By Echika Ezuka

Change as a word has been appropriated by politicians who seek power either for themselves or for the interests they represent. Change is to alter, to take off (clothes) and put on different ones, to exchange (money) for the same amount in any other denomination, to abandon (one thing or person) for another, to denounce (one course) for another. You could change your accommodation, hair dresser, anything in life.

However this piece is about to talk of a fundamental change that involves many people at the same time. Recall the change that took place in the way Africans saw the white colonialists after the 1st and 2nd world wars. Africans returned from the wars to reveal that the white man was as weak or strong as any black man. They revealed that the white man, like other men, would cry or run in the face of fear and would bleed if cut by a sharp object. The white man is not a god. The change in the perception of the white man led to white spread demands for independence in Africa. The rest is history.

A more recent change was the change from military rule to democracy. The military seized power as disciplined patriots who were going to save Nigerians from the greed, corruption, thuggery, and nepotism. The citizenry were amazed that rather than cure the social ills the military added dictatorship and a new Nigerian variant called impunity. The people resisted military regime and a gruesome struggle followed leading to a return to democracy led by civilians. The change was so thorough that even strong men in the military who felt entitled to the President and Commander in Chief position were forced to transform to civilians in agbada before ascending to Aso Villa. That is the change from military to civilian regime.

There is another kind of change sweeping through the South East of Nigeria like a tornado. This change is cultural and concerns the fate of the girl child in terms of inheritance. The macho foundations of the Igbo society is under a serious threat of being redefined. The all-male Okonkwo society of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart is about to give way to a challenge led by well-read Igbo women. These women are well read and have traveled nationally and internationally. They have also been exposed to other cultures through reading and academic interactions. Some of them are married to families from the North, West and the South-South. These women are asking questions and they want urgent answers.

They are quick to cite that in Lagos if a Yoruba man, who own an estate of six flats dies, his six flats are shared equally among his children – equally between boys and girls.  It’s a different ball game in Igbo land. For the purpose of this paper, Mazi would be the name of a father or head of a household. Let’s start with a common scenario among the Igbo. The culture recognizes the boy child as the real birth that has consequence. Only the boy child can guarantee the survival of the lineage. The boy grows up, marries a wife and begins to procreate to continue the family name. The boy child is, therefore, a must for Mazi, who may have as many as 10 children searching for a boy. Sometimes, only the youngest the 10th is a boy child – a consolation from his Chi. When Mazi passes away the nine girls get nothing from his estate no matter how rich Mazi was in his lifetime. To rub pepper into the open wound, the Igbo tradition dictates that the Ada, the first daughter must buy the coffin of Mazi.

The hurt bites deeper because when Mazi is feeble, old and unable to sustain the  living and lifestyle of his youth it’s often the girl child that provides food, clothing and medicines. The boys often are occupied with the herculean task of marriage and establishing a family. On the lighter side the boy child is more often consumed by the township culture of drinking, clubbing and fashion. This not generalizing that boys contribute nothing to the growth of the family but the girls are more helpful. Most times the girl child is given out in marriage. While the boy biserving a long apprenticeship or going through school. The girls bring in lump sums in cash or other valuables as dowries. The in-laws are an extension of Mazi’s family in terms of support at critical moments – village festivals, rites of passage and natural disasters.

The ladies are arguing, therefore, the girl child should have a stronger claim in matters of inheritance. She should not be treated as property already sold out to another owner another name of marriage. In recent years, tokenism has been used to try to melt down the anger of the girl child. While most of the pampered and ill mannered boys are shouting the Nigerian slogan –

“GO TO COURT”

The ladies did.

Today, there are scores of court cases, from the Customary Courts to the Supreme Court, involving Igbo families over inheritance. Siblings at each other’s throats or flexing muscles with their mothers, nwunye Mazi. Perhaps, the most popular of those cases is the fight for the estate of the popular transport magnate “Thank Jehova Motors”. Mazi, the magnate was a devout catholic and a Papal Knight. His sacramentally wedded wife gave birth to six baby girls in a row and Mazi was in despair. He defied the Pope and the Church and took a second wife. His Chi smiled and the second wife had three baby boys back to back. Mazi used his affluence to hold his polygamous-by-necessity together. He sent his children to the best schools in Nigeria and the United Kingdom. The girls from the first wife were older and had a head start. By the time Mazi passed away three decades later they were all graduates in those professions that the Igbo people adore – Medicine, Law, Engineering etc. The boys from the second wife were younger, also well-educated but were not as exposed as the girls from the first wife, a few were already married to high net worth individuals. His girls from the first wife spent a fortune to give Mazi a befitting burial.

There was a will and Mazi, expectedly gave almost everything to the second wife’s boys. The ladies convinced their mother and the will was challenged in court. Hush-hush, the Igbo hates the publicity of a police or court case. The Igbo man would pay an arm and a leg to avoid a police cell. Hush, it must not be heard that Mazi’s children were in court. A powerful representation and the case was withdrawn from the court for a settlement at home. A powerful arbitration, constituted by relatives, friends and the Church divided Mazi’s estate into two parts – Transport and Property. The boys chose the Transport business with numerous luxury buses, cars, and well-built terminals all over the nation. The girls settled for the Property section. As this piece is written, that Transport section, Thank Jehova Transport is dead, completely dead.

The hush-hush strategy doesn’t work all the time. Another popular Mazi, a big time trade in Enugu with his company Okoro and Sons unlimited, was not as Lucky. His first wife died during the birth of her second girl-child. Mazi married a second wife who bore him four boys. Okoro and Sons had five houses in Enugu and two in Owerri. At Mazi’s death, his sons seized the company and all its assets. They claimed the support of tradition. Anyway if Mazi had wanted his girls to inherit anything, they argued, he would have named the company Okoro and Children or Okoro and Daughters. In his wisdom he named it Okoro and Sons, so what a heck?

Again the ladies went to court and sued their step mother and her boys. The girls won the case at the Customary Court and the boys appealed to the Magistrate Court and got a reversal to the status quo. Again the Ladies appealed to the High Court that set aside the judgment of the Magistrate Court. Twenty years after Mazi’s death, the case was still at the Appeal’s Court where the Ladies were seeking justice. Meanwhile, the case has been abandoned and was most likely to be thrown out of court for lack of diligent prosecution. Both sides of Mazi’s family were completely exhausted. Mazi had seven houses and all seven were sold to fund litigation. Mazi’s sweat wasted and his family today lives in penury.

Let me not bore you with the scores of cases in court but there is one more pathetic case that would help you understand what’s happening in Igbo land. Mazi was the epitome of the Igbo workaholic business man. Mazi couldn’t read or write but he served an apprenticeship for seven years in Kaduna, made money doing street trading and linking buyers with sellers in the Kaduna Central Market now Abubakar Mahmud Gumi Market. Soon he had his own shop and had customers from the far North. By the time he ran home to escape from the killings in the North, he was a wealthy man. During the civil war he became a multi-millionaire supplying food to the Biafran Military. Mazi died forty years after the war he was multi billionaire with vast investments in Oil, Estate, and Tourism. I repeat Mazi couldn’t read and write, could hardly sign his signature but he incredibly established a Polytechnic.

This Mazi’s case was peculiar because at the height of his affluence, influence with multiple titles, his kindred insisted that he must take a second wife – a younger more polished Lolo befitting of his new status. Mazi refused because he had worked so hard and would not like to have two wives and their children waste his wealth litigating over his enormous wealth. Luckily his wife blessed him with eight children – four boys, four girls. The four girls are in court today contesting their father’s will. He loved them so much that he wouldn’t leave them without a share in his estate. Four girls versus their mother and four brothers. Raging waste of emotional and financial resources.

Igbo tradition and culture is complicit in the state of affairs because of the extra importance placed on the boy child. We don’t need to quote any authorities here other than to refer you to the image of the Igbo woman in the works of Achebe – beloved ornaments for child bearing and domestic chores. Recall the comic scene in Things Fall Apart – there was a rap on the door. Okonkwo opened the door and Ekwefi was standing there. Without a word Okonkwo lifted her to his shoulders and carried her into his inner room. Soon after his kinsmen paid her bride price and built a hut for her in his compound.  One could argue that it is different today with majority of the women acquiring western education. In spite of all that the woman is still treated patronizingly as a partner, albeit a very weak one.

The Supreme Court has taken a position – condemning the Igbo customary practice of excluding women from inheriting their fathers’ estate, declaring the practice null and void. The judges stated that the practice was repugnant to natural justice, and it contradicted the S. 42 of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

The cases in the customary courts are many and may drag on for many more years because the Igbo traditional institutions that are benefiting from the second class citizen status are pretending that they can resist the judgment of the Supreme Court. We know that they cannot. The bailiffs are there to enforce compliance.

Justice delayed is justice denied. Institutions in Igbo including the Ohaneze, traditional rulers, the Town Unions, and religious organizations must take advantage of this judgment to modernize the Igbo society. The traditions and customs of the Igbo society in relation to the status of the girl child must change. The fact that not one of the many limited liability companies of Igbo men survive their deaths can be traceable to the practice that grooms only the boys for succession.

The litigations that follow the passing away of Mazi unknowingly wastes enormous resources required for personal and communal development. .The intra family feud is unnecessary bloodletting for siblings who lived as one until the moment of inheritance.

Without supporting divorce or more broken homes, I must point out that a major difference between the Yoruba and Igbo house wives is that the Yoruba woman, if abused in marriage, will return to her father’s house and occupy the rooms she inherited in the family house.

The Igbo wife tolerates abuse, sometimes dying of it, because she cannot return to her father’s house where she would be treated as an intruder, unless she has wads of relevant currency to spend continually. The Igbo society will produce more Dorothy Akunyili, Okonjo Iweala, and Oby Ezekwesili if this wind of change is allowed to impact on Igbo land.  Perhaps, Social Clubs based in the South East must find their voices and issue statements immediately. Change must come now to save Ala Igbo.