‘Your husband has the right to do whatever he wants with your body’ -Tope Mark-Odigie

TVC Presenter Tope Mark-Odigie, has weighed in on reports of a Nigerian doctor who via his Twitter handle shared the story of how a husband connived with his doctor, to remove his wife’s womb because he doesn’t want her to have more children.

While the lady alleged that after the birth of her 5th child, her husband connived with the doctor to remove her womb without her consent, Tope Mark-Odigie sarcastically stated during the show that as long as a woman has gotten married to a man traditionally, he has the right to do whatever he wants to do with her.
According to her, if we want to do culture, then we should be 100% with it as traditional weddings have been created to give the impression that a woman is being bought by her husband.

”We cannot behave like the western world. We are in Nigeria and we are in Africa. We are a people that will tell a man to prostrate for hundred times to marry one woman. We are the one that will ask a man to bring a million Naira, to bring a goat, to buy everything possible because you are giving over that woman unto the man to take care of her, to make decisions for her, as long as you own her. As long as we still live within that rule, we cannot begin to form westernized. We cannot begin to form modernity. We cannot begin to form feminism. Except we want to expunge traditional marriage. So, we are going to do legal wedding which means that I am bound only by the laws of this marriage. Then if my husband does anything contrary to my legal rights, of which we have shared everything in the marriage 50-50.

If you want to do culture, do culture. If you want to do modern 21st century family setting, then you focus on that. But you cannot eat your cake and have it. In our country, we have prioritized culture more than any other thing.
A man has a right to decide how a woman should look.If he wants her to be slim or be fat he would say add weight. He would tell her I have bought you. I own you. So I tell you how to look. I tell you how I want your body to look. I control your life.”