USA Africa Dialogue Series - Hoax report: Nigerian women not world most promiscuous

Hoax report: Nigerian women not world most promiscuous   KAYODE KETEFE   "Nigerian women are the most unfaithful in the world" that is conclusion of a report released earlier this month by a condom manufacturer, Durex, which claims the conclusion was an emanation of a survey in which 29,000 people in 36 countries were interviewed. According to the report, Nigerian women habitually cheat on their spouses and rank "the most promiscuous in the world" (with 62 per cent of those interviewed purportedly admitting promiscuity); Thailand and Malaysia women came second and third with 59 and 39 per cent scores respectively. The title of the most randy men went to Thailand (54) while South Korea came second with (34).  Malaysia, already a top performer for women infidelity, also came third here with 33 per cent. The method of this study, according to the researchers, was through population samples who filled questionnaire online. No sooner had this report been released by Durex than it released another similar one. In the latest, Nigeria still clinched another dubious title; she was adjudged as having the "most sexually satisfied people in the World". The  focus of this piece will be on the most damning and embarrassing of the two reports – the one purportedly finding our women most promiscuous. Why on earth would Nigerian women be the most promiscuous? Certain questions need to be asked concerning the report – why should such an infinitesimal sample of 29,000 people be used to make hasty generalisation for whopping populations of 36 countries when Nigeria alone has population of 160 million with half of them being women? Secondly what is the demographic distribution of the samples used? One hope the researchers did not reach to "good samples" in case of some countries and bad samples (like prostitutes!) in case of others.  You know what I mean - malicious selection of samples with a view to lend credence to preconceived stereotype   This is not the first time pseudo-scientific postulations would be bandied about as products of empirical findings; in 2010, Nigeria was described in a Gallup global poll as having the "happiest people on earth". But the report was discredited two years later by The United Nation (UN)'s first comprehensive survey on national mood which rated Nigerians as the 100th happiest people in the world. Back to the question, why would Nigerian women emerge the most sexually debased?  Is it in Nigeria that we have the culture of wife-swapping? A morally dubious practice that is deep-rooted in Europe and consists of men mutually exchanging their wives with friends or total strangers for briefs spells of sexual pleasure that may prove continual, all in the name of seeking transcendental sexual gratifications. Every day, in many parts of the world far removed from Africa, people strive to outdo one another in perverse bid to re-enact Gomorrah!      What about artificial penis, synthetic vaginal, clitoral stimulator and all other paraphernalia and tools of sexual perversion?  Are they not manufactured in the West and some other places outside African soil whence they are distributed worldwide? What about the practice of Bondage and Discipline, Sadism and Masochism (BDMS) that has taken firm root in Europe?  That is a kind of lifestyle where men and women enter into self-imposed slavery by surreptitiously maintaining relationships in which they voluntarily yield up their bodies and freewill for the domination and mastery by other men and women or conversely where men and women exercise sexual domination on other men and women who voluntarily yield up their "bodies, souls and spirits" to them, as it were. No attempt is made here to condemn peoples and their lifestyles; we are only saying that most, if not all forms of practices based on seemingly inordinate freedoms of people for erotic gratifications are still foreign to Africa. Thus the proposition of Nigeria women emerging as most promiscuous in the world simply does not conduce to prevailing realities, and by extension common sense.  Even let us assume that there was no hidden agenda and bias on the part of the researchers and those samples were sensibly selected and let us for the moments overlook the disproportion in the sample/population statistics, the research is nonetheless doomed for what I may call "Liar confession dilemma". When a liar tells a lie and you are asking him to tell you the truth about the lie, more often than not, you would end up being told more lies! They researchers had obtained information online by way of social survey from respondents. Now for the outcome of that research to be reliable, two apparently contradictory virtues must inhere in respondents – they must both be unfaithful and honest at the same time! What makes the researcher think that a woman who is fiercely independent-minded and so morally bankrupt to be untrue to her marital vow would now be down to earth in filling statistics on her sexual escapade online truthfully simply because some starry-eyed researchers have asked her. Will the same unfaithful characteristic that predisposes her to marital infidelity not render whatever "truth" she tells researchers highly unreliable? One would have thought facts on this kind of research could be elicited through demographically reliable indicator like the rate of divorce predicated on the grounds of infidelity etc. Last  word? We don't need any condom manufacturer to tell us about virtues of Nigerian women.

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