IGBOZURUOKE MEDIA

The unnecessary viral exposures and cacophony of comments that followed the release of the late Chief Engr. Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu’s will is unfortunate and goes a long way to highlight the negative use of the social media.

In Igbo practice, the mode of sharing one’s assets to his or her relations is clearly defined by traditions and how one executes it follows that custom and suppose to remain a private and family affair. Chief Iwuanyanwu was an Igbo man and the fact that the execution of his will has deviated from these norms due to exterior motives is unfortunate and suspicious.

The suspicion stems from the fact that most comments that have turned out to be from the women folk tries to contrive the will as a grievous injustice against the deceased young and surviving wife who has a son for him. In other words, the peddlers of this narrative (which may not exclude the lady in question) want the public to see and condemn the will as another act of Igbo culture that victimizes the female gender by banning a young and sexy wife from exercising her freedom.

Like Fela Anikulakpo, said in one of his hit: Yellow Fever, freedom can be a disease. In Igbo land, the freedom of a woman to do how she pleases is regarded as a disease and cannot be tolerate it. If you are a young wife who had just lost your beloved husband, you either remain in the family or cooperate with your husband’s kinsmen or you do the needful and ask your parents to return your bride price. Anything, short of that, remains a nullity that no legitimate Igbo family shouldl accept.  

For the few who have refused to appreciate the objection of female inheritance in Igbo culture and those who still believe the obnoxious and  pathetic Nigeria’s Supreme Court rule of May 2014 against it holds any hope, should know better as Iwuanyanwu’s will, correlate this Igbo justifiable practice. Unfortunately, the Igbo seem to have been made the fall guy of a tradition that is widely practiced in Nigeria. In Edo culture, the estate of the deceased is left to the first son to be shared as he deems fit. Besides the Yoruba, Efik and Itsekiri, of southern Nigeria, other Nigerian tribes, hardly practice female inheritance that a few insolent Igbo ladies root for. The Jews’ law that metamorphosed into the Bible that defines the Christian religion which Igbo females adopt is a custodian of this culture. No Igbo lady is known to have castigated or quit the religion for that reason.   

When a new wife is brought into an Igbo family, she belongs to her husband’s family and kindred primarily before her husband. Her husband remains an intimate inheritor. While the primary edicts, needs and care of the woman may be the responsibility of her husband, the rules that ultimately guide her existence in that family is that of her husband’s family/kindred.  

Since, each Igbo family has a distinct creed, their wives are conditioned to follow and fit into the family’s tenets. Consequently, the Igbo adage: Agburu akpa ekete ga akpa ekete; Agburu akpa abọ ga akpa abọ (which means, a kindred that is known to make a trough will be known as trough makers, while one that weaves baskets will be characterized as that.)  Ndi Igbo are a serious-minded tribe who develop through personal endeavours that in most cases aligned with the exploits of their forefathers. Therefore, assuming an Igbo man is from a family/kindred who made their wealth as head hunters or as arbiters, a risky venture that must have jeopardized their comforts and safety over time, do you expect or advice a latter-day scion of that family to flimsily fling off a piece of such wealth that accrued to him in the name of a loving husband or on the emotion of a having a young wife.

Much of Igbo wealth is tied to the family as an asset. While a daughter in the family is an asset, a wife is part of a family’s wealth. The wealth that developed from ancient time remains in the family for those living and for future generations. Therefore, if Frances Chinonyerem Enwerem, the 36-year-old wife who survived Iwuanyanwu, is not barred from remarrying after she had just come into the family’s wealth as a result of the demise of her husband, what happens if she decides to remarry after six months?  In that case, a man, who may be riffraff, a gold digger etc., or even one, from a family whose activities in the past had antagonized and attacked the Enwerem family would suddenly come into a wealth he never labored for and that may have cost sufferings and lives to acquire. Furthermore, if family/kindred continue to lose its wealth in such a manner, it means most of a family wealth will no longer domicile in the family but elsewhere through the privilege of daughters or wives’ inheritance.

Igbo daughters are programmed to get married and fight for their rights in their new homes and not to continuously run back home to fight  for family  inheritance that generate interminable feud in the family like the Yoruba are  enmeshed in.

Fortunately, she has a son which confers the element of autochthonous legality on her.  If she desires to have more children, Iwuanyanwu’s kinsmen are there to ensure her wishes materialize. But, if she doesn’t consider any man in that kindred worthy of that role and covets “more handsome men” elsewhere, the choice is hers: remain in the family with the inheritance or chose affection elsewhere in exchange for the returned of her bride price to the Enwerem’s family.

That is what the Igbo culture says and no one should put asunder.

Boniface Alanwoko