Truly Bizarre!! Community Where Old Women Marry Young Ladies. Read Now

Eighty-three-year old Nwanyidinma looked disconsolate as she sat in front of her thatched, mud house. There was no one to keep her company apart from her little ‘bingo’ dog and a host of chicken strolling round her premises. Occasionally, she used the horsetail in her hands to chase the dog away from the chicken. In the animal world, it would not be out of place to conclude that the animals were playing hide and seek in this peaceful environment. That, however, is not for Nwanyidinma.

The weather was cool and breezy and so she was just out there watching the movement of the leafy orange trees and palm trees in her neighbourhood.

Beyond this natural scene, Nwanyidinma has a heavy heart. Not that she has lost anybody in recent times, but she has a bigger burden occupying her inner recess as she watches the dog, the chicken and the trees.

But Nwanyidinma’s three remaining children (all females) and those close to the octogenarian know too well her challenge. Her bigger headache borders on what happens to her late husband’s property if she passes on. Her husband had died several years ago. Her only son had also passed on. In fact, her son died in his early 20s; unmarried.

As the tradition in her Mbaise community demands, women have no right to inheritance of property, especially landed property. And here lies the octogenarian’s headache. Her three daughters are living  happily with their husbands and children. So who takes over all her husband’s landed property? Who takes over the pear trees, palm trees and other natural inheritance belonging to her husband? Will her husband’s brothers/relations inherit all the wealth and property, things she and her husband laboured strenuously to acquire?

By the way, before her husband died, there was an estranged relationship between him and his brothers, an action that further severed their relationship. Will these ‘enemies’, as it were, now take over all the wealth?

For Nwanyidinma, this dilemma, more than any other thing, occupied her mind. However, from a neighbouring village, information has it that a young unmarried girl had been impregnated. The person who she claimed got her pregnant had denied paternity and her parents were on the verge of disowning her for ‘shaming’ them.

So as the octogenarian relaxed in front of her house, she was thinking of how she would send a delegation to the young girl’s family to seek her hand in marriage. If the girl’s family agreed, she would bring her and her unborn child to her home. The overall game plan is perhaps that if she puts to bed and the child is a boy, he will naturally belong to the family.

Few weeks later, Nwanyidinma did just that. She went and married the pregnant young lady, whose unborn child, she believed, would automatically become her grandchild and a bona fide heir of her property.

Indeed, there are so many likes of Nwanyidinma in some Igbo communities, especially in Mbaise, who ‘marry’ other women in order to have male children in their homes.

These ‘female husbands’ as they are known, are practising a tradition that is long accepted in the communities and which has gone a long way to solve a need, a need to perpetuate a family name.

Charity Igbokwe, from Ahiazu Mbaise is another typical example of a ‘female husband’. The 68-year-old widow had an only son, Donald Igbokwe, who had died in an accident over 30 years ago. He was unmarried.

But Donald’s name has not gone into extinct. His aged mother made sure she married a woman for him ten years ago and the young lady has had four children –three boys and a girl- for the deceased.

Igbokwe, while speaking to our correspondent, said it was necessary she married a woman for her late child in order to keep his name alive.

“What I did was just the normal thing anybody in my place would do. My child died tragically. He was my only son. My husband had died many years ago. So I had to marry a woman for my late son. My son’s wife now has four children. The children of course, ans