For those who have lived in Abuja for a while, the phrase ‘Abuja Marriage’ is nothing strange. It is an expression for a marriage of convenience between two consenting adults, which many residents of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) have lived with for decades. VICTOR OLUWASEGUN and GBENGA OMOKHUNU take a look at the phenomenon that is causing palpitation in the hearts of many genuine spouses across the nation.

There is an old but persistent trend in Abuja of spinsters and bachelors coming together as husbands and wives without observing the conventional marriage rites. It is called Abuja marriage. Adult male and female from different family and geographical backgrounds living together has become more or less a tradition that is growing in intensity as the number of new comers into the city, particularly young women aged between 20 and 30, continue on the upward spiral.

The trend is such that a marriage is consummated without the services of an event planner, a pastor or an Imam, and without any of the expenses that go with getting married. There are no bridal trains or showers, bachelor’s eve or the usually long list of items given to a would-be groom by his in-laws to be. In Abuja, you can get a wife or a husband without a dime spent on marriage rites!

It is common sight in Abuja today that spinsters and bachelors live together and become husbands and wives, and even raising children without any customary or religious solemnization of the marriage. In most cases, it is even without the knowledge or approval of the couples’ parents.

The married strangers do what other normally married couples do. They watch movies together, go to parks, play together and travel together to attend village festivals. The only problem is that the joy from their brand of marriage is usually short-lived and, in many cases, regrets set in.

As it is in Karu, Lugbe, Bwari and other satellite towns, so also it is in Kubwa, Karshi, Maitama, Asokoro and other highbrow parts of the capital city.

Their marriage is mostly forced by the economic conditions in the FCT, particularly the high cost of accommodation. With the influx of young, impressionable ladies into the capital city, the city has become saturated with job seekers who have a wrong impression of what Abuja stands for.

Having heard stories from friends and relatives of how much things are happening in the FCT, they head straight to Abuja in search of greener pastures. But no sooner do they arrive in Abuja than they realise that things are not as rosy as they were painted. Their desperate for survival then begins with a desperate search for accommodation, even if they are housed by a total stranger of opposite sex.

Categories of Abuja marriage

Abuja marriage can be categorised into two, namely the planned and the inadvertent.

The planned one involves someone contriving an incident or ‘accident’ warranting the commencement of a relationship. The inadvertent, on the other hand, is mostly happenstance; gratuitous occurrences, like someone coming into town but unable to locate their relations, bring the two parties together and ultimately culminate in unofficial marriage.

Spouses of circumstances

Findings revealed that there have been numerous cases of seekers of greener pastures ending up having their hopes dashed. In some cases, helpless ladies are thrown out by the same people who had lured them into the city, leaving them vulnerable to the antics of dubious men who take advantage of their circumstances. Such men take in the helpless ladies under ‘arrangement’ and turn them into sex mates.

That was the case with Rachel (surname withheld) who was encouraged by the presence of her friend to come into the city a few years ago and was living with her Kubwa area. Her friend could not offer her accommodation, so she arranged another friend named Rita to take Rachel in.

About two months later, Rachel fell so ill that she could barely walk while Rita had travelled. A young bachelor named Ken, who stayed in the next apartment, took pity on Rachel and took her to a nearby hospital where she was diagnosed with typhoid fever.

The doctor recommended some drugs and advised lots of rest. Because Rita had travelled and Rachel was alone in the apartment, Ken thought it might be a good idea if she stayed in his apartment so he could keep an eye on her and monitor her temperature.

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Eventually, it took about a week for Rachel got well. Within that period, she had grown attached to Ken who nursed her back into health. She saw no reason to move back with Rita even when she had returned from her journey. That became the beginning of their Abuja Marriage.

For Sandra, who lived in Lugbe, off Airport Road, it was a quit notice that pushed her into a relationship in which she ended up with two girls and became a single mother. She started work as a hairdresser upon her arrival in the FCT two years ago. A friend had told her that Abuja was the place to be after the death of her fiance back in her native community in Kogi State.

The trauma was overwhelming her and she could not wait to leave for a different clime to start a new life. She first got a job as a stylist in a saloon at Cornershops near Total filling station, on ‘work and share’ basis, but the take home was not much.

Eventually, she was able to secure an accommodation in Kapuwa, a community within the area. But after two years, she could no longer cope with the rent, so she gave in to the advances of Tony, an indigene of Anambra State who sold electronics parts near Police Signboard in Lugbe.

She eventually moved in with Tony, but their relationship did not end up well as the latter turned out a serial skirt chaser. He could say he was going to buy bread at 9 pm and would not return until the next day, especially on weekends.

At the end of the day, Sandra could not stand it anymore. Tony’s midnight calls and chats with different ladies and the beatings she got for complaining forced her to quit. She could not complain to any family member because they were not properly married.

In tears, she moved out of Tony’s apartment with her two young daughters, the last of whom was barely six months old, to live with her aunt in Mararaba, Nasarawa State.

Omolayo Yusuf left her home town in Edo State when a family friend who visited the village during one of the Christmas holidays some years back gave her a phone number and promised to get her a job.

The man in question, a business man, she later realised had eyes on her but could not have his way.

Omolayo headed for Abuja only to discover that her would-be benefactor had other intentions. After staying with him for one week, he abandoned her to her fate. At that point, going back to the village was no longer an option for Omolayo who had dreamt of returning to the village a polished woman like other city dwellers.

Three months later, with the help of an old friend who took her in, she was able to secure a job in one of the fast food joints in the FCT. Thrown out of her friend’s house about three years later, she was left with no choice but to call one of the regular costumers she had become fond of, who offered her a space till she could rent an apartment of her own. That, however, was the beginning of another chapter of her life.

“I had hardly spent two months in his house when he started asking me out. We started dating. But a few months later, I discovered that he had a child with another lady,” Omolayo said.

Not for the youth only

It would be wrong to assume that the phenomenon of Abuja marriage is limited to only young or single ladies who are looking for ways out of negative economic situations. There are cases of women who are married in other cities and are also married to other men in Abuja for reasons of expediency.

Some of these women are driven by the “shame” of being seen as single, others are impelled by the financial benefits they derive from the arrangement. Thus you sometimes find a woman who has two or three children in say Lagos living with another man as a full-fledged wife in Abuja.

If nothing untoward happens, the charade can be maintained for years with no one being the wiser.

Nwanosike ONU, Awka Reports

IT was 15 years ago when the alarm bell rang across the world over the happenings at a shrine in Okija, a sleepy community in Ihiala Local Government Area, Anambra State.

Known as ‘Ogwugwu akpu ‘, the killings associated with the shrine and other untoward events in the place gave birth to the discovery of others like ‘Ogwugwu Isulo’.

The sleepy community became popular over night for the wrong reasons, as popular politicians flooded Okija for in search of power and for oath taking.

Like many communities in Igbo land, Okija harbours many shrines. But the most popular was the Ogwugwu Akpu Shrine located on the bank of Ulasi River. It is located in Ubahuezike, which is one of the 30 villages in Okija and lies at the end of the village.

In the olden days, stories had it that people who committed atrocities were dumped in the shrine when they died. People who died from such diseases as small pox and leprosy were also dumped in the shrine; the reason the entire shrine was littered with relics of dead bodies.

About 19 years ago, Ogwugwu Akpu assumed a new status when some educated young people in the village decided to become priests of the Ogwugwu, thereby bringing some ingenuity into its worship.

That was how Okija became famous as people from various parts of Igbo land and beyond came there to administer oaths on their people suspected to have committed one offence or the other. Before then, Ogwugwu Akpu was just like any other shrine in Igbo land which served as checks against impunity and man’s inhumanity to man.

For instance, people who were aggrieved over the manner they were treated in business deals, land disputes, among other issues, took their cases to the Ogwugwu shrine.

Despite the destruction of the shrines in the area 15 years ago, new ones have sprung up and the business has started booming again. Some of the new shrines include the Ulasi Okija shrine, Ogwugwu Mmili Umuohi and Ogwugwu Ajani shrine.

The existence of these shrines, The Nation gathered, never affected the spread of Christianity in  Okija. The Nation gathered in the area that Okija community had produced more than 35 Catholic and Anglican priests.

Not only that, the community boasts about 10 parishes of such churches and three archdeaconries. Apart from the shrines scattered all over Okija, the community also hosts the country’s first private faith-based university, the Madonna University.

The emergence of the new shrine in addition to the old ones has brought back old memories about Okija.

Speaking with The Nation, one of the community leaders and big time farmer in Okija, Hon C.Y. Obi, said the shrines had returned in full force.

He maintained that the people of Okija are not known or associated with killing, adding that dumping of human heads in the shrines painted the community black in the eyes of the world.

Obi, who is also into politics in the state, said: “I am from Okija and we are proud of our community, no matter what people think or believe.

“The priests in charge of those shrines never killed anyone. Rather those who believed in those deities, who came to swore, would go to their places and die while their bodies would be brought to the shrine in the belief that they were killed by the deity.

“Some of us from the place don’t believe or go near the shrines. But those who believed in them were succumbing to the threats of the deities out of fear.”

Mrs Bridget Obi, another indigene of Okija and one time Commissioner for Women’s Affairs in Anambra State, said she does not believe in the shrine.

She said: “I believe they (priests) went the extra mile to use that place for 419 (fraudulent purposes) to extort money and deceive people.

“What happened there was not the culture of our people. Traditional religion is not what we saw in that place. What we saw was just a barbaric act.

“I don’t think the society today needs such extremes. It was actually due to lack of justice that made people to go to that extent. If the courts are working, if the judiciary is working, if justice is obtained in the right ways, the police and army are doing what they are supposed to do, even the community does the right things, there wouldn’t be any reason for this kind of archaic form of justice.”

Obi maintained that the so-called Okija shrine justice was jungle justice, adding: “I don’t believe in it.”

Another citizen of Okija, Comrade Chris Okwuosa, told The Nation that the shrine should serve as a tourist centre in Nigeria.

He said he had not visited any of the shrines because he does not believe in them, adding that the people of Okija should be paid compensation for being given a bad image by the government.

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Okwuosa said the children of Farmers Club, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) based in Okija, organised a mass burial for those whose heads were thrown into the shrines. And the community ordered that henceforth, the shrines should not be littered with dead bodies, adding that it would be difficult to erase that stigma of killing on their community.

He described it as the major challenge facing the people of Okija today world over, saying that tagging the people of Okija as killers, which he said is not true, has remained a big dent on their image.

However, Okwuosa, said the place has come alive again but observed that patronage appeared to have dropped after the saga.

It was not clear at what point the operators of the shrine began to demand for the corpses of those allegedly killed by Ogwugwu. But it became common knowledge that once somebody suspected to have been killed by Ogwugwu was buried in his compound, the priests of the deity would go to demand for the corpse the same day it was buried and the body would be exhumed and taken to the Ogwugwu forest and kept forever.

The frightening sight is usually shown to those who appear before the deity after they were summoned, and this further instills fear in such people, with the result that they would do the bidding of the priests to stay alive.

In August 2004, a petition was written to the then Inspector General of Police, the late Mr. Tafa Balogun, over the happenings at Okija, and the IGP ordered the then Anambra State Commissioner of Police, Mr. Felix Ogbaudu, to investigate.

The disagreement among the operators later led to the arrest of two chief priests and 30 other persons suspected to be agents of Ogwugwu shrine and were taken to Abuja for questioning.

The police also found 10 registers containing names of prominent politicians, businessmen, apprentices, among others, from most parts of Igbo land and beyond, though the identities of those whose names were in the register were not made public till date.

One of the current chief priests of Ogwugwu, who asked not to be named, accused the media of blowing what happened at the shrine out of proportion.

He said: “This deity is not associated with killing people, rituals or any form of death. Instead, the shrine’s main objective is to settle differences amicably and, should such move fail to resolve the crisis, the ultimate punishment is meted out.

“The shrine seeks to create solution to problems, especially for people who have been cheated in one way or the other.” According to him, even white men visit the shrine to summon their Nigerian business partners who they claim cheated them in business.

After the police raid of the shrine in 2004, it was as if the popularity of the shrine had waned, although recent happenings indicate that some people still believe in it, especially non-indigenes of Okija.

As at today, Okija shrine has lost the glory it acquired through politicians who patronised it in the past.

One of the priests, Mr. Ofokansi Okoli, said their customers no longer come, adding that the last customer he got came many months ago.

Another priest, Mr. Ejionu Ilodinobi, said for now, the Ogwugwu-akpu Shrine in Okija and others are  in limbo, adding, “whether they will still bounce back is what we don’t know .

But C.Y. Obi and Chris Okwuosa, believe the shrines are back in full force and are bubbling again.

For Obi, “people have freedom of worship. Those operating in those shrines believe in them while we believe in our own God, and those people who visit the shrines also believe they always get justice.

“People are living their lives. The forest is there. It has grown again, but people still go there.

“The shrine is still there. Of course, shrines don’t die. It is their own god. Itis part of our society.”

But Okwuosa said: “No more dropping of dead bodies in the forest. We have stopped that.

“The community warned that if any corpse was seen on the surface of the shrine, they would be sanctioned, and they agreed on that, and it is working.”

For ex-commissioner Obi, “the lessons we’ve learnt is that there are lots of anomalies in the system. “People see it and don’t raise their voices. If you don’t, it could also swallow you. When there is an outcry and there are investigations, it should be followed up to a logical conclusion.

“Okija shouldn’t be associated with shrine. Shrine is a thing that is everywhere. That one was an extreme case. I would say the Okija saga was a blessing in disguise.”

Give and take, Okija shrines are back and multiplying. But patronage has drastically reduced.