The other day, people in the Ozoro area of Delta State decided to mark the now controversial Alue-Do tradition that is supposed to help the barren conceive. It is something that is done in the open in broad daylight. Ordinarily, there should not be any problem with that. After all, we are, in a way, products of cultures and of history.
Man is meant to occasionally look back in order to see the future more clearly. What started as a cultural phenomenon ended up as a disaster with the alleged assault on women in the vicinity.
It now appears as if the main reason for holding this event was to hide under the canopy of culture to commit this heinous crime against women and by extension humanity. As to be expected, there were outcries immediately videos of women who were harassed surfaced in the social media.
The police belatedly acted only on the strength of the outrage that followed and arrested a few people allegedly involved in the incidents, including the chief priest!
As to be expected, and as has happened all too often, nothing meaningful will come out of the unfortunate incident as Nigerians move swiftly onto other matters, including how to survive the hardship in the land engineered by bad leadership and accentuated by the war in the Middle East.
Not long before the Ozoro incident, the country had joined other nations of the world to mark the International Women’s Day with pomp and pageantry. Much of the space of that celebration was taken over by well heeled women and corporate organizations that found yet another platform to market their products, services, and image. Part of this was just so they would not be labeled as anti-women rights’ organizations. On the real practical issues that confront our women such as what happened in Ozoro, champions are scarce. The minimum irreducible is for the wife of the governor of Delta State to take up the fight for the victims conclusively.
Clearly, the Ozoro incident is just symptomatic of the decadence of certain aspects of our culture that deserve to be confined to the dustbin of history. Across every nook and cranny of our country, certain cultural practices that debase humanity go on unabated as if we are still in the 14th century, and in many cases, the enforcers of these practices are the educated and the elites.
In Ibibioland, we still see people who claim to be Christians still go to make sacrifices to appease the gods of the land for bumper harvests just before planting season starts. This is contrary to the faith they profess as the scripture says that by our tradition, we have made the word of God of no effect.
In Igboland, a widow’s hair is completely shaved just as the remains of the husband are being interred. Guess who does the shaving? Women. I witnessed one some years ago in Imo State during the burial of my then Managing Director’s father. One hears of cases where, if the wife is suspected to have ‘killed’ the husband, she will be made to drink from the water used to wash the body of the dead husband. But no one does same if the husband is suspected to have killed the wife. Culture.
In both Igbo and Ibibiolands, many unmarried women are frustrated by the high bride prices that would-be husbands are forced to pay. Apart from the huge dowries, suitors are presented with seven to ten page-long list of items to buy including power generating sets, as if we are now in the business of selling our daughters. Woe betide a lady whose father is no more and her fate in marriage is to be decided by the so-called father’s relatives. These wicked people will constitute themselves as principalities just to frustrate the lady from getting married. And these are people who hold big titles in the church and in the society.
Burials in the eastern part of the country have turned to something else. Keeping (or preserving) dead bodies for upwards of six to sixteen months is not uncommon. What is the reason for this misbehavior? The relatives are looking for money to give their beloved ones befitting burials; whatever that means.
They would not look for money to help the persons, who may have died of curable diseases or poverty, live meaningful lives. Until they borrow and mortgage their farmlands and other assets, they will not have enough money for the ‘befitting burials’. When they are done with the burial, which will be talked about for a week or two, they face steep poverty. On this score, I must commend those from the north and the southwest who, more often than not, bury their loved ones within days or weeks of their deaths.
Do not get me wrong? If a person has loads of money and decides to lavish it on burial, wedding or other events, I have no problem with that. My problem is with the poor who, in the name of upholding tradition, dig deeper their poverty pits.
Inheritance is still a problem for women in most cultures in Nigeria. Many of our hackneyed societal practices do not regard female children as children. Women and children are almost always made to hold the short end of the stick by relatives of the deceased. Why deny a woman an inheritance just because she is a woman? Why make her suffer unjustly on account of her gender? Here is what the Bible (now I mean the Old Testament) says regarding this unjust practice. In the book of Numbers Chapter 36, Moses was commanded to give the five daughters of Zelophehad their father’s inheritance.
In the 21st century Ebonyi State, Ms Nnenna Onu elected to reenact what happened in the Old Testament when her father, who had only daughters, died. She paid with her life as her cousins chased her, her sister and aged mother out of their father’s house. When she insisted on reclaiming their property, she was killed and her body burned beyond recognition. This was in 2021, exactly five years ago.
Till date, the police have developed cold feet in prosecuting the alleged murderer, one Chidiebere Okoro. This week, the National Human Rights Commission had to literally beg the police to do their job of prosecuting the suspect. The Ebonyi case is not an isolated one but very much entrenched in our culture.
Forcing young girls to marry very old men is rampant in the country but much more so in the north. Some of these girls, out of desperation, frustration and abuses have had to either take their lives or kill their so-called husbands in order to free themselves from the prison of forced marriages. Where there is no consent, how can there be a marriage? And how can a young girl still in puberty be said to have consented to what she does not understand? It is no less than conscription. This abusive setting is always predominant in poor and fatherless families. Back to the Old Testament daughters of Zelophehad on marriage: the Lord commanded that they could marry ‘whoever they thought best’, but only within their tribe.
In the north, the aspect of the almajiri practice where children are left to beg on the streets to feed is child abuse. Those schools should be fully funded to take care of those children by those who own the schools. If you do not agree with me that that aspect of that school system is child abuse, how come it is not practiced among children of the rich and in the Middle East?
The Ozoro incident is a wake up call for us to begin to rebuild our cultures with the times that we are in. Cultures are always evolutional, which explains why we are not exactly as our first century parents walking around with leaves on our bodies. Our forebears behaved the way they did based on their limited knowledge, exposures and resources of their times. We, who are privileged to live in this time, need to infuse our current knowledge and exposures into our cultures for a more progressive society. Progress mindset is required for every society to be progressive.
Africans should not live their lives as if they were the only set of humans created to live for their ancestors. Back to the future.
Esiere is a former journalist!
