By Lasisi Olagunju
One sad Monday in June last year (2025), I wrote in passing about the perils of fibroid and the ruin it does to hopes, wombs and homes. I got plenty of reactions and comments, some of them from ladies who have seen everything fibroids- with all the tears and pains.
One victim volunteered a close-up picture of her problem for me:
“You may publish,” she said.
She attached her real name to the message. I found it very surprising that she said that much. I was surprised because afflicted women rarely talk; they merely sulk on their reproductive disappointments. The person who spoke with me added that she had twice gone through fibroid procedures.
“I did the second surgery because it grew back since I didn’t have children still. They say fibroid grows in a disappointed womb. It takes over when pregnancy refuses to occur.”
But why did she open up? I asked her.
“Well, I talk to guide others. People now speak out on previously no-go areas. I was stunned when a lady told me recently that she had a hysterectomy…”
“Hysterectomy?”
“Yes. Removal of the uterus, the womb, so as to save the woman from very bad troubles and complications.”
“Removal of the womb is huge, and final. It means there will be no conception again and no biological child. You didn’t do that?”
“No. I didn’t. Mine was just the removal of the fibroids from the uterine walls. But, I still don’t have a child yet…”
“Sorry about that…” She could go for IVF or surrogacy, I sugggested. She kept quiet. I suspected finance.
“But who really is a mother? Why can’t a woman be a mother without a child?” she asked while hinting that she had decided to live a full life of service, with or without a biological child.
“Why not?” I responded. Madam Efunroye Tinubu was ‘a mother without a child.’ She actually had two children, but both of them predeceased her. After those terrible losses, she worked really hard to have more children. She changed husband after husband, drank medicine after medicine, but destiny stood on her way. She then ploughed her boat fully into the oceans of business and politics and made a success of both in Lagos, and later, in Abeokuta.
I read a portion of Madam Tinubu’s biography to my friend: “The Lagos Observer, reporting her death editorialized as follows: She (Madame Tinubu) played no mean part in the circumstances which necessitated British interference in the death struggle between Akintoye and Kosoko for the Lagos throne, and led to her expulsion in 1853. She was, by the way, the last of the principal actors in this historic drama. She left many an indelible mark, too, in Egba history. Requiescat in pace!”
Bitter-sweet.
The conversation was intense as it drifted into the emotional swamps of childlessness and how to handle it, especially when the clock moves towards midnight.
Stories of childlessness are emotionally charged themes in life and in fiction.
‘Efuru’ is a 1966 novel written by Flora Nwapa. Literary historians say it is the first novel written by any African woman and published internationally. In ‘Efuru’ we have Efuru, the protagonist. She has beauty, she has character glazed with inner and outer strength. But she is unlucky with children. She is unlucky, she has a child who died at infancy, then her womb dries up. Her husband, the ‘weak’ man she tends like a child, leaves her. She marries another man who, for the reason of her childlessness, goes for another woman.
Childlessness is a silence that follows the childless everywhere. Efuru, the character, is childless but she finds great success in trade. In her story is the story of the lake goddess, to whom the childless lady becomes a devotee.
Efuru…dreamt of the woman of the lake, her beauty, her long hair and her riches. She was happy, she was wealthy. She was beautiful. She gave women beauty and wealth but she had no child. She has never experienced the joy of motherhood. Why then did women worship her?” (Efuru, page 221).
Life is full of puzzles and complications. A childless goddess has devotees.
In the Nigerian (African) society, childbearing gives individual and social fulfilment. Beauty, health and wealth do also; one set complements the whole. Some people have one of those; some two, three; some all the four, some none. Life!
“Many fairy tales begin with a childless woman who seeks a remedy for her infertility. If she’s a queen, she’s desperate to give her husband an heir. If she’s a simple woman, she yearns for a child to fill the empty space in her house, in her heart. The wish of the childless woman is always granted in the fairy tale…”
‘Fairies’ are “small imaginary beings of human form.” Fairy tales are what their adjective says they are: fairy. Real life is much more complex and full of shocks and disappointments.
Michelle Tocher is a Canadian author of many story books. One of her writings is ‘The Childless Mother’ in which she speaks of her own fruitless struggle with barrenness. The quote above opens her paradoxical story of being a mother without a child. She wrote: “…I would call them the ‘childless mothers’ – the women who might have loved to have been mothers but didn’t have children because nature and destiny had another plan. I count myself among them.”
That woman, Michelle Tocher, is in every country and in every city and town.
A Grade A Customary Court, sitting at Mapo, Ibadan, Oyo State, towards the end of 2025 dissolved a marriage that went bad because of childlessness. In that case, reported by the Saturday Tribune of November 1, 2025, we find the woman at the centre of the case, one Silifat, abandoned, frustrated and harassed. In her evidence, she told the court her story: “My husband and I met about five years ago, and he paid my bride price.
“We had a beautiful relationship at the beginning of our marriage, and we were happy. We started experiencing a strain in our marriage when we had a delay in having children.
“My once loving and caring husband gradually became cold and withdrawn towards me. He stopped giving me attention and cared less about my welfare.
“He also denied me sex and refused to give me his support in all efforts that I made to have children.
“My husband, to my shock, later deserted me. He left home three years ago without leaving a clue as to his whereabouts.
“His family members likewise would not let me have peace of mind. They became hostile and demonstrated that their shoulder was not there for me to cry on. They demanded that I move out of their son’s house.
“My lord, I have had enough of my in-laws’ hostility. I pray the court will dissolve our union so that I can move on with my life.”
The court granted her prayer.
The Yoruba ancestor said olówó kò r’ómo rà (the rich cannot buy children). You and I know that this saying is long dead. Science killed it. It is the poor and the powerless who are found today childless.
Some weeks ago, I spoke with an old friend in desperate search. She would want to adopt a child but there is a long queue with attendant lobbying and racketeering in state-run ministries and agencies. “Can governments and governors look into the sleaze in this hole?” She asked no one in particular.
“Babies go to the highest bidder. It is messy.” She told me.
It is said that poverty exposes life’s cruelty. Surrogacy as another more modern, more biological option is as expensive as Rolls Royce Phantom. It is for the rich; she can’t cope. What other options are there for her and for others like her? Life is “a comedy for the rich, (and) a tragedy for the poor.” I got that line from Sholem Aleichem, Yiddish author and playwright who lived from 1859 to 1916.
There is an old song: “Eni tí kò bímo, ayé á fi ìwòsí lò wón” (a woman without children is open to all sorts of insults). It happened to Efuru and it is on the very last page of her story:
“Then, I became ill. Where the illness came from, nobody knew. Everybody thought I was going to die. Many dibias were consulted and we were asked to sacrifice to the gods, our ancestors and the woman of the lake. All was in vain. I was worse. Then a rumour went round that I was guilty of adultery. That I, Efuru, the daughter of Nwashike Ogene, was guilty of adultery. My mother was not an adulterous woman, neither was her mother, why should I be different? Was it possible to learn to be left-handed at old age? Then, my husband, Eneberi, had the nerve to ask me to confess so as to live. Eneberi, my husband, of all people, asked me to confess that I am an adulterous woman. Ajanupu saved me. I was too weak to do anything. But Ajanupu said a few home truths to Eneberi. I hear he is in the hospital on account of the injury given to him by Ajanupu.
“She took me to a doctor in Aba. I was cured. I came back a month ago. I went to my husband’s house and collected my belongings. Then I called my age-group and told them formally what I was accused of. According to the custom of my people, selected members of my age-group followed me to the shrine of our goddess – Utuosu. There I swore by the name Utuosu, she should kill me if I committed adultery. She should kill me if since I married Eneberi any man in our town, Onicha, Ndoni, Akiri, or anywhere I had been, had seen my thighs.
“I remained for seven Nkwos and now I am absolved. Utuosu did not kill me. I am still alive. That means that I am not an adulterous woman. So here I am. I have ended where I began, my father’s house. The difference is that now my father is dead. But I have nothing to say to Eneberi. He will forever regret his act. It is the will of our gods and my chi that such a fortune should befall me.”
The centenary of Efunroye Tinubu’s passing was marked with her biography published in 1987. It is a story every ‘stressed’ woman should read. It offers hope and, I believe, it gives direction. With understanding, the marriage that died in Mapo, Ibadan, could have been saved. Having at least a biological child is the socially ideal, but not having should not remove meaning from life.
Efunroye Tinubu was a mother in her childlessness. Historian and Yoruba novelist, Oladipo Yemitan, author of Tinubu’s biography, wrote of her burial: “After her body had been committed to mother earth, the rest of the weekend was devoted to merriment and feasting. No honour more grand could have been done her if she had been survived by a dozen children.”
Among the Yoruba, having children is not enough to rejoice over; it is the one buried by children who truly had children. Madam Efunroye Tinubu died on Friday, 2 December, 1887, a woman of means and meaning. She died without a child of her own but she left behind a ‘nation’ of children in Lagos and everywhere bearing her exclusive name forever. Anyone who is a Tinubu today is, one way or the other, of that woman. In life she was childless, in death, she became a mother of countless children.
In 2026, may the childless who seek God’s favour find it.
