Female inheritance in Ana-igbo: The facts, the fiction and the faction!

SOMETIMES in 2020, there was this Breaking News when the Supreme Court made a ‘landmark’ judgement, which upheld the right of daughters to inherit their fathers properties. This judgement directly affected the agelong Igbo law and custom, which hitherto excluded female children from partaking in such properties.

The Supreme Court held that the practice was discriminatory and conflicted with section 42(1)(a) and (2) of the 1999 Constitution. This was the outcome of an appeal SC.224/2004 filed by one Mrs Lois Ukeje and her son, Enyinnaya Ukeje, against Gladys Ukeje, a daughter of the deceased (late Ogbonna Ukeje).

I do not know whether Gladys was the biological daughter of Lois. The ruling was actually a breaking news as several organisations, lawyers, women-libers, commissioners for women affairs (why has never been any commissioner for men affairs anywhere in this country?) and media houses were issuing statements, organising special programmes, congratulating the Supreme Court and celebrating the judgement.

The ruling also caused verbal ruptures in Anaigbo with some people hailing it as end to discrimination and man’s inhumanity to man while others were angered by the perceived bastardisation of Igbo tradition and culture. In September this year, the highly combustible Governor Wike signed the ‘Rivers State Prohibition of the Curtailment of Women’s Right to Share in Family Property Law No. 2 of 2022’. After all the usual arguments against the practice, he added a ‘Wikeistic’ angle to the whole show when he declared that ‘women are even more useful to us than the men. The day you’re getting old and dying you’ll know that you need more daughters than men’!

And just the other day (16/11/22), Abia State House of Assembly passed the ‘Abia State Female

Persons Right of Inheritance of Property Bill, 2022’, which allowed the female family members to inherit property in their fathers family. The laws passed in Rivers and Abia, are in tune with the

SC judgement, and have been hailed by all lovers of equity and pro-women organisations and associations.

However, there is a serious misconception in the whole matter, what our people call confusing the theft of a cock with the theft of yam. In Ana-igbo, in the days of yore, stealing a yam from somebody’s farm was an ‘alu’ (abomination) but stealing a cock, while it is an offence, was not an alu! It was thus inappropriate to confuse or compare the two.

And so, here I go. I start by declaring that I am NOT a lawyer. In my voyage into Business Administration and Banking, have taken some courses on commercial, business, mercantile and banking laws and had even taught same to undergraduate students (I hope NBA will not go on strike because an unlearned fellow taught a ‘learned’ course)!

But while I am not a lawyer, I am an Ichie (a member of the kings cabinet) in the ancient kingvent dom of Igbo-ukwu. I have also seen enough Christmases to be in a position to say ‘teacher, don’t teach me nonsense’ in matters concerning Igbo culture and tradition. Does Igbo tradition and custom preportion females from sharing in their fathers assets? The answer is NO! The Igbos do not give a share of the ancestral land to their married daughters because we know that she would co-own her husband’s ancestral land.

However, an ‘nna-gaanu’ (father go marry; an unmarried lady) is Fully entitled to a share of the ancestral land. If a lady is married and then breaks irretrievably with the husband, she is also entitled to a portion of the ancestral land but it depends on whether the land had been all shared before then and the good will of her brothers, especially when the father has gone to the great beyond.

In the not too distance past, one of my relations shared his ancestral land among his sons but kept a portion for the youngest daughter, who was unmarried as at then. He called me in as a witness (and one of those to enforce the will) and directed as follows: ‘if this my daughter does not get married eventually, that is for her. But if she gets married, it goes to the first son’.

Of course, you know that now we are being increasingly urbanised, the ancestral land for unmarried daughters has become less significant as it was before because few of such ladies still stay in the village. Beyond ancestral land, a daughter is entitled to buildings, shares, and other investments of her father. If the father does not include her in his sharing calculus of these assets, he cannot blame Igbo customs; it is because of his level of knowledge and mindset about women. If the father died intestate and ,N 0XR 3K' 'HSDUWPHQW RI %XVLQHVV $GPLQLVWUDWLRQ 228 $JR ,ZR\H 2JXQ 6WDWH PXRLJER#\DKRR FRP PXR LN#RRXDJRLZR\H HGX QJ the brothers exclude any of their sisters from the distribution, then they are just being greedy, covetous and mean!

They cannot hide their greed, callousness under the guise of Igbo culture. This is the fact of the matter. All other positions are fictions and factions. I have one daughter and she should share in my properties (mostly books) when I die. My family was a football team plus one reserve (5 boys, 5 girls, papa and mama). One of the boys defected to the netherworld in 1982. My father, as a village headmaster, was not a man of means. However, he co-owned a plot of land with one of his co-inlaws. When the land was eventually sold, my elder brother who is now in charge shared the money to ALL of us.

While we lived in Kaduna (1989-1992), a family friend died and the wife went home to bury and mourn her husband. By the time she returned, her husband’s people had invaded the house and carted out chairs, beds and other such items. Can you call this Igbo custom? No; this is caused by poverty, lack of knowledge, jealousy and pettiness. You can imagine the calibre of persons who did such a distasteful thing. It is an evidence of household wickedness. How can I go to my brother’s house to steal some third-hand household items and say it is our custom? I have spoken

While we lived in Kaduna (1989-1992), a family friend d ied and the wife went home to bury and mourn her husband. By the time she returned, her husband’s people had invaded the house and carted out chairs, beds and...