Why I asked my husband to marry me – Aisha Yesufu

Nigerian socio-political activist, Aisha Yesufu, has opened up about her marriage and how she wooed her husband, Aliu.

She said this during an interview with BBC Pidgin.

During the rare interview, Ms Yesufu described herself as a “control freak,” saying she has always been the one to approach men.

Ms Yesufu, who is a co-convener of the Bring Back Our Girls campaign, revealed that she had never been in a relationship where the man asked her out.

“I like to be in charge of everything I am involved in. I have never been in any relationship that I didn’t initiate myself. I don’t do relationships where the guy comes and say I like you and all of that.

“In a lot of instances, I have been rejected. The most hurtful one happened when I was in secondary school. What Uche did to me was very painful. I wrote him a letter to ask him out and he replied that he wasn’t interested because he wanted to focus on school. Guess what happened, everybody in the class read that letter before I did. They laughed at me, it was painful but it didn’t stop me,” she said.

The mother-of-two also revealed that her controlling attitude encouraged her to approach her husband and present herself to him as “his wife” before they got married.

She also advised young unmarried women to normalise walking up to men and asking them out or proposing to them instead of waiting on men to make the offer while they age.

She said, “Go there and ‘toast’ him yourself. A woman can propose to a man and tell him I want to marry you. Go there and ask him yourself. People sit down clocking 30, 40, and going over 50 while waiting for a man to come and ask them out. How? Even if you are older than him, it won’t spoil anything because marriage is a serious business so you shouldn’t be waiting for “anyone that calls me.”

Fantasy

Speaking about her sex life, the 47-year-old businesswoman said attending to her husband’s sexual needs is the principal obligation in her marriage and that she is like a girlfriend to her husband, not a wife.

“Honestly, on my wedding night, I told my husband to tell me any sexual fantasy he had or any style he wanted and I’d be available because that is my primary job in the house. Every other thing, I do delegate them but you see that one work, I don’t joke with it.

“One thing my husband always says is that there has been no time that he makes advances to me in bed and I said no. You know I am an Edo woman now, we have to do it. Anytime people insult me and call me a prostitute, I tell them that I am a prostitute with only one customer,” she said.

The fiery activist has frequently been criticised on social media for being too outspoken for a Muslim married woman.

“I see people always insulting me on social media. Some will say that I am ugly and all of that. Those things do not matter to me because when I was growing up and there was no food, we fed on insults and grew up fighting,” she said.