Condom and the cloak of shame -
Taboo and shame turn one of the most common and inexpensive retail items the most difficult to purchase in Nigeria.
By Emmanuel Mayah

It started like the opening scene of a television drama. A man walks into a small store. At the counter, he hesitates a little, his eyes sweeping across shelves stacked with retail pieces. Possibly having picked what he wanted with his eyes, he nevertheless asked: "Do you have condom?" Eager to make a sale, the storekeeper's daughter, who was about 11-years-old, sprang from her bench and went directly for a pack of condoms. The angry voice of her mother stopped her in her tracks. "Don't touch that thing! Haven't I told you and your sisters before?" The teenage girl recoiled. In her fear and confusion, the packet of condom, just at her fingertip, dropped from the shelf, spilling its contents on the floor. Another woman in the store stooped to lend a hand in salvaging the items, adding her voice to the fray between mother and daughter; meanwhile, the embarrassed male customer had walked away. Though, this incident was observed last week in the Isolo suburb of Lagos, it was by no means isolated. It is not uncommon for those who desire to buy condom for protected sex to be frustrated from buying them because of one barrier or another. As Saturday Sun discovered, this trend is as much a roadblock as several other social and cultural factors impeding condom use in Nigeria.

Given that heterosexual intercourse is the leading means of transmitting the human immune deficiency virus (HIV) in Nigeria, it was at first encouraging that virtually all the stores visited by Saturday Sun stocked condoms. There the good news seemed to end. Though it is available just across the counter, in reality the gap between the condom and sexually-active youths and young men is wide. It is even wider for married men. According to 29-year-old Edmond Idonije, it takes willpower to go to a store and ask for condom. "I have experienced several embarrassing moments at stores where I had gone to pick up condom. Until you have experienced it, you wouldn't believe how awkward it could get. One Sunday afternoon, I walked down to a kiosk on my street. People were buying cigarettes, milk and the sorts; when I asked for a packet of condom, everyone stopped whatever they were doing to take a look at me. The looks on their faces said the same thing; that you must be irresponsible. They made it appear like you were about to commit a sin or crime. Well, since nobody openly accused me of anything, I said nothing too, just that I urged the mallam to make the transaction as brisk as possible." It could never be known how many Nigerians have faced with same situations but chose to back out completely, resorting to unprotected sex without a condom.

Silas Mekwunye, a 31-year-old estate surveyor doesn't let his pride prevent him from being responsible. But even though he is willing to face down a shopowner and buy his condoms, the barriers don't always end there. Silas says he has experienced occasional moments of embarrassment at the store, but it is something he now takes in stride. "The problem really is that our attitude to sex still leaves so much to be desired. Nigeria suffers from a closed-society syndrome. Nobody wants to talk about anything, especially sex. With the wave of Pentecostal Christianity, when people have babies, they even want you to believe it was by immaculate conception. Condom has no other use except for sex, but people forget we are talking about responsible and healthy sexual relationships that addresses our fears of STDs, HIV/AIDS and unwanted pregnancy even in marriage." Well, Silas' most embarrassing moment was not at the store but at a police checkpoint. He was in a taxi that was flagged down by some officers on stop-and-search. When they went through his briefcase, they found a pack of condom among his papers. The sales executive was ordered out of the taxi for more frisking. When the interrogation began, it centred more on the condom than on anything else. The police wanted to know what he was doing with the item and where exactly he was going to. Silas did not help his case when he informed the officers that he was a married man. The police began to accuse him of adultery and even threatened to drag him to his place of work to verify that he was a staff of the company he claimed. While he says he would had dared the officers to do so in another situation, he was horrified at the thought of being taken before his bosses and colleagues with a packet of condoms. He did what he had to do to free himself from the clutches of the policemen, and once out of that scene, he threw the offensive condoms out the taxi window.

Investigations revealed that very few men in Nigeria would want to be caught dead with a condom outside of their bedrooms. Because the entire business of purchasing them is most times clumsy, everyone who understands the value of the condom has devised their own techniques of buying them. According to Mr Obiora Igwe, a shopowner on Old Ojo Road, it is indeed a tricky business buying and selling condom." Some customers come to my shop and go away only to come back again when few people are around. I think it is because they are ashamed to call the name. When you buy condom, people think you are going to prostitutes or you don't trust your girlfriend." Obiora told Saturday Sun that he sells condom but doesn't use it. The woman at the shop next to him doesn't sell them at all because she is Catholic and doesn't want to be seen as promoting promiscuity. Obiora added that some buyers, unable to say the word 'condom', have coined various euphemisms for the latex device such as: 'rubber,' 'raincoat,' 'that thing' and 'CD', which he said is most popular among students. Throughout his years in the store, not one woman has ever come to purchase condoms.

Adesoji Johnson, editor of Security & Safety magazine, is piqued by the conservative attitude to condoms in Nigeria. Having devoted editions to sexual safety and public health, he finds it ridiculous that Nigerian society is still held captive by stigma and misconceptions. " I see it as an irony that people can freely sell and buy life-threatening products like tobacco, alcohol and narcotics yet are embarrassed or reluctant to market life-saving items like condom. The real problem is that many among us see condom as a stigma commodity, more like a sex accessory in the same mould as vibrators."

More ironically, the stigma that Adesoji spoke about has sometimes come from the same people whose jobs it is to promote condom use. Not too long ago, some advertising practitioners have had to query the message contained in the TV commercial of the most popular brand of condom in Nigeria. In the said commercial, a scruffy conductor of a crowded molue bus picks up a piece of condom that had ostensibly dropped from the pocket of a passenger. Almost howling with disdain, he demands to know who the condom owner was. Of course, the male user was suffused with embarrassment when the item was traced to him.

To add to the problem of safe sex education and condom use, the Advertising Practitioners Council of Nigeria (APCON) recently came out with new codes for condom advertisement in Nigeria. The body charged with vetting and approving advertisements has begun a crackdown on advertisers for what it called, "condom advertisements that might encourage indecency", or in any way dramatise, depict or insinuate a sexual act by use of word, graphics, sound or action. In addition, condom advertisements may not be aired on children's programmes before 8.00 pm, on radio and television, or displayed on billboards near places of worship, schools and hospitals. Reacting to the development, Adesoji Johnson said: "We just love playing the ostrich in this part of the world. How can we possibly win the fight against HIV/AIDS when we choose to shut out a significant and in fact, most vulnerable segment of our population? How many of our kids today are zipping up like we tell them to do? But have we forgotten that the first AIDS case in Nigeria was an unfortunate 13-year-old girl?"

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