Africans Can Teach the West How to Sustain Marriages – Pete Edochie

Veteran Nollywood actor Pete Edochie has sparked renewed debate on culture, tradition, and the sanctity of marriage with his recent comments during an interview.

The film legend, who has been married for 56 years, said that Africans particularly Nigerians have much to teach the Western world about building and sustaining long-term marital unions.

Edochie, widely regarded as one of Nollywood’s most respected voices and a symbol of Igbo cultural heritage, voiced concern over what he termed the erosion of traditional African values in the face of modernisation and Western influence.

“I am being seen as a custodian, an uncompromising custodian of our culture,”
he said during the interview.
“When I said you shouldn’t kneel down and give rings to women, it caused a bit of backlash. Most of those people raised their voices at me, but I wasn’t angry because revolutionaries don’t get appreciated.”

Edochie reaffirmed his long-held position against kneeling to propose marriage, describing it as culturally alien and symbolically problematic within African traditions.

“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 argued.

He emphasized that while culture is eclectic and dynamic, adopting foreign customs should not come at the expense of one’s native traditions.

“It’s not in our culture to kneel. Culture is eclectic. In its 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.”

Edochie also took a swipe at Western societies, which he claimed have lost the meaning 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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“I have been married for the past 56 years…. There is something that we can teach the white man. We can teach the white man how to get married and keep their marriages.”

Chief Pete Edochie insists MEN SHOULDN’T KNEEL to propose and gives reasons. pic.twitter.com/AvXEUZzgiL

— @𝗼𝗻𝗲𝗷𝗼𝗯𝗹𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗯𝗼𝘆 (@OneJoblessBoy) July 24, 2025

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