Does Tiv man offer his wife to a guest in the name of hospitality?

There is a dangerous lie slithering through the undergrowth of ignorance, coiling its venom around the noble image of the Tiv man.

It is whispered, smirked, sometimes even declared by those too lazy to learn and too eager to label. That a Tiv man, in the name of hospitality, offers his wife to a guest.

What an evil tale. What a tragic misreading of kindness. What a slap on the face of honour. We Feed Our Guests, Not Trade Our Brides. Let it be said clearly, for the avoidance of doubt.

Hospitality is not promiscuity. Tiv men serve meals, not their marriages. You see, in Tivland, we believe a guest is a gift, someone to be welcomed with warm water, warm food, and warmer hearts. It is not uncommon to find a host slaughtering a prized cock or offering his last tubers of yam just to honour a visitor. Our doors are open wide, our pots deep with generosity, and our laughter loud around the hearth. But.The Tiv kitchen is open to guests. Our bedrooms are not. Wherever this ugly notion started, it reeks of ignorance soaked in mischief. The Tiv man is a lover of strength and passion. Yes. But more than that, he is fiercely loyal, often jealous in love, like a lion guarding the pride he built with his bare hands.

He will give you his best wine, but never his woman. His goat, his last bowl of pounded yam? Perhaps. But his wife? Never. Not for anything. Not for anyone.

To misinterpret the kindness of a Tiv host as an invitation into his home’s sacred inner chambers is not only wrong. It is profane. It is to mistake a palm tree for a ladder to the moon.

Food, not flesh, is how the Tiv welcome visitors. And who started this nonsense anyway? Who found laughter in the dirt and passed it off as truth? Was it the one stranger who misunderstood a smile? Or the traveller who mistook our cheer for consent? Whatever the case, let them hear this now. Our wives are not gifts. They are queens. Respect our women. Respect our culture.

The Tiv man builds his family with pride, protects his home with honour, and holds his wife with the reverence of an ancestral shrine. His hospitality is deep, yes, but it ends at the threshold of his wife’s honour. Tiv hospitality ends at the table, not in the bedroom. We are not a tribe that plays with the sacred. In our proverbs, in our songs, in our dance love is guarded, marriage is sacred, and dignity is non-negotiable. We feed the body with food. We feed the soul with song. But we do not feed lust with our wives. So the next time you visit Tivland and are welcomed with laughter and a steaming bowl of pounded yam, remember this

The Tiv spirit  welcomes, feeds the hungry, not the lustful. And if you should hear someone whisper that old wicked lie, you must rise. Rise and correct it. For to let it go unchallenged is to let smoke cloud the sun. Misunderstand our generosity, if you must, but never insult our dignity.

Now, it is from this same falsely peddled narrative this tired, baseless distortion of Tiv culture that the Chief of Defence Staff found a convenient and lazy escape route. Rather than confront the hard truth of his own failures on insecurity, he reached for an old lie. He claimed the Tiv people not only housed terrorists but even gave their women to them.

Think about that. A man entrusted with national security, in a moment that demanded leadership, chose instead to recycle a cultural smear, weaponizing it to explain away a tragedy he could neither prevent nor manage. He did not offer facts. He offered folklore, twisted and false, as justification for failure.

This is not just deflection. It is defamation.

This is the same man who melts into a fit of rage over a denied Canadian visa to attend a sporting event, but carries on like business as usual when citizens in his own country are butchered by terrorists. A man who cried for weeks when Canada shut its doors, calling it a national tragedy and a disgrace to Nigeria because he wanted to go and make friends with white people in the name of Invictus. That is what breaks him, not the blood spilled in Benue, Taraba, Plateau, or even Southern Kaduna, his own ancestral land.

You would think he should relate to our plight. But no. He is Nigeria’s first Instagram and social media influencer general.

His people in Southern Kaduna have seen worse. Maybe, there too, their women were offered to terrorists. After all, they share language and culture. Would he mock them as well?

Always eager for a camera, a mic, a sit-down interview. You would think his mandate was to trend, not defend. Behind the polished uniform and made-for-TV quotes lies a terrifying disappointment.

Let him be reminded that this same insecurity took out a former Chief of Defence Staff, Alex Badeh. He did not go down in a PR disaster. He went down in bullets. His service ended not in applause, but in blood. He was assassinated in his own.That is the cost of failure in a broken nation. That’s is how real insecurity is.And that’s what you were appointed to fight.That is the weight of the uniform you now wear. Instead, you distract with disrespect.

Tiv people are not the reason Nigeria is bleeding. Do not blame your inadequacies on us.Take full responsibility for your failure and stop mocking our pain. We are not the ones who failed to repel killers. We are not the ones who politicized security and then blamed the victims for their own deaths. I urge anyone who has supposedly benefited from this imaginary hospitality to come forward. Bring your proof. Stand in the light and speak.

Because our ancestors were not ambiguous about this. If a man was caught with another man’s wife, he paid a heavy fine “Tia”. Some men laid curses. Others took lives. How does a culture that punishes adultery tolerate sharing wives with strangers? We are a polygamous people, yes. A man may assign a wife to look after a visitor cook, clean, ensure comfort. She may even vacate her room and sleep elsewhere, with another wife, if necessary. That is hospitality. But it ends there. The boundaries are clear. The visitor is a guest. Not a god.

And perhaps the most misleading part of this false narrative is that it is now being taught in schools. Why do you teach a theory or a hypothesis that is built on falsehood? What academic rigour supports this? When do we begin to correct these damaging lies in our curriculum and our national memory?

Say what you want, but no Tiv man ever gave his wife to a stranger and called it culture.