Kenny Ogbuehi Adazie
THE IGBO WOMAN AND HER PLIGHT
(please a must read to all my Igbo brothers, sisters and neighbors)

We all go about saying and believing we live in the 21st century, the era of civilization in Nigeria and Africa in general. We believe we now have so many educated people in our society. The truth is that we have people who went through school, acquired degrees, without allowing school to pass through them.

I was reading an article sometime back on the issue of the Osu caste system in Igbo land. I read something about many great brains coming from the east; I agree with this. But it is very painful when you have those great and educated minds getting involved in some barbaric practices and even standing to encourage them.

I remember a man who is in the middle of his Phd work sending me some terrible messages because I spoke out against the practice of Osu caste system in Igbo land. He first asked to know if I am Osu and when he confirmed I am not one, he went ahead talking in ignorance. I was so pissed off that I unconsciously told him that he is a disgrace to education and to God, the maker of mankind.

I am not here today to talk about the Osu caste system and its madness, but about the plight of the girl child in Igbo land. I have noticed one thing among the Igbos; education plays a very minor role in our lives and mindset. In fact, our behaviours as easterners to a greater extent are determined by upbringing and not education.

After my last Friday’s article on the way we treat people before and after death and the things widows go through in the hands of in-laws, a man from the South-south called me amidst pain and tears. This man lamented the ordeal of his late wife in the hands of her relations who are from the east. I am yet to fix a meeting with this man who is in so much pain because of some obsolete and barbaric traditions. I shall, by the grace of God handle these devilish traditions one after the other.

Having looked into the other Nigerian tribes, it appears to me that we, the Igbos, have the worst tradition when it comes to the issue of the girl child.

Let us start from the moment a woman gets married. Have you listened to our fathers pray during traditional marriages? All you hear is, “you shall have Okereke and Okarafor…Iseeee”. This is the number one proof that the girl child is seen as nothing in the Igbo culture. The woman gets into her husband’s house only to start praying for a male child due to the pressure she gets, even from her own mother. Your in-laws agree that you are well settled in your husband’s house only when you have a male child.

As the children are growing up, the girl child is taught that her place in life is in a man’s kitchen and so she must put the kitchen before the school. I agree that every woman needs some good housekeeping and cooking skills. But where we have the girl child drop out of school because she must get married and help train her siblings in school; I don’t know what to say.

Many Igbo men today misbehave because they believe they are childless as the woman keeps giving birth to female children. Many marriages packed up simply because the woman was unable to have a male child. In those days, our fathers freely took second wives, but the case is different for some men who are now religious leaders and as such cannot take second wives. A friend recently told me about a very rich Igbo man who lives here in Lagos, but does not travel to his hometown because he is made to feel he is not a full-fledged man without a son. This is one of the numerous miserable conditions our tradition has kept people in.

I remember a woman, a relation to the man I was married to, actually making a foolish comment to the hearing of my mother when I had my first child; a female. She laughed and said, “Why is Amara giving birth to a female child when she is expected to have a male child first?” Today, I have two girls and two boys, but the woman’s daughter who got married about six years ago has none today. Most times we forget we are still humans and talk like God.

A reader called me just last week to narrate his story to me. This man has four girls who are all doing wonderfully well today. He told me how other women were coming to his wife to remind her she was not safe without a male child. Thank God for this wonderful man who continued assuring her of his love and support for her. Today, they are all married and are lawyers, biochemist, and chartered accountant.

A good number of Igbo men still believe life is not complete without a male child. This has led them to torture their wives as if they are the ones responsible for their so-called ordeal. Sir, you are the one who decides the sex of your child. It is what you put into the woman she gives out. The woman has XX chromosomes while you have XY chromosomes. If you give out your X, it goes to meet any of her own chromosomes and the result is a female child. But if you give out your Y chromosome, it meets with any of her X and that is when you have a baby boy. Now you agree with me that your wife does not deserve that ill-treatment she is getting from you.

If you are not proud of your girl child, why stretch your legs and clear your throat when it’s time for her bride price to be paid? Some men see their female daughters as another good in the warehouse. In fact, I have heard some Igbo men call their daughters by that name; it is a shameful thing.

You don’t want to appreciate the fact that your wife gave birth to girls, but you have the audacity to sit and collect millions as bride price. Some men see their daughters’ marriage as an occasion to make money. This is why you have a lot of mature Igbo ladies still very single as the men are now scared of all the expenses to be incurred during engagement. Some even add their own on top only for them to sell them after the marriage.

How do you think your daughter will feel by the time she realises that her father left nothing for her? The Igbo culture believes a woman is just an extra to humanity. They believe she has no portion in her father’s house and the same thing happens when she gets to her husband’s house. A girl child is made to believe she lives just to get married and raise children.

You can make yourself different by having your daughter inherit some things from you. It is not enough giving her the best car on her wedding day; she should have something to hold on to in her father’s house. Let us stop this ill-treatment being meted out on the girl child. I feel terribly bad about this issue and I think it’s time we made the change. Our educated men should begin to act educated and treat women the way they should be treated; as human beings.
Monday at 00:04

lol

What is she talking about, it's a universal thing and if Igbos don't send their girls to school, how do you account for the fact that there are more educated Igbo girls than the boys?

Sicherheit:

What is she talking about, it's a universal thing and if Igbos don't send their girls to school, how do you account for the fact that there are more educated Igbo girls than the boys?

because igbo men tend to drop out of school to do businesses.

that would also explain why there female are in top positions over there men

@OP,

I think the author of that article exaggerated a lot and is infact talking nonsense in most of the article. Infact, there's no ethnic group in Nigeria that treats the girl child better, than the Igbo. I think the issue of a male child in Igbo culture is exaggerated by non-Igbos. Its even become somewhat a folklore. I have sisters and female cousins and they have never been made to feel less important than their male counterparts. Infact, they're over protected with equal encouragement of educational attainment etc as compared to their male counterparts.

Igbo women have a history of excellence since the advent of Igbo culture.  Our women were/are never taught to be inferior by relegating them to the kitchen etc

Igbo culture is very patrilineal just like other Nigerian cultures.

alj_harem:

because igbo men tend to drop out of school to do businesses.

Very untrue. You generalized here without much thought. I know of nobody who I schooled with right from primary school till University who dropped out for business. Even those guys you may know who're business men, are highly likely to have a degree with very minimal exceptions.

alj_harem:



that would also explain why there female are in top positions over there men

Our women are in top positions cos of Igbo culture which is very egalitarian. We don't look down on our women and while the success of our women has been very noticed and acclaimed by other Nigerians, Igbo men are very indifferent about this.

dem_people:


Very untrue. You generalized here without much thought. I know of nobody who I schooled with right from primary school till University who dropped out for business. Even those guys you may know who're business men, are highly likely to have a degree with very minimal exceptions.

Our women are in top positions cos of Igbo culture which is very egalitarian. We don't look down on our women and while the success of our women has been very noticed and acclaimed by other Nigerians, Igbo men are very indifferent about this.

Ok i am not at home right now so i can not really prove you wrong. for now ( on the igbo men and women thing)

them- people, i have to apologize for my recent behaiour but i just had to put an end to some thing here. No malice

alj_harem:

Ok i am not at home right now so i can not really prove you wrong. for now ( on the igbo men and women thing)

them- people, i have to apologize for my recent behaiour but i just had to put an end to some thing here. No malice

No need to apologize. They're your views - however evil and wicked they might be. And you wonder why we all are in a single country as Nigerians.

I don't know where you always get it from that Ndigbo eat people but never mind, such things don't make me angry cos they're false.

dem_people:

No need to apologize. They're your views - however evil and wicked they might be. And you wonder why we all are in a single country as Nigerians.

I don't know where you always get it from that Ndigbo eat people but never mind, such things don't make me angry cos they're false.

OH OH wait so I am wicked but ur brother that have been doing worst things than I are kind hearted. saying awo die like a rat etc. or is because I have tried to be civil and u people are so tribalistic u find joy in aying someone die like a poisoned rat

others even said yorubas should be locked in a concentration camp and be gased. they are all kind hearted

others stated hausa/fulani should be sent out of the country. etc are all kind hearted. now to give some of them the taste of there medicine back after some may weeks of warning. I am wicked

talk about double standards

dem_people:

No need to apologize. They're your views - however evil and wicked they might be. And you wonder why we all are in a single country as Nigerians.

I don't know where you always get it from that Ndigbo eat people but never mind, such things don't make me angry cos they're false.

What is evil and wicked about what he said? you people and your victim mentality, it's getting boring jo. Same thing that will be said about another tribe, you people will turn into a federal case and start crying foul like babies.

alj_harem:

OH OH wait so I am wicked but your brother that have been doing worst things than I are kind hearted. saying awo die like a rat etc. or is because I have tried to be civil and u people are so tribalistic u find joy in aying someone die like a poisoned rat

others even said yorubas should be locked in a concentration camp and be gased. they are all kind hearted

others stated hausa/fulani should be sent out of the country. etc are all kind hearted. now to give some of them the taste of there medicine back after some may weeks of warning. I am wicked



talk about double standards

Are you minding him? If someone does not know any Igbo person in real life, you will start to believe all of them are whiners like the ones on Nairaland. Any small thing, they raise alarm ewooo, why are you doing us bad, it's remaining for them to tell us not to even say the word Igbo because our tone is evil and wicked.
This one said because the people he grew up with did not drop out of school to do business is proof that Igbo boys don't drop out of school more than the girls. We should ignore the ones without school cert that troop into alaba market every day from the village .

Sicherheit:

What is evil and wicked about what he said? you people and your victim mentality, it's getting boring jo. Same thing that will be said about another tribe, you people will turn into a federal case and start crying foul like babies.  

Oh shut up. We aren't talking about the comments on this thread. Use your brain.

alj_harem:

OH OH wait so I am wicked but your brother that have been doing worst things than I are kind hearted. saying awo die like a rat etc. or is because I have tried to be civil and u people are so tribalistic u find joy in aying someone die like a poisoned rat

others even said yorubas should be locked in a concentration camp and be gased. they are all kind hearted

others stated hausa/fulani should be sent out of the country. etc are all kind hearted. now to give some of them the taste of there medicine back after some may weeks of warning. I am wicked

talk about double standards

Alhaji, I'm not familiar with the views expressed concerning Awo and so on. Please who said Awo should die like a rat? And who and who are you referring to as "you people are so tribalistic"? Who said Yorubas should be locked in a concentration camp? Who said "hausa/fulani should be sent outside the country"?

And if you don't reply, will all those sentiments come to pass?

And please, how did you come about the believe that Ndigbo eat people?

You should understand me by now. I love my people Ndigbo but also willing to learn about other cultures and socialize with other non-Igbo Nigerians. I'll defend my people with facts but when it comes to tribalistic warfare, I tend to shy away. A significant number of my friends in real life aren't Igbo. How can I speak ill about their ethnicities and still look at their eyes and faces without a feeling of idiocy and bigotry?

I mostly like to visit this forum for virtual socializing but mainly, to better understand the make-up of the soul of Nigeria and its people.  

I have no time for tribalism.

dem_people:

Oh shut up. We aren't talking about the comments on this thread. Use your brain.

See the brain dead moooron who can't think long enough to stick to topic telling someone to use their brain. The irony

Relegating women and looking down on the girl child is very common in all African cultures and maybe all Third world not peculiar to Ibos

How can Ibos be the ones treating women worst when we still have hausa, Fulani etc

I can say that Ibo women acheieve much more academically than other tribes women in this country

Ndi Okereke Onyuike, Akunyili and Okonjo-Iweala

Harem,Sincerely speakin, education started from hausaland, no wonder boko haram are fighting for the sustenance of that education.

After reading this article, the first thing that came to my mind is that we may need a "Slap Police" in Igboland.
We Ndigbo talk down ourselves too much! The OP is either very ignorant or she is very narrow minded (letting her personal life becloud her judgement of the greater Igbo culture).

The truth is that under the Original Igbo culture (not this current fake one) the female enjoy same things as men.  I have a long list, but I will handle just a few -the right of the female child in a non-male inheritance scenario.

Though Igbo culture is patrilineal, there is still a provision in some Igbo cultures (mine for example) for a man who failed to produce a male child to reserve one of his daughters (not marry her off) to stay home and have babies at home. This is one of the VERY FEW times when a female is allowed to have babies at home without marriage. This female is permitted to have as many babies as possible at home, and from any man outside her clan (umu nna) until she makes a male child. 100% of the time, these females produce male heirs to their families. They are treated like men -they attend every meeting where the father should have attended in the village. This practice is still surviving in my town and I personally know one family just like that. NO ONE dares talk about them in derogatory way.

In the ORIGINAL traditional Igbo marriage in my town (not the current fake one), after the bride price is paid, the female follows the man home for one week. She would return after that one week to tell her family whether she wants to marry the man or not. In that one week, she must test out EVERY aspect of the prospective husband. If she so much as develops a cold feet, the bride price is returned to the man, no question asked. End of story. In other words, she only marries by INFORMED consent.
And even after marriage, if she wakes up one day to find that her husband has stopped being a good husband, she simply buys a small cutlass called Mma ekwu (in my Nnewi Igbo), and proceeds to give it to any man of her choice whom she fancied (outside her own clan of course). She becomes the man's wife (minus her children who belongs to her first husband) after a small ceremony following her action. END OF STORY. That made men in my culture to always sit up and be good husbands in the olden days.  There are many others that pertain to families allowing a female to get pregnant by any man of her choice (minus relatives of course) in cases where husbands are impotent or the family lineage suffers from premature deaths. Again NO QUESTIONS ASKED.
These are female rights in the ORIGINAL Igbo culture.
Igbo culture had answers for almost EVERYTHING as far as marriage is concerned. 

Modern Igbo dropped most of these things and copied strange ones; and even though we send our girl kids to school more than any other Nigerian group, people like the OP is hung up on the things we dropped, not knowing that we had these things before.

Before any Igbo should criticize any aspect of our culture, he/she should go home and ask some hard questions before going online to talk ignorantly.

Igbo culture is RESILIENT and aims to solve EVERY social problem. 

Ibos the bingos

I like when people critisize the Igbo people and their culture. It's all good.
More critics and criticism are welcome people. More more please.

Igbo sells!

The Original writer of that article is merely looking for cheap fame,hits on her blog/site or book.or one of the unfortunate folks that grew up in a dysfunctional family unit(s/he made referrals to her upbringing)

Seriously,who still discusses silly stuffs like osu in 2011?and with someone probably born in Regos or Amelika who can neither point out his/her fathers'  obi  nor lead the way to the family's ancient landmarks?Folks whose only connection with "Igbo" is 2 wks Xmass vacation per annum,who are so out of tune with the[b] real norms and practices [/b]of Igboland and only source of enlightenment is the garbage they come across online and wild tales told them by strangers?

Oge adighi biko.

More of culture, and less of politics pls.

Moved.

Everything on the write-up sounds either made up to me or probably peculiar to the writer's home.Igboland is not entirely patrilineal.Infact only Eastern Igbo and Nembe Ijaw are the matrilineal society in Nigeria.The Osu system is not spread across Igboland.It is therefore wrong to call a culture practised in some sections "Igbo culture" or you imply that those without it are not Igbos.

The Osu issue does not affect only a girl but both sexes.It is infact better for a man to marry an Osu girl and bring her into diala than a diala girl to follow an Osu man.

As for those talking of education,a credible NYSC or JAMB list is there for everyone to see.Imo state has been on the lead for 30 years.

[size=13pt]Why Igbo Youths Drop Out of School[/size]

Enugu — Failure to address the realities of the socio-economic problems facing the individual passing through the education system has been identified as the major problem facing education in the country.

President, Nigeria Book Foundation, Prof. Chukwuemeka Ike said that though there were many schools, the curricular of the tiers of education were not designed to make a positive impact on the socio-economic lives of the people, "including our traditional occupations, our means of earning a livelihood".

,

http://allafrica.com/stories/200607130043.html

Failure to address the realities of the socio-economic problems facing the individual passing through the education system has been identified as the major problem facing education in the country.

President, Nigeria Book Foundation, Prof. Chukwuemeka Ike has attributed the reason why people drop out of school to the result of the Igboman's get-rich-quick propensity.

"Drug peddling, 419, internet business deals, political patronage, and other instant money spinning avenues have out distanced education as the means of acquiring the present day social indices of success, "namely a "white house", the okwu oto ekene eze automobile, paper titles from traditional rulers, and spraying of bundles of dollar bills at the slightest provocation".

In her remark, Chairman, Board of Trustees of the Education Trust Fund (ETF), Chief Mrs. Olutoyin Olakunri said that gender crisis manifests in Nigerian education system line in most of Africa.

To solve the problem, she said that a new awarenss and zeal in gender research must be developed, accelerated and sustained.

Olakunri highlighted the importance of Boy Child Education in Nigeria as a whole in the South East, adding that there is a national gender disparity in basic education in enrolment, retention and completion against girls.

She also said that there are regional variations in education with girls and women from Northern Nigeria and rural communities generally at disadvantage.

"The national literacy rate for females is only 56 compared to 72 for males, and in certain states the female literace enrolnment and achievement rates are much lower", she added.

She said that following this, strategies have been mapped out to address the imbalance by raising national awareness on girls education, building of schools technical capacity to develop girl-friendly school environment.

thisday 2006

etc

ROFL

Onye nyere Usu onu?

alj_harem:


etc

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^hehehehe^^^^^^^^

dayokanu: Relegating women and looking down on the girl child is very common in all African cultures and maybe all Third world not peculiar to Ibos

How can Ibos be the ones treating women worst when we still have hausa, Fulani etc

I can say that Ibo women acheieve much more academically than other tribes women in this country

Ndi Okereke Onyuike, Akunyili and Okonjo-Iweala

WORD

The outcry here about Igbo women is not neccessary. If others take the lead and Igbo women are last at the table, then there is the need to sound an alarm bell.
For now, no worries

which plight is that?

dont know of any and neither did i read the op.