By Farooq Kperogi
I just read that Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan told 4a Benue senator by the name of Titus Zam (whom I’d never heard of!) that she has his “mate at home.”
I genuinely laughed out loud. It is a sharp, deliciously ironic reversal of a stale and sterile misogynistic put-down that high-flying Nigerian women know too well.
In moments of heightened emotions, some men like to remind confident, accomplished women who refuse to be anybody’s doormat that they “have their type at home,” as if wives are trophies, acquisitions, booties from a conquest, or household appliances, not partners.
Natasha’s witty squelcher at her male colleague cleverly turns that script inside out, which is precisely why it lands with such powerfully comic force.
Of course, the remark raises amusing questions. Did she mean Senator Zam resembles her husband, which would be a spectacularly accidental insult? Was she referring to her male domestic servants? Or was the name “Titus” simply triggering thoughts of the ever-present canned fish that populated many Nigerian childhood kitchens?
Whatever her precise meaning, the line works because it flips the script on misogyny. It punctures a familiar male ego reflex. It is quick, ironic and unexpectedly funny.
