Written by Jide Ojo - Nigeria
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Jide Ojo |
The title of this piece is a copyright from Aisha Falode and her team of co-presenters of "Amazons", a magazine programme on African Independent Television. The phrase was the topic of the episode aired on Friday, August 28, 2015. I watched the fascinating edition and therefore decided to share my perspective on the issue with a wider audience. In the episode, Nigerian designer wives was the ascription given to married career ladies who are trendy, sophisticated, and cosmopolitan but deficient in culinary prowess. They are women who are well-read but lack the ability to manage the home front. They rely heavily on house-helps to clean and cook thereby outsourcing crucial matrimonial duties.
Ace actress, Funke Akindele, in one of the recent episodes of her highly entertaining TV drama entitled "Jennifer's Diary" featured a character that best describe Aisha Falode's Nigerian designer wife. The lady couldn't cook nor do any household chore and only tried to do them when she was about losing her fiancé to another woman.
Is it not shocking that this country now has a sizable number of married women who cannot cook anything beyond noodle? There are even some of them who cannot boil water let alone egg. They have been so pampered that they do not know the way to the market and if they do, they don't know the recipe for soup making; how to identify good fish or meat; which yam is good for pounded yam and which one is good for porridge; how to bargain, etcetera.
There are many ladies in today's Nigeria that hire people to go to market for them. Thereafter, they go for their cookery book for guidance on how to go about preparing their meals. Some who couldn't cook order large quantum of prepared food and soups from restaurants which they take home to refrigerate and microwave when they want to eat or entertain visitors. Some don't even bother themselves going through all that stress, they simply eat out.
These designer wives do not know how to sweep, wash plates and clothes, mop the floor, dust the furniture, iron clothes, arrange the home and tidy up their environment. While some of them make heavy investment in purchasing washing machines for their laundry; some others hire people to do their home cleaning. Some do most of their laundry at the dry cleaners. All these are done at great financial and social costs.
What then do these designer wives know how to do? Oh, a lot! They are fashionistas and are specialist in the use of information and communications technology. They are connected to all the social media and can ping and chat from morning till evening except when they are busy at work. They regularly upload their latest pictures on their social media accounts such as Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. They also are good at watching the latest movies and films on satellite television. They have favourite soap operas they cannot afford to miss on terrestrial TV. They know all the major characters in Mexican soaps, Nollywood and Hollywood. They like to gossip and as such spend quality time on phones chatting up friends, colleagues and relations. They also love cars, customised, posh wonders-on-wheel, with which they cruise town.