In Africa, Nigeria in particular, most dominant cultures often dictates that the major role of woman in the society is to ensure that their children are in the best humanly condition and that her husband is well fed and happy
At the mention of her name not every kneel bows but every tongue confess that she is indeed the one true feminist messenger whose gospel is to "liberate" women who have been chained by the inequality in the society and to make the world begin to accord the same level of respect given to men to women.
In Africa, Nigeria in particular, most dominant cultures often dictates that the major role of woman in the society is to ensure that their children are in the best humanly condition and that her husband is well fed and happy. But, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie begs to differ from these perceptions of women by the society.
According to her, “Culture does not make people, people make culture…. Today, we live in a vastly different world. The person more qualified to lead is not the physically stronger person. It is the more intelligent, the more knowledgeable, the more creative, more innovative. And there are no hormones for those attributes…. I have chosen to no longer be apologetic for my femininity. And I want to be respected in all my femaleness. Because I deserve to be.” She wrote in her book “We should all be Feminist”. The book was published as a follow up to a talk she delivered at a conference in December 2012, TEDxEuston.
For Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, in her book, a Feminist is “a man or a woman who says, yes, there’s a problem with gender as it is today and we must fix it, we must do better. All of us, women and men, must do better.” Born on the 15th of September, 1977 to a Professor father and a University registrar, Chimamanda Adichie has so far authored at least six books with majority of it lending a voice to females not to be intimidated by anyone in the society.
It will be recalled that earlier in April this year, the Feminist activist had asked former United states of America Presidential aspirant, Hillary Clinton, why her Twitter bio described her as wife unlike Bill Clinton, her husband whose bio read “42nd president". Although Chimamanda's statement was not well received, however, a few days later Hillary Clinton changed her twitter bio.
A few days back, Chimamanda again came under heavy backlash for her statement on chivalry. In an interview with South African comedian, Trevor Noah, She said she had trouble with people opening the door for women and that people mostly do it “for the sort of idea of chivalry because chivalry is the idea of women are somehow weak and need protecting but we know that there many women who are stronger than men”
In his reply to her, Nigerian radio host, Daddy freeze wrote on his Instagram page "Dear Chimamanda, yesterday, while driving home from our online church service held on the radio, I saw a broken down Danfo bus. All the women remained on the bus, while the men assisted the conductor in pushing the bus, as the driver tried his best to jump-start it. Seeing this, I realized that no matter how hard you try to propagate your feminist ideology, your own gender will continue to let you down because of both nature and nurture.”
With all these activism effort of Chimamanda one can only ask if someday the feminist messiah might someday decide to prove to the whole world that indeed what a man can do a woman can do better by running for the office of the Presidency in Nigeria. After all, she once said "Nigerian politics has been, since the military dictatorships,largely non-ideological. Rather than a battle of ideas, it is about who can pump in the most money and buy the most access." What if she decides to change this?