Veteran Nollywood actor Pete Edochie has reignited conversations about culture and marriage with a bold declaration that Africans, particularly Nigerians, have more to teach the Western world about sustaining long-term unions.
In a recent interview, the actor, who has been married for 56 years, expressed concern about the increasing erosion of traditional African values in the name of modernisation.
Edochie, who went viral in 2020 for his stance against kneeling to propose marriage to women, tagged himself the custodian of Igbo culture.
"I am being seen as a custodian, an uncompromising custodian of our culture. When I said you shouldn't kneel down and give rings to women, it caused a bit of bad backlash. Most of that people raised their voices at me but I wasn't angry because revolutionaries don't get appreciated."
Edochie argued that kneeling to propose marriage is culturally alien and symbolically problematic.
“In church, you kneel before a superior spiritual entity. So if you kneel to a woman, you're acknowledging her superiority. It has destroyed the white people—they don’t know it,” he asserted.
It's not in our culture to kneel, culture is eclectic. In it's dynamism, it grows. You adapt and you adopt, there are aspects that you can clip off but adopting these things does not have to be at the expense of our culture.
He further criticised Western societies for what he sees as a disregard for the sanctity of marriage.
"I have been married for the past 56 years, there is no actor in Hollywood who has my record, nor in Nollywood. Something that we can teach the white man is how to get married and keep their marriages. They don't appreciate the sanctity of marriage and it doesn't mean anything to them, it's nonsensical."
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