He fell in love with his first wife because she was sincere and eager to please. His second wife, a cousin, was irresistible because she did everything he wished and nothing he didn't.
I get a revelation from God telling me any woman I'm going to marry. If it wasn't from God, I wouldn't have gone beyond two
"That alone made me love her."
His third wife won him because she submitted to his every request. "I saw her, I liked her. I went to her parents and asked for her hand in marriage."
Wife No. 4 was very obedient.
So was wife No. 5.
Wife No. 6, the same.
As were wives 7 and 8 and 9 and ...
Well, by then - it was the late 1980s - things had taken off
for Bello Maasaba, an Islamic faith healer from this city in Niger
state. He went from a wedding every few months to one every few weeks. All told, the 87-year-old has married 107 women, which, even in a society with a tradition of polygamy, is on the high side. The Nigerian government is not amused. Neither are Islamic authorities in the state.
But he's still marrying, every time Miss Right comes along.
He now has 86 wives, the youngest 19 and the oldest 64.
Nine have died and 12 he divorced (for disobedience).
But how on earth does he ... ?
To ask the delicate question about how a man with so many
wives, well, manages, one first has to cross a dusty street in this hot
city in northern Nigeria where the sun bleaches the colour from the
street.
Droning Chinese motorcycles belch choking fumes. Women in
flowing garments sit under umbrellas in the market, selling fruit and
vegetables. A looming four-storey house with 89 rooms and a broad
verandah supported by gold columns overlooks the street with an air of
faded grandeur.But its view is inauspicious: an open gutter running from a bank of rickety street toilets, their wooden doors askew.
On the porch, dozens of men are seated - some relations, some followers. They rustle in excitement at the approach of guests. Choruses
of "You are welcome" echo like bells as visitors are seated on a red
couch beside a large, patterned red rug. The carpet, an island in the
sea of Maasaba's followers, lies bare but for one white pillow and one
white facecloth.
The pillow awaits. Suddenly, the crowd of men leap up, bursting into a traditional song of praise.
He is coming.
At the doorway, his long, pointy white shoes are removed by
aides and placed in an empty plastic shoe rack tacked high on the wall.
Then he rustles in, enveloped by a tumble of shiny white cloth, which
the aides spring forward to arrange whenever he stands or sits.
He ignores the pillow and sits beside it. He wears a tall
white hat, and smiles a crooked-toothed smile. The pouches under his
eyes give him a mournful air. But there's barely a wrinkle on his
forehead, and he professes to have no worries.
An aide proffers a microphone hooked up to speakers on every
floor of the house so his wives and children can listen. Questions are
blasted through speakers over the street so his followers (and anyone
happening by) can hear.
Which makes it a little awkward to ask that delicate one. He begins with his family history, almost singing the story of his roots. After school, he led an ordinary life for 21 years, involved
in the clothing business and later working for a sugar company, keeping
just two wives.
Life was normal until a religious "vision" in the 1970s, which he says involved a visit from the archangel Gabriel. He fell deeply ill, unable to eat or sleep for days, and all the medicine the doctors gave him only made him worse. He gave up work and became a traditional faith healer who
eschewed medicine. The angel also instructed him to take wife after wife
after wife.
"I get a revelation from God telling me any woman I'm going
to marry. If it wasn't from God, I wouldn't have gone beyond two," he
explains in a wispy, singsong voice.
Maasaba has to pause to remember the number of children he has - an ever growing figure, with the youngest just one month old.
He has fathered 185, and 133 are still living. He has acquired an extended family of some 5000 people, many
who live in the sprawling compound in the block surrounding his house. It takes three enormous sacks of rice a day and prodigious quantities of meat and vegetables to feed his enormous clan.
He's rich because of the handsome fees paid by those who come to be healed.
Maasaba's many marriages underscore the gulf between modern
urban Nigeria and traditional rural towns, where women often have few
choices.
Aishetu Ndayako, about 57 years old, clocked in at wife No. 40 or so.
She had heard Maasaba was a good man who looked after his wives and solved all the problems of the family. She was a widow with six children and no means of support
when she married him, leaving her children living in her late husband's
house.
"There were no problems between the wives. They were all very
peaceful. Honestly, we never had a quarrel, not even once," she says. "He loved me. The food was good. He slaughtered a cow so many times. He gave enough money to each of the wives.
"I was always happy in his house. I understood the man. I felt he was sent by God."
But after five years, her children demanded that she return.
"They said no one was with them, and they were lonely," she
says. "They asked me, and I felt I should go because of my love for
them."
After leaving Maasaba's house, she never saw him again.
"I really miss him," she says.
Three years ago, Islamic authorities in Niger, a majority
Muslim state with Shariah, or Islamic law, ordered that Maasaba divorce
82 of his wives, keeping four.
He refused and was ordered by the Shariah court to leave
town. (Muslim scholars generally agree that the Quran allows up to four
wives, provided each gets equal treatment.) Police raided Maasaba's house at 3:45 a.m. on September 15, 2008. He was taken away to jail. Disobedience, the trait intolerable in a wife, was his own sin.
"In prison they asked me what was my offence. I said they hate me because I won't do what they want me to do."
Refused bail, Maasaba spent 22 days behind bars, while his wives (11 of them pregnant) demonstrated for his release. In the end, a group of civil rights lawyers came to Maasaba's rescue and had him freed on bail. That November, at the High Court in the capital, Abuja, the
lawyers called in his wives and their parents, one by one, to testify
that they had agreed to marriage.
At wife No. 57, the court told the lawyers to stop, and ordered Maasaba freed. Some of the wives, wearing bright costumes of pink and blue,
gold and yellow, meet visitors to the house in a white-tiled entry room,
chorusing hellos. Others, surrounded by a clutch of children, cascade
down a wooden staircase and peer curiously around a door.
As Maasaba talks, they are hidden within, listening to the
squawking speakers, as the delicate question is finally posed. With so
many wives, how does he meet their romantic needs?
He smiles. Everyone asks him that.
"In his wisdom, God has given me the power and strength to
give them the sexual portion they need," he says. "If I didn't satisfy
them, they would leave."
Then he stands up, and his aides rush to him, putting his white shoes on his feet and arranging his white
costume, just so.
