IGBOZURUOKE FORUM

The Igbo seem like a tribe bent on self-destruction. If we adhere to the saying that a people without a culture is like a tree without a root, then one must sympathize with Ndi Igbo, especially, their emerging educated and so-called liberated ones.

Among the three major tribes of Nigeria, only the Igbo revel in making mockery of their heritage but look on the cultures of others with covetous eyes. The Igbo, who are about 80% Christians, are ferocious in the worship of God today, through the Christian religion.

In the established denominations like the Catholic and the Protestants churches, in the emerging Pentecostal denominations also, they are there, in spirit and in deeds. Spiritually, they exalt and idolize the Bible that contains and direct the worlds of the Christians’ God and how to apply them in the Christian worships. In deeds, Ndo Igbo, especially, their womenfolk actively support and engage in activities that ensure the survival and smooth running of which ever Christian church they found themselves in.

Inexplicably however, the same Igbo females and their admirers who embrace the Bible would turn round to denigrate the Igbo culture—a culture that is 90% the same as what is found in the Bible. The reason the world sees the Igbo as the black Jews is due to this, the high intellects that both share and the affinity that characterized the entrepreneurial capability of both group.  All what the Igbo abhor—the Jews abhor—all what Ndi Igbo hold dearly—the Jews hold dearly. In both cultures: Hebrew and Igbo, females are excluded from most forms of traditional engagements, neither do they inherit property of their forbearers. In both cultures, females are owned and fiercely protected by their male counterparts. Furthermore, both culture bestowed the right of a child’s father on he that paid the mother’s bride not on the biological father. Igbo and Jews don’t include females when counting their off spring; and just to mention this, males in both culture, detest female’s menstruation, Ime Ihe Nso, with a passion, just as the Jews. In Igbo culture, part of a head wife’s duty is to clandestinely determine the menstrual period of an-incoming wife to ensure her husband is precluded from having wives whose menstrual periods occur at the same time since an Igbo man is forbidden from associating with any female under menstruation.

Yet, practitioners of the Christian faith in Igbo land and elsewhere including a few distractors like the Rt. Rev. Owen Nwokolo, Bishop of the Diocese on the Niger, Anglican Communion, who was enthusiastic about the Supreme Court ruling and went on to declare that equality of women with men was not only a civil right affirmed by the court but was a God-giving right; unfathomably, one wonders how people would revere the Jews’ culture that embedded in the Bible but demonize that of Ndi Igbo; is this not the height of double standard and barefaced hypocrisy?

The conclusion is that some Igbo as principal culprits are becoming increasingly disoriented. Like the saying goes; “when a fish decays, it putrefies.” There is no doubt, current educated and so-called-liberated Igbo ladies, who incidentally are Christians, have become restive about the Igbo culture and have decided to start testing the waters on how to desecrate it.  The recent Supreme Court verdict that declares Igbo daughters entitled to ancestral property is the fruit of this madness and machinations.

In 2004, Nigeria’s apex court, the Supreme Court of Nigeria gave a judgment in which it declare the long-held Igbo tradition of excluding daughters from inheriting their father’s estate as the sons do. It said the tradition was discriminatory and infringed on the rights of the female child, citing section 42 (1)(a) and (2) of 1999 Constitution.

This followed a petition filed by one Gladys Ada Ukeje, daughter of one late Lazarus Ogbonna Ukeje, challenging the family’s decision to exclude her from her late father’s estate based on Igbo Native Law. In what the press at various fora and platforms dubbed a landmark judgment, The Supreme Court, in agreeing with the Lagos High Court and Court of Appeal, where judgments had earlier been giving in fovour of the petitioner. In the suit: Ukeje V Ukeje, SC 224/2004,  The Supreme Court finally set aside the Igbo custom and gave Igbo daughters the right to inherit their late father’s estates.

Whether this ruling has been carried out or what transpired, before the lady decided to approach the courts in a purely-long-held Igbo traditional matter is not clear. However, let it be understood that any Igbo ladies who finds succor in whimsically challenging Igbo laws and rules, is like a bitch that goes bush-hunting—it will suffer lacerations.

In Africa and to a large extent, Igbo females are favoured. Till date, Igbo men are derided by their counterparts from other Nigerian tribes as wives’ slaves, because they labour so hard to make their wives comfortable. If you flip through past Nigerian newspapers, you will see cartoons depicting where the Igbo husband carries the baby, the baggage and holding high the umbrella while the gorgeously dressed wife walks leisurely with only her hand bag under the umbrella held high by her perspiring husband. In fact, the Igbo spoil their daughters and wives to the extent where many non Igbo erroneously believe Igbo ladies are lazy.

In Igbo tradition, if a man can’t take adequate care of his household, he would be excoriated. If a man beats his spouse unnecessarily, kinsmen will go as far as alerting the ladies’ parents and turn a blind eye if the culprit is being dealt with by his in-laws. Until recently when the proliferation and bastardization of Christianity that have eroded the Igbo communal system occurred, hospitals in and outside Igbo land see prospective Igbo fathers as a promissory note. It was never heard of where a hospital doubted if a pre or postnatal’s bill of an Igbo woman would be paid; because if the new father is hamstrung in any way, kinsmen through well-oiled channels will come to his aid. The culture ensures Igbo women are saved from any form of unnecessary humiliation like we see in the cultures of other tribes in Nigeria.

For example, a law permits Umuada or wives in a community, to invade a culprits’ home, whether male or female and severely dealt with the person, once the victim is a woman.

In most Igbo community, you would have seen lands or property in the community belonging to another community. Such lands were lost due to what is known as Igba Oso in Igbo land. In such cases, If an Igbo daughter or wife is severely maltreated while a quick or adequate appeasement was not forthcoming, her peers in that community would flee to find succor at a place that  guarantees them safety and comfort. There, they will narrate their ordeal after which they would be treated like queens until the rogue community comes for settlement. This case which occurs only in severe situations remains one the greatest protector of Igbo females and deterrent to errant males in Igbo communities. In this case, the community that harboured the fleeing maidens would claim a choice property from the offending community as settlement—a humongous settlement that is meant to serve both as a punishment and as a deterrent.

What is unfolding today is a situation where Igbo females are repaying their benefactors with a corrosive coin. To whom much is giving; much is expected, they say, but in this case, it has become to whom much is giving; less is retuned.

The Igbo will be foolish to allow such to fester. Ndi Igbo must begin to pay attention to their custom and traditions before it becomes decimated. The Igbo culture is under an invasion that is insidious in nature. Some feminists of Igbo descent and their disgruntled male counterparts are furiously clawing at the Igbo culture.

The bulk of these Igbo, malefactors, are the educated and so-called liberated Igbo ladies. In this camp, you get fishwives, vixens, viragoes, male-haters and unrepentant husband traducers. These trouble makers who can be seen at the head of most organizations and committees, in their respective Christian denominations are assertive and have moved on to form NGOs and other subterranean platforms disguised to assists women and the so-called female child but meant to challenge the Igbo culture on all fronts.

A situation where a daughter that has been married off after her pride price and other requirements met, turns back and began to salivate over her parent’s estate, if allowed under any circumstance, will spell doom for Igbo tranquility. Ndi Igbo must close ranks and nip this sponsored depredation in the bud.

Most importantly, they must begin to understand what is happening and get prepared to defend the Igbo custom and traditions. The Supreme Court judgment is a first step in this evil machination, they should take cognizance of it and ensure that the needful is maintained and quickly settle down to look at the bigger picture.

If we consider what is happening today, can one imagine what will remain of the Igbo culture in the next twenty years? Today, all the big trees under which Igbo people fraternize during moonlights and for other occasions have been branded evil covens and cut down by the ever-increasing Igbo emergency men of God and their cheerleaders.  While ancient sites are meticulously preserved and branded as tourist attractions in Yoruba land and in other parts of Nigeria, in Igbo land, such heritage sites have been obliterated and re branded with ecclesiastical names.

A it is fast becoming in most Igbo communities, children and young people, can no longer see where or how their forefathers were carrying out certain traditional functions as those places; totems, diadems and heirlooms that are parts and parcels of these functions have been destroyed or systematically being destroyed.

Thus, the Supreme Court judgment should serve as an eye opener and Ndi Igbo must gird their loins to defend what remains of the distinguished heritage that sets them apart.

To start with, once an Igbo lady becomes a wife, she must be programmed to begin a new home at her husband place where she will be required to live, build and be a beneficiary in her husband’s place. Igbo custom forbids a married daughter to benefit from her father’s estate since her inheritance would now be in her. If allowed, a daughter, apart from having divided interest between her new home and her father’s compound will become a menace to maidens newly married into her father’s compound and also to the sons of the family when the time to share their father’s estate arise at the demise of the later.

Due to this and other attributes, Igbo marriage system has remained one of the best in the world. Traditionally, it records the least divorce cases and is known to be a system that gives less room for infelicities, yet some Igbo copycats are angling to denigrate it.

. Despite their education, standards and sojourns in foreign lands no Yoruba woman has gone to court to challenge why only their males are crowned kings. After all, the British monarch is a female. Even the female regents that act as a stop-gap before a substantive royal nomination is made in Ondo State, willingly step down when called to do so. Yoruba women relish and defend the Yoruba culture at any cost, irrespective of the inherent inadequacies that are equally found in Igbo culture just as in every other custom.

Igbo fathers should copy the biblical Job as expatiated in Job, 42:12.  Let any Igbo father, who wishes to bequeath a property to his daughter do so in the presence of his sons and kinsmen while he is alive. Such property must be the one or ones he personally acquired like Job: they must not be an ancestral or family estate. The fact that some Igbo sons turn out to be lay bouts or vagabonds do not vitiate their entitlement to ancestral estates; just like Prince Charles of England would not cease to the heir, if he were one. In Igbo land, ancestral and family properties belong to the sons—nothing will erode that and nothing will change the system.

Boniface Alanwoko, a journalist and Igbo activist is the publisher on www.igbozuru.com, e-mail: [email protected]