and tears through lonely years. Polygamy may promise power, dominance and spicy variety, just don’t forget that too many sweets can also deliver debilitating chaos.
