Kenya: Polygamy bill allows men unlimited wives

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Junior Ogwela, a doctor who runs a small clinic in a village near Lake Victoria, said his father wouldn't have married hundreds of wives if there were restrictions to stop him.

Ahmadiyya Times | News Watch | Int'l Desk
Source/Credit: Al Jazeera
By Malkhadir Muhumed | April 4, 2014

A new marriage bill that gives men the liberty to marry as many wives as they want – and without any consultations with their partners – is, according to many, going too far.

“Those days of marrying dozens of wives are gone,” said Tom Akuku Ogwela, son of a polygamist, and a polygamist himself. “Socially and economically, it’s difficult to have more than three-to-four wives.”

Tom Ogwela's father, Ancentus Akuku Ogwela, married 130 wives, and, when he died at 92, left behind 210 children.

Junior Ogwela, a doctor who runs a small clinic in a village near Lake Victoria, said his father wouldn't have married hundreds of wives if there were restrictions to stop him, noting that, “in those days what was needed was a lot of food, which my father had a plenty of as a farmer, and less cash, unlike right now”.

The bill, passed by parliament last month but still unsigned by the president, has split Kenyans into two main camps: Those who vehemently support it for religious or cultural reasons, and others who say it will create unnecessary divisions and hostilities in families in a country where many people still live in poverty. Some even say that unchecked polygamous marriages have the potential to dramatically increase the population of the country.

The head of the Catholic Church in Kenya, John Cardinal Njue, called the passage of the bill “a painful” move by a male-dominated parliament, and urged President Uhuru Kenyatta to reject it.

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