Love potion. Is it real? Does it still work? Can a wife be that mean as to administer it on the man she married, the father of her children? Love potion, if you ask me, is like magun, only those who live to tell the story know that it is still efficient.

This is a major sensitive subject. It is one that rubs many people , especially men, the wrong way. It is one of the topics that earned me a warning from one of my close friends, Steve.

‘You want to be teaching our wives bad bad things, right?’ He once scolded me.

Well, it is not like that. This is an age-old sensitive matter in marriages. It is spiritual. It is real does not matter what the Gen-Z thinkers think. It may not be as common place as it once was but who wants to dare it, whether it still works or not? Who wants to be the guinea pig volunteer so we can finally chalk it up as a scientific find?

By the time Jane discovered that she had made the one wrong choice that had led to a dozen more wrong choices, it was too late to cry. In the beginning, she thought it was love. Toye was all over her, refused to let her spend her money. He assured her he was going to pick all her bills, that that was the way he was raised.  All Jane’s friends were green with envy. After the wedding, Toye’s true colours started emerging. First he wanted Jane to quit her job. She didn’t need it. He was picking all the bills already. Jane resisted. She kicked. She begged. She refused to stop going to work. That was when the demons strolled out of Toye’s closet, in a fine line. It started with the occasional slaps. Then he made good his threat to lock her out of their apartment. The embarrassment was indescribable for her. She slept on her balcony all night. Toye made sure of it. After that things move from bad to worse.

Toye wanted his breakfast to be ready by 7a,m and his lunch packed by the time he finished breakfast. He didn’t want the housekeeper touching his food in any way or at any stage. Jane k new she was in trouble but she didn’t want her friends to know. How do you tell your friends who thought you married a keeper that your husband is actually a killer?  She concealed her pain and maintained the façade. If she had a party with the girls at the same time she was wearing a black eye or her arm was in a sling courtesy Toye’s raging fists, she would come up with a gigantic lie, like she and her mother-in-law were going to see ‘mama’s cardiologist.

Then came the day she knew she must be ready to die in her marriage or must do something about it. Jane had fallen ill and gone to the hospital in a taxi because her husband always locked all car keys up somewhere or took them to the office. She was asleep from all the drugs and injections when Toye arrived hungry and angry. Jane had not cooked. What effrontery? He dragged her out of bed, down the stairs into the kitchen and ordered her to make dinner. A sick, groggy woman dragged down the stairs and locked in the kitchen. You got the picture, right? Of course, all Jane could do was lean on the kitchen island and cry bitter tears. Bitter tears don’t make dinners. No dinner meant more walloping for Jane and Toye really beat her that night.

After three days in bed, Jane decided to seek counsel and a way out of her troubled marriage. You see, there was an ‘aunty adugbo’ a neighbourhood big sister whose husband used to be a beast but is now a ‘born-again’ husband. Jane took her burden to big aunty and pleaded with her to teach her what she did that made her husband now caring and loving. Long story short, Toye is now a born again husband. He no longer beats his wife. If she goes to work or even a party and is not back by midnight, Toye waits outside, harmattan or downpour, on the balcony for Jane. Toye cooks and cleans now. He calls Jane honey and sweetheart. If Jane says he should not go out, he stays home. Jane decides when he goes to hang out with the boys and once she blows the whistle, he packs his things and returns to his ‘honey’. Imagine the man who once pulled his wife’s newly braided hair until she wept like a baby now opening the door for her, carrying her bags and massaging her feet and back every day after work?

Did you say it is not ‘ordinary eye’? Ah, that’s my point exactly. It was also not ‘ordinary eye’ when he was pummeling another woman’s daughter, was it?

Women in abusive relationships react to their pains in different ways. Some pray and hope that God will change the man. Some just bear the punches until they die or end up in a psychiatric ward.  Some talk about their pain. Many cover the gashes and scars. Some leave in the night while others have been known to kill their abusers in fits of frustrated rage.

The group under discussion here are those who opt for self-help by changing their husbands with dark magic. They call it love potion. I call it changing your husband’s heart and forcefully remolding him The only problem is the ‘dosage’ and ‘directions for use’ of this dark magic do not specify the ‘spec’ you will end up with. Too often we’ve heard of a once confident man becoming a super-mumu, fool who the wife does not even recognize. A remodeled abusive husband is usually extremely different from his original self. But if their wives like the pimped version, who are we to explain?    

All it takes, I heard, is a sprinkle of the life-changing powder in the food of the abusive bully. In the case of Toye, the powder was put in his  favourite soup, seafood okro .  Now, he’s a  pimped, prim and proper husband.

My stand has always been this. A man who will be fed with love potion always asks for it. Good husbands, responsible fathers do not end up with belly-full of dark magic powder. A loving man who does what he should do when he should do it is not a problem his wife wants to solve. A man who protects and respects his wife will not be changed to a model his mother will not recognize.

These are the men who are likely to be served love potion along with their dinner, today or in no distant future.

Men who beat their wives regularly or irregularly.

Men who disappear from home to hibernate with side chicks for weeks.

Men who impregnate multiple women without marrying or catering for them or their children.

Men who think they are special gifts to women and so should take and not give back in  a relationship or marriage.

Rich, fine young men who are known for breaking hearts of women who trust and truly love them.

For a while these iniquitous men may get away with their bad ways but the day they meet their match or waterloo, their ‘ofada’ rice stew or ‘ofe nsala’ or groundnut soup will be spiced with love potion. And that’s when they become good husbands by force, washing toilets and driving madam to the market and waiting until she finishes shopping.

Guys, I’m not interested in any debate over whether love potion exists or if it works or not. I’m just a concerned mum trying to do my bit.  Whatever names medical doctors call ‘magun’, it has been seen in action including its cousin that glues a man and a woman together via their private pens and ink-pot, until they become a spectacle.

Isn’t it just better to change your ways, your bad manners, my brother, before your wife changes it for you with just a pinch of powder? And fellow mothers, let’s pull our sons, wards, brothers’ ears before they are pimped into models we can’t recognize. Let’s stop encouraging these young men to do evil things in the name of tradition. Their wives are their partners, not commodities. These Gen-Z girls are wired differently. Let’s not push them into taking matters into their own hands. As for recalcitrant men who like to test fate, go on, keep abusing your wife physically and mentally, when you have had a full dose of the dark powder, and you start your Mondays with sorting your wife’s coloured pants and bra from the whites, we will be here to cheer you up.