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It took the sex scandal of Equitorial Guinea’s finest and lover boy, Baltasar Engonga, for Nigerians to understand that we share different mindsets and ideologies about sex with our French and Spanish -speaking African brothers and sisters.

By Chukwudi Iwuchukwu

For instance, even though we are the largest consumers of pornography in Africa, an average Nigerian is prentious and a puritan when it comes to s€x.

We love the subject sex, but we don’t admit that we have it in public.

This is why some Nigerian pregnant women are shy of people seeing them pregnant in public, because she does not want people to know that she is having sex, and pregnancy is evidence of that.

It does not matter that she is legally married to a man; still yet, she does not want people to think she is having s€x.

She is shy.

I think this boils down to how we were raised and the fact that s€x is rarely discussed in most Nigerian homes.

Even when it is discussed, it is discussed in a hushed tone and something that is sacred and forbidden.

I’m not sure many unmarried young people in Nigeria can boldly walk up to their parents to inform them that they are having sex even when that is the case that they have an active s€xual life with their partners.

But for our brothers and sisters in the French and Spanish -speaking African countries

It is a different mindset when it comes to s€x, and they are aggressive when it comes to it.

For instance, in the democratic republic of Congo, a mother can aggressively go for the same man that her daughter is sleeping with.

A young girl can bring her lover home and her mom will hear daughter moaning in her roof and it is nothing to her.

She can even ask her daughter to pass him around if she hears good testimony from her unmarried daughter that the man is good in bed.

The same with men; a man in Congo can go for the same babe that the son is sleeping with, and in their culture, it is not an outrage.

I think that is why Baltasar Engonga could get away with what he did for this long because for his people and the women he slept with consent, it is a way of life to have sex with any man or woman that catches your fancy without feeling guilt about it.

In French and Spanish -speaking African countries, s€x is seen more or less as a need, the way we eat food, and you don’t need to be guilty about it for having it with anyone because you are simply fulfilling a need.

Sex is s€x and no attachment. Men can woo a married woman in Congo, and it is ok.

But in Nigeria, s€x is equated with love and feelings.

Nigerian men are brought up to believe that having sex with many people can block progress and your destiny, so you have to be careful with who you do it with.

Because of this mindset, a Nigerian woman is brought up to believe that a man who had sex with you and moved on after the sex used her and collected something important from her.

That is why you hear heartbroken Nigerian women cry out.

“All all I have done for him, which is in most part s€x, he still dumped me.”

This mindset is rooted in the fact that sex is something a Nigerian woman gives to a man, even though it is for mutual enjoyment by the two parties.

It is not like that for French-speaking African women, who prioritise their satisfaction and orgasm over their feelings.

Also in Nigeria, men who are promiscuous like Baltasar Engonga are ridiculed and called community penis by members of the community where he lives, but in Cameroun, for instance, men who behave like him are in the majority, and they are celebrated and seen as normal.

The only difference is that they don’t tape their s€xual encounters with their multiple partners like Baltasar Engonga did.

So this is a case of us being in the same Africa; we even share the same complexion, but we have different views and mindsets about s€x, which is ok.