There are sentences that stop a room cold, and “a husband can go to prison for life for forcing his wife” is one of them. In Lagos, that sentence is no longer a whisper or a Twitter argument. It is law speaking, plainly, through the Director of Public Prosecutions during the flag-off of Domestic and Sexual Violence Awareness Month on September 3, 2026. The caption reads : “Sex without a wife’s consent can attract life imprisonment.” Not rape, technically. “Sexual assault by penetration.” The name changes. The penalty does not.
That is what makes people uneasy. It feels like Kano boasting “Tumbin giwa, Kano, ya fi a komai” which means, Kano surpasses all, except this time it is Lagos setting the pace, and the bloggers like Tara Aisida would say, “This is Lagos.” Because Lagos has always loved to be first: first to test, first to legislate, first to endure the backlash. And now it has walked into the oldest room in human life, the marital bedroom, and asked a question law has avoided for centuries: can consent be withdrawn inside marriage?
The DPP, Dr. Babajide Martins, answered with legal precision. Under Nigerian law, a husband cannot be charged with “rape” of his wife if they are together. But under Section 261 of the Lagos State Criminal Law, anyone who penetrates another person without consent commits sexual assault by penetration, and the maximum is life. The distinction is semantic. The consequence is not. What it means, in the eyes of the state, is that a man who forces himself on a stranger and a man who forces himself on his wife can stand in the same dock. Marriage is no longer a blanket license. Dowry is not a receipt for the body.
That jars, because our childhood memory of marriage was different. We grew up hearing girls say, “Wait until you marry me,” as if marriage was the switch that turned entitlement on. We grew up hearing men say, “She is my wife,” as if that phrase alone settled every argument about access. Feminist legal scholar Catharine MacKinnon called that the “consent fiction”, the idea that a single yes at the altar erases the need for a thousand small yeses afterward. Sociology tells us the same. Anthony Giddens, writing on the “transformation of intimacy,” argued that modern marriage is moving from institution to relationship, from duty to negotiation. In that shift, the body stops being property and becomes territory that must be asked for each time.
And yet lived experience complicates it. Talk to men in banks who come home at midnight with nothing left, to drivers who fall asleep with their shoes on, and you will hear stories of wives who initiate, wives who withhold, wives who say “pay tax” before intimacy, husbands who beg, bribe, or wait. Talk to women and you will hear the reverse: husbands who demand, who sulk, who equate refusal with rebellion. Consent, in real homes, is rarely a courtroom yes or no. It is mood, fatigue, pregnancy, fear, love, spite, reconciliation sex, makeup sex. That is why the law feels like an overkill to many. It takes a private, messy negotiation and threatens it with the state’s heaviest hammer.
The moral logic behind Lagos, however, is not new. It is now global. England abolished the marital rape exemption in 1991. Canada did it in 1983. South Africa in 1993. The principle is simple and brutal in its clarity: marriage cannot mean permanent ownership of another person’s body. Jurist Matthew Hale’s 17th century doctrine, “the husband cannot be guilty of rape” has been overturned almost everywhere because it mistook a contract for a surrender. Legal philosopher Martha Nussbaum argues that bodily autonomy is a “central human capability.” Without it, no other freedom matters. From that view, Lagos is not destroying marriage. It is protecting the person inside it.
The problem is in the drafting and the optics. The DPP tied prosecution to “having an issue” between spouses. That creates a dangerous grey zone. Does disagreement equal non-consent? Does good terms equal implied consent? Criminal law scholar Andrew Ashworth warns that sexual offences are uniquely vulnerable to he-said-she-said evidence because they happen in private. Without clear standards such as force, threat, incapacity, withdrawal of consent mid-act.. the law risks becoming a weapon in custody battles and divorce negotiations. And with only one penalty on the table, life, the court has no ladder. It cannot distinguish between violence and a terrible judgment call made in anger.
There is also the fear of abuse, and it is not imaginary. Any law that lives in the bedroom can be misused. That is why comparative jurisdictions built safeguards: a requirement that the accused knew or had no reasonable basis to believe there was consent, graded sentencing that separates coercion from violence, and penalties for false allegations. Without those, the law may unintentionally push men toward the very thing marriage was supposed to cure by negotiating sex like a transaction, with gifts, bribes, and conditions, because the cost of guessing wrong is a lifetime behind bars.
So where does that leave us? The first truth is cultural. We have to let go of the idea that paying bride price buys permanent access. Anthropologist Ifi Amadiume showed decades ago that in many Nigerian societies, women retained sexual agency even within marriage. The law is only catching up to what many women have always practiced.
The second truth is legal. Lagos has not invented marital rape. It has bypassed the exemption by using a broader assault provision. In effect, the state is saying: we will protect you, even if we do not call it by the old name. That is clever, but cleverness is not clarity.
The third truth is practical. A better law would say three things clearly. One: marriage is not perpetual consent. Two: consent is absent when there is force, threat, fraud, or incapacity, not merely silence or a bad mood. Three: punishment should fit harm, and proof should be rigorous, because the state’s power to imprison for life demands the highest evidential bar.
Lastly, this is not about men versus women. It is about dignity versus domination. It is about whether we believe, as legal theorist Ronald Dworkin put it, that people have a right to control their own bodies even inside the most intimate contracts they sign. Lagos has chosen to say yes, and to say it loudly. The sentence is thrilling because it is frightening. It forces husbands to ask, it forces wives to speak, and it forces all of us to admit that the most private room in the house is no longer beyond the reach of law.
Bagudu Mohammed is the Founder, Alternative Perspectives.
Web: https://alternativeperspective.onrender.com
Email: bagudumohammed15197@gmail.com | Phone: 0703 494 3575
