Before now, women were widely believed to be portrayed as inferior to men. With the emergence of women’s liberation movements across the world, however, the situation began to change and the womenfolk started enjoying a measure of equality with their male counterparts. In communities in Imo State, however, the female gender is yet to be liberated from its second-class rating. INNOCENT DURU, who visited some of the communities in Oru West Local Government Area of the state, examines a weird tradition that prescribes severe punishment for women above their male counterparts in cases of incest and other offences.
IN many parts of Oru West Local Government Area, Imo State, women appear to be living in the Stone Age, cut off completely from the feminist movements around the globe. In an age that women liberation movements are battling to liberate the women folk from the yoke of male domination and abuse, the female gender in communities like Mbgidi, Otulu and other parts of the local government are living with all manners of injustice that the male folk mete out to them in the guise of culture.
Our correspondent, who visited some of the communities, gathered that from the Stone Age till date, women who are caught committing incest are banished, while their male counterparts are either fined or sent out of the community for a short period, after which they would return to enjoy their full rights as members.
One of such instances of inequality occurred in Umuaru, Otulu in Oru Local Government Area last month when a young girl identified simply as Uchechi, who was suspected to have had illicit sexual relationship with a male relation named Ikechukwu, was banished and consequently stripped of her rights to free movement and association with her kith and kin. Her banishment was reportedly pronounced after she and the man involved in the amorous affair were publicly paraded and humiliated.
One of the community’s leaders, Uche Nwaokoro, said the affected lady is a teenager, while the errant man is married with children but his family members live outside the state.
Nwaokoro said: “Incest is a taboo in our community and Igboland in general. This fact is not hidden from anyone, young or old. Everybody knows that the implications are very grave, especially for females. The girl and the man you are talking about defied the laws of the community and paid dearly for it.
“Unfortunately, it is the female who would suffer grievously because she has been banished forever from the community and nobody will have anything to do with her again. The unfortunate thing is that the tradition does not care if she was deceived into the unholy relationship or whether she went into it voluntarily.
“The man was also penalised because he was also sent out of the community. But he will have the opportunity of returning to the community after some time.”
Asked why such harsh treatment is meted out to women, Nwaokoro said: “I can’t really say why women are at the receiving end of the tradition. All I can say is that it was passed down to us like that by our forefathers. We are strictly following what we inherited from our forefathers. And as far as we are concerned, civilisation and modernisation cannot change the tradition, because it could be calamitous to do anything contrary to what tradition prescribes.”
Another member of the community, who gave his name simply as Eke, gave a clue to why women are sanctioned more heavily than men in such cases.
While admitting that the practice amounts to injustice for the female gender, Eke said: “The reason why women are permanently ostracised and men are allowed to return to the community later is that when you ostracise men, you are depleting the community. When you send a woman away, it is believed to have lesser consequence on the community because the woman will get married at a point in life and leave the community. If the woman is already married, she faces the same treatment.
“Our tradition places a premium on males. You know that men were required to fight wars and defend the communities against external aggression in the past, while the women only took care of the home front. I feel that the perceived crucial role played by men in the primitive society engendered this practice. This is why the men have always been treated with kid gloves and the women are harshly treated.
“We know that there is an element of injustice in this kind of treatment but there is nothing we can do about it, because that is the tradition.”
How sanctions are imposed
Describing the processes involved in the ritual, Eke said: “They are onerous. Some of the items required for cleansing are antiquity items that are extremely difficult to come by in modern times. The whole thing is handled by the custodians of tradition.
“On the very day they are banished, the man and the woman would not wear decent clothes. Their faces are painted with white chalk and they are paraded round the community, followed by a large crowd of singing people. The custodians of culture will drag a lamb on the ground as they parade the culprits. The body of the lamb is peeling off as they drag it around on bare ground. The ritual is not deemed complete until the lamb dies. That also was what happened in the recent case.”
He added: “The offenders are led in that manner until they get to the community’s boundary with Mgbidi. No member of our community is allowed to give them the clothes they could wear after the ritual.
“To avoid walking about in such a ridiculous manner, the offenders would have made arrangements with members of other communities who will help them to carry their bags to where they could change after bathing in a bush.
“After the exercise, nobody, including the immediate family members, is expected to associate with them, not to talk of eating with them within and outside the community. The belief is that anyone who does so would die.”
Relations speak
Lamenting the practice, a relation of the recently banished female offender, who gave her name simply as Ada, said: “Her mother cried all through the ritual. It was an unfortunate development but there was nothing we could do about it. The tradition and culture of the land is supreme as far as the community is concerned.
“What annoys me so much is that the guy in question is married. He will obviously return to his family and continue to enjoy himself. And when the period of his banishment is over, he will return to the community and continue to enjoy every benefit that every other person enjoys. But that is not the case for our sister again.”
The male victim’s brother, who gave his name as Uka, also lamented the incident saying, “The exercise was not a good sight to behold. Just imagine seeing your brother brought out half naked before a multitude and publicly humiliated and paraded around several communities, would you feel healthy that day and thereafter?”
After the banishment, Uka said: “We had to carry out some cleansing in our family so that we could at least talk with our brother when we see him anywhere. We may not be able to eat together, but we would at least be able to stand at the roadside and talk. If we had not done the cleansing, something terrible could happen to anybody in the family.”
To make sure the shame and stigma are limited to the community, Uka said: “We made sure that nobody took the pictures of the offenders while they were paraded. If we had allowed the pictures to be taken, it would have dealt more devastating blows to the images of the victims and the families by extension, because people would post them online and that would eternally tarnish the images of the offenders and their families.
“But with the way it was done, the impact will be limited to the community. That level of damage is manageable compared to a situation where the whole world could identify our brother and the girl because they had seen their pictures while they were being publicly humiliated.”
Before the recent development in Umuaru, several other cases of banishment were said to have been recorded in other parts of the local government.
“This is not the first time that people are banished. There have been so many others. There was a case where the girl was already pregnant but the parents had to abort the pregnancy to prevent the family from having a child born out of forbidden sexual relationship.
“While most of the men have long returned to their various families, the females dare not return. Even if some of them are offered money to come back home, they will never accept because of the stigma,” said Eke.
Emeka Nze, a native of Mgbidi, said apart from incest, a woman also risks banishment in the area if she throws sand at her husband while they are fighting.
Nze said: “Our culture places a huge burden on women. When a man and a woman quarrel, it is forbidden that the woman throws sand at the man even if the man beats her to a pulp and throwing sand at him remains her only means of fighting back. Even if it is the man that offends a woman and she angrily pours sand on him, she would be banished.
“There was a man in one of our communities who had issues with his wife over food. While he was beating the woman, she parked some sand and poured it on him. That marked the end of her stay in that community. She had to do a lot of things to appease the land.
“If your wife pours sand on you and you keep quiet, a grave danger lies ahead. In this part of the world, we adhere strictly to the traditions we inherited. I am not sure there is any penalty for men when they throw sand at women. But if a woman does so, she will pay dearly for it.”
The injustice meted out to the female gender does not end there. According to Nze, “we also have a culture that banishes maidens when they get pregnant before performing certain rites. This has nothing to do with incest. It is just about a maiden getting pregnant before performing the rites called Ike-Ezi.
“Many people wonder why the men who impregnate the girls are not equally penalised and that the men could be encouraged to impregnate more young girls since there is not enough penalty to deter them from perpetrating such acts. Unfortunately, the tradition does not concern itself with the men. Nothing has been done and it appears nothing can ever be done to reverse the tradition.”
Protests over practice
In some of the communities, the penalty for women who commit incest is said to have been changed from perpetual banishment to one that only lasts for a number of years.
A respondent said: “Total banishment of women is not practised in some places. That was the practice everywhere in the past, but it has been modified in some communities in recent times because it is believed that perpetual banishment is no longer fashionable.
“When a woman commits incest now, she will be banished for a number of years, but the man may be given fewer years of banishment. If a woman is banished for six years, the man may be banished for three years, after which they would be allowed to return to the community.”
But some members of the communities who spoke with The Nation said they were not pleased with any form of banishment. They described the practice as barbaric and of no value to development.
A trader who gave his name as Ekele Ofor, said: “We have to put an end to this practice that sees the female gender as inferior to the male gender. I am a male but I will never support a tradition or culture that promotes inequality. How can we continue to keep quiet when our sisters and daughters are remorselessly banished and the men who commit the act with them are given a slap on the wrist?
“Experience has shown that such men don’t change after returning to the community. Instead of repenting and leading a good life, some of them even get worse in their sins of messing up innocent children.
“Some of the men that are involved in the banishment rituals are not morally better. Some are chronic adulterers who would never allow other men’s wives to rest.
“It is imperative that the government looks into this anomaly and stop the practice, because there is no justification for punishing women more than men when they have committed the same offence.”
A clergyman, Ifeayin Nwachukwu, regretted that “much as efforts are being made to put an end to osu (caste system) in Igboland, some traditional practices are still encouraging it.
He said: “When a woman is banished and prevented from having anything to do with her people, what do you call that? Has she not consequently become an outcast?
“Whether we like it or not, the challenge of having people often referred to as osu in Igboland will persist. If public humiliation and banishment of offenders were panaceas to the problem, would people still be involved in incest?”
Another respondent, Esther Nwaka, said it is injustice to mete out such punishment to women.
Her words: “It is barbaric to hear or see people banished in the present age and time. I am not trying to support sexual perversion, but the truth is that we have the modern means of resolving such issues instead of the crude styles we apply here.
“As a woman, I get more worried that it is females like myself that are often given bigger punishment. Even if they want to banish people, why can’t the two offenders be given equal punishment?
“What is more annoying is that it is the men that are spared by the tradition that lure the females into such indecent sexual relationship.”
Anxious parents, guardians
The fear of banishment appears to have become the beginning of wisdom for many people in the area as parents have made it a point of duty to warn their children and relations against having any sexual relationship with blood relations.
Oluchi, a young man who visited his village, recalled how he was embarrassed by his parents’ admonition against having anything to do with blood relations.
He said: “I was thoroughly embarrassed by my parents’ caution against wooing blood relations. Each time I am going out, they will tell me to be careful not to have anything to do with anybody that is related with us.
“If they see me with a lady, they will quickly come to remind me that she is a family member. They will spend time explaining how and where we are related. It was quite okay at the beginning. But as time went on, it became an embarrassment because the feeling I have is that they believe I am promiscuous.”
A worried mother, who identified herself simply as Abigail, said: “Incest is totally forbidden in our culture. It brings a lot of evil to the land and the people in general. For me, I am always monitoring my children to be sure that they are not dating their blood relations. The moment I see my children with a relation, I am always quick to let them know that it is forbidden for them to have sexual relationship.
“The children of today don’t know the implications, and if you don’t keep checking on them, they will one day bring untold shame to you,” she said.
Gender activists, lawyers speak
The Executive Director of Initiative for Sustaining Family Unity, Kate Ibeanusi, said the practice amounts to injustice for women.
Her words: “It shows how partiality has dug into our society. Whenever a crime is committed in a community, the woman is not just the victim, she is also seen as the offender, and the treatment that is meted out to her is worse than that of the man who committed the offence with her. It is repulsive.
“If an offence is committed all the parties involved are equally punished, there would be no human rights issue. But where the male gender gets a lighter punishment for the same crime, the whole issue about patriarchy, inequality will continue to arise.
“I think the Igbo culture has a way of institutionalising this kind of inequality. Unfortunately, they put women as gatekeepers to make sure that this inequality is continuously perpetrated. The practice amounts to injustice if we are to use the modern day parlance. But deeply, it is inequality grounded in patriarchy.”
Examining the psychological effect of the practice on a female victim and her family, Ibeanusi said: “The practice disempowers the woman and makes it impossible for her to raise her head to speak in that society. Because anytime she speaks, that card is played back and she is reminded of her moral lapses and that becomes a burden she bears for the rest of her life. Psychologically, she is broken, battered and highly disempowered.
“In traditional Igbo society, we value the acceptance of our larger society. So, when a member of the family commits or is seen to have committed an offence in the community and a punishment is meted out to that person, it is not just the individual that bears the brunt, the family also bears it. They bear the shame and want to hide to avoid bearing the tag of being associated with the crime. It also disintegrates the fabrics that hold our society together.”
She pointed out that such development fuels suicide and mental health problems among women. “Sure, it does lead to suicide cases. This has happened in the past and it is still happening, especially to women. A lot of women have taken their own lives simply because they feel they could no longer bear the shame of an offence they committed.
“The woman knows that she may not be able to get married if she returns to the community. And if she was married before the incident, she loses her marriage and her children are taken away from her. Without access to social network, economic power, she feels she has lost everything, and the next thing is to take her own life.”
The Executive Director of Child’s Health Organisation, Victoria Urenma, described the practice as gender discrimination, saying that women movement groups in the area should stand up against it.
She said: “Sometimes, it is out of ignorance that these people do these things. Such a woman would never return to the community even if she is asked to. She would move to another place after the banishment because she will never be the same again. She will be like a broken clay pot because her womanhood has been robbed off her.
“Unfortunately, it is fellow women that are used to carry out this practice against their fellow women. In 2002, we were in Owerri to greet a colleague who had lost her husband. Her people said she must sit on the floor and even brought food for her in one funny plate. But we refused all that because she is a human being and must be treated as one.
“We tried talking to them, but when they refused, we threw the food away and got her something else to eat. When they saw that we were adamant, they soft-pedalled.”
In spite of the Violence Against Persons Prohibition (VAPP) Law, 2015, one wonders why the communities still resort to using traditional means to handle such issues.
Bemoaning the culture of neglecting legal means in resolving issues, a human rights activist and lawyer, Barr Ben Odeh, said: “It shows that our judicial system takes a long time for a criminal matter to be resolved. That primarily has to do more with the confidence that our people have in our judicial system.
“Another reason is ignorance. A lot of people do not even know that these laws are there. Most times, when laws are passed by the state and national assemblies, the government hardly sensitises people on those laws. A lot of people do not even know.
“If you look at our legislation, there are a lot of laws that are existing but they are not being applied by the relevant government agencies.
“If you accuse my brother of stealing and jungle justice is applied, I will report. It doesn’t matter that my brother committed the crime. The law did not say that anybody should take the laws into his or her hand. If you accuse somebody of committing an offence, the person should be reported to the appropriate places for investigation and subsequent prosecution in court.
“A community does not have the power to banish anybody. If they feel that anybody has committed an offence, it behoves them to report the case either to the police or the relevant agency that is in charge of such issue. For them to do that is jungle justice. It amounts to taking the law into their own hands, which is completely anti-civilisation.”
Odeh’s view was shared by a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), Chief Ladi Williams, who strongly condemned the practice of banishing people.
He said: “Freedom of movement in any part of the country is a constitutional right which cannot be abrogated. The community has no right to do that.
“Any customary law that says that they have such powers, to the extent that it is inconsistent with the constitution, it is null and void. If a customary court supports that, then it is nonsense.
“The affected persons should proceed to the Magistrate’s Court. Such a case can even go up to the Supreme Court. The banished persons can sue for the enforcement of their human rights and also claim damages for preventing them from going to their primary abodes.”
