2021: The Goal Is Over Ambition.

or simply put be a genevieve nnaji

Art Source: Pinterest. Congo Positif.

As a child, I grew up watching women like Genevieve Nnaji and Ini Edo act movies that in retrospect were quite instructive and ahead of their time. I also grew up hearing a lot of rumors about women like Genevieve Nnaji. Rumors that I couldn’t understand because Genevieve Nnaji seemed happier and more focused than any of the women pushing those rumors. For one she wasn’t answering to any man and the young me knew that that was the dream life.

I remember on one such occasion, an Aunty of mine who we shall call Aunty Chinonyelum blamed Genevieve Nnaji’s unmarried status on a situation that she narrowed down to “na over ambition dey worry am”. The eight year old me was confused. Genevieve Nnaji was not the one who was always stressing and in fear of where to run to. Genevieve Nnaji was the one on TV showing young girls that acting was a viable path. It was NOT Genevieve Nnaji who disrupted my mum’s Sunday service because she was running yet again from a man who whilst strongly refusing to marry her, beat her numerous times even with a pregnancy.

Whenever people ask me what my goal as a feminist is, I always tell them freedom. But what exactly constitutes that freedom?

I will say as a feminist and as a Nigerian woman, my goal as a feminist is to not have to prove my humanity and to not have to feel shame around my body. My ultimate goal as a woman is the freedom over my voice. I want to be free to speak my mind knowing that my choice of opinions will be judged not based on the body of the owner, but on the content of the words themselves.

However, even if I have once said that I want women being respected as human, I will also now say that I want women to be over ambitious the same way I want women to be attention seekers. The honest truth is that in a society like ours, sacrificing your dreams for a man or for children forever can and will make you resentful when these two groups leave you.

I want Nigerian women in 2021 to begin to imagine if men and children did not exist. Yes some of us may want kids and there’s nothing wrong with that. But if there were no men and no need for reproduction, how would you think as a woman. What are the conversations you would have?

These few questions are what surprisingly guide me when trying to see myself as human. Too often women in Nigeria and indeed other parts of the world are viewed through the lens of how well we can use our bodies to produce children and satisfy men.

Currently Aunty Chinonyelum has five children and the last picture I saw of her, she looked tired. A tiredness only women can understand. A tiredness that comes when you are bound as an Igbo woman to the duty of taking care of your children and still maintaining happiness enough to insult any woman who laughs at your lack of a university degree.

A tiredness that can and will push you to be harsher in raising your daughters so they have a better life than you did especially in the choices of men they marry.

A tiredness that will make you revolt in violent anger if your daughters end up being lesbian and there is no possibility of you showing that the years you exchanged purple eyes for have seen your daughters marry well with you being “Mother of the Day”.

This new year I want Nigerian women and girls including myself to own all our dreams and ambitions. It doesn’t matter where we are currently. It doesn’t matter who has said what. I would also like to add that it doesn’t matter what even fellow women have said.

I want Nigerian women to understand that since our paths are always shaped by sisterhood, we can and should find new sisters we can call on when we need encouragement. Any woman who holds another woman back to please a man or the appearance of a man should be ignored in words AND action.

May the end of this year be the year I and other women remember as joyful.

Welcome to 2021.

Ise. Ase. Amin. Amen.