Shocking! Nigerian community where old women marry young ladies

In Igbo land and Nigeria at large, marriage is basically between a man and woman.

However, this case is very different and interesting. In a report by The Punch, the marriage between women in Mbaise area of Imo state is in no way a lesbian marriage even though it is same gender marriage.

Older women marry young ladies traditionally but it is not sexual. It is said that there is always no sexual attraction between the ‘female husband’ and the person being married. Read the super interesting article as written by The Punch below:

”…Explaining more on this issue, a community leader in Onicha, a community in Ezinihitte Mbaise, Nze Ebere Iwuagwu, told Saturday Punch, that the females in question do not really go to a lady’s family and seek her hand in marriage.

However, he said, the woman goes out, looks for the wife, makes the necessary enquiry about the person and then provides the bride price and other necessary stuff required for the marriage to hold. Iwuagwu said the female husbands are always accompanied by male relatives who would be the ones to actually ask for the lady’s hand in marriage from her family.

“In our community, women don’t really ask for the hands of the women in marriage, traditionally. But everybody knows the new wife belongs to the female husbands, but during the course of marriage rites, the ‘female husband’ stays at the background.

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“In a case where the woman’s husband is dead, then her late husband’s male relatives will accompany her and would even be the one to marry the wife in his name. A woman can’t just get up and go to a family and say she wants to marry another woman from that family, it is not done! However, after the marriage ceremony, when they get home, everybody knows that the new wife is the ‘property’ of the aged woman and she would live in her domain,” he said.

Iwuagwu said this tradition which is almost as old as forever, has become the norm and both parties – the female husband and the wife- are not stigmatised in any way.”

Most of the women who marry wives are usually elderly and have passed the age of child bearing. In most cases, the woman may have been childless or had just female children. The women just want heirs who would take over their property and wealth when they are gone.

Explaining why she had to marry a wife for her late husband, 70-year-old Adanma Ikem from Ezinihitte Mbaise, said she had had four children, two males, but her sons had died tragically even before they could get married.

“Two of my sons died when they were in their 20s. Their death was so painful. I cried my heart out. I cried not only because I lost my children, of course, it was a painful experience, but I cried because I just thought of how my husband’s name would just die like that. Who would perpetuate the name? Our lineage would just be forgotten. My husband had died earlier on. My daughters had married. So I was left with no other choice.

“I went to a neighbouring village and I was lucky, I found a girl who was pregnant and she was willing to be a part of my family. I and my relatives went and paid her bride price. She has been living with me for many years now and she has five children, three boys. The children are mine now and at least, our family name will not just die like that,” she said.

In other scenario, a woman who didn’t have a son could actually ‘marry’ a wife for her ‘fictitious’ son for the same reason as procreation. Madam Angela Ugwuani, 75, is one of such women who didn’t want her family name to go into extinction. Ugwuani who had five daughters, didn’t marry the young wife for her husband, rather, she got a wife for a son she never really had.

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“I didn’t have a male child. I know that. But I still couldn’t allow my family name to die. Somebody told me about this girl who just had an unwanted pregnancy and I enquired about her. I and my husband’s relatives married her under our native law,” she said.

Ugwuani’s case is similar to that of 62-year-old Sabina Njoku, a retired primary school teacher. In Njoku’s case, she is childless and she needed her home to be alive with children.

“I wasn’t blessed with a child in my marriage and back then, adopting a child wasn’t fashionable. In fact, in my village, it was more acceptable to go and marry a wife that would have children for you than to even adopt a baby. So, I had to (with my husband’s relatives of course) marry a wife into my husband’s home. She has been delivered of so many children,” she said.

Interestingly, even after the woman (new wife) starts procreating and giving births to children, the kids would automatically bear her surname (expectedly, she would have changed her maiden name to that of the family that married her) regardless of who the biological father of the child/children may be. Nobody actually remembers the biological fathers of these children. In fact, they could best be described as sperm donors; they certainly do not have any other responsibility on the woman or the child she eventually gives birth to.

Iwuagwu explained that there will never be any point where the man would come out and claim he is the father of any of the children the woman eventually gives birth to.

“It is never done! The man doesn’t come into the picture at all. There is no way the man would come out and claim paternity of the children. Nobody will even listen to him. He doesn’t have any parental right to the children. The children conceived in this kind of arrangement would bear the late man’s name even if their biological father does exist.

“Even if the children become governors or presidents tomorrow, their biological father can never come out to claim them as his. There is nothing like paternity test. Don’t be surprised, the woman may not necessarily inform the man about her pregnancy. Even if the child ends up having a striking resemblance with the biological father, nobody would relate them openly in any way,” he said.

Saturday Punch findings revealed that most of the men who impregnate these women are usually married men who wouldn’t want to expose their escapades.

“The woman can even go as far as sleeping with men from neighbouring village. Smarter ones go far away to have relationships and consequent pregnancies. But then, in all, both parties know the reason for the relationship. The man will not come to claim the child and the woman will not go to him for any financial help towards raising the child,” said Uduma Ike, a village head in a community in Aboh Mbaise.

Ike also said that the ‘female husband’ takes care of the children and sees to their financial needs.

“It is the female husband who is now the head of the home that takes care of the wife and the children that she will have in that family. Nobody expects the biological fathers of the children to contribute to their welfare. Even if the fathers would help, they wouldn’t do so openly. If the child is sick, there is no way the woman will take the child to the man and ask for money for hospital bills even if he was the one that got her pregnant. She dared not even tell anybody in the village that it was this or that man that got her pregnant,” Ikem said.

Cynthia Obiajulu, (not real names) 26, got married five years ago, to a man she never met or heard of. Her supposed husband had died so many years ago and his first wife, Udoka, who didn’t have any male child, had married her into the family. Obiajulu, who now has three kids, all boys, refused to say who the biological father of her kids is but insisted that she is ‘legally’ married.

“I don’t think it is proper to ask me who the father of my children is. It is private. But the truth of the matter is that I am a married woman and my husband is late. Whether my late husband is the father of my children, it is not anybody’s business. But my children are answering their father’s name and nobody would claim that he fathered them; that is absurd.”

Obiajulu, who said she has a fantastic relationship with her older co wife and the person who ‘married’ her, said she also has strong respect for her.

“She is my mother. My children call her ‘Mama’. They regard her as the mother and not grandmother. My kids even see me as a big sister and not their mother. I have a great relationship with mama. It was through her that I came to live here. Even though I am traditionally married into this home, I have my place. I don’t disrespect mama. We don’t have equal rights in this house. She is my benefactor and she would be the one that takes care of us,” she said.”

You can read more here.

 

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