In the years before the colonialists came to Igboland, for men, a woman's older age was not a factor in choosing her for a wife or even a lover. Young men freely took over widows, even those of own dead fathers (apart from own mothers of course) to marry, or simply continue raising and making children by the women. Her being older was not a factor -at all.

But in the binary marriage system that dominates our part of the world today, such relationship is now at a disadvantage because a man now has only one chance to form a family. Also, the older woman with whom he may have fallen in love may not be of childbearing age, or she may be in her twilight reproductive years. This tends to force men to abandon older women lovers, or widows they should have married, to marry younger ones for the purpose of having children; but then still retain the segxwal relationship with the older lovers in the secret world of adultery, or fornication.  Hypocrisy has continued to define the marriage system that forces a man to marry only one wife, and the many instances of men (or women) cheating on their spouses continue to prove this point. Society has almost become normalized to the idea of infidelity, or serial monogamy, provided that these all exist within the bounds defined by law. In other words, law has replaced common sense and morality.

A committed observer would notice that the lies and hypocrisy that define contemporary marriage are more dangerous to the goals of keeping the seventh commandment than anything else. In an effort to create a utopian one-man one-woman world (which is not mandated  biblically by any stretch), a dystopian society of serial divorces and broken homes has been created, and this manifest through increased clandestine sex, wickedness, and selfishness.

In pre-European Igboland, a man married according to natural realities, not according to some fables and unproven narratives. For instance, if a man impregnated a woman, regardless of her age, tradition demanded that he performed marriage rites to take her home as wife. As long as the woman was a willing participant in the segxwal acts that led to the pregnancy, she was expected to marry the man who impregnated her. She was not bound to do so, but unless she planned to have a baby in her father's house as agreed by the family, she was expected to go with the man that impregnated her. If the man repeated such act one thousand times, he got one thousand wives. Simple. The only barrier was if the woman turned down his marriage proposal for whatever reason; or if the couples were too close genetically, like cousins and siblings; or in cases of parental incest; or peoples barred from marrying freely for ritualistic or spiritual reasons, and whatever isolated (or ostracized) group. Such a marriage would also not be possible if the woman was already married; in that case any child resulting from such encounter would automatically belong to the woman's legal husband (the man who performed the marriage rites to have her as wife).

Outside these, everyone was free to marry, or be lovers, in Igboland. It was not a statutory matter (there was no state anyway). It was a local traditional matter. Variations existed in different Igbo clans, but the practices were largely the same. Clans adopted what worked for them, not what was forced on them by some higher human authority.

Women were not allowed to have more than one husband in Igboland because the ancestral cultural custodians felt that it was not necessary, probably because a woman was allowed to keep “Iko” or lover who was not her husband, if she so wanted. The Iko was known to everyone including the husband who gave consent by entering into a covenant with the Iko man. The covenant was necessary to ensure that the Iko never endangered the woman's husband or the woman's family.

A man married according to his natural physical abilities and social status; while a woman lived to her fullest potential regardless of her husband's physical and economic abilities.
The relationship wasn't solely for economic reasons, or solely for social reasons; it was a combination of both, and more. Women did not depend on the men for spousal support or sustenance. Women owned farms and domestic animals and traded the products at will.
Therefore, if a love relationship developed between a young man and an older woman, the love relationship developed naturally, and ended naturally, without anyone feeling cheated, or the type of sense of loss that leads to adverse reactions including homicide. Igbo marriage institution separated “love” from marriage because it was understood that love is ephemeral. Marriage, even when initiated from love or attraction, simply continued long after love had exhausted in the marriage, thereby allowing families to remain whole and unbroken. Unbroken home and strong family was the backbone of pre-European Igbo society.

A relevant comparative anecdote is a news in one of the online news sites about a couple (non-African) who will divorce because the couple finally decided it was time to tell everyone (including their children) that the man is gay. The couple had been together for 17 years, and the woman had known about the man's segxwality before the couple tied the knot. What is baffling, is that they decided to divorce after all these years. Now the children will have to deal with parents living apart -basically their family is now broken. This, because of “love” shifting grounds in the family. Love (more like lust) is not, cannot, and should never be enough to sustain a family past one generation. Therefore it is sensible to demand more than love at the onset of marriage. In fact it is more desirable for a couple to undertake a complete self examination before deciding to tie the knot.

One is tempted to place the old Igbo marriage system side by side the contemporary Greco-Roman version to see which supports the human family better.
Without any doubt, the old Igbo marriage was more stable and equitable because it operated on the basis of holistic, collective, and reciprocal morality.

Present day humans tend to lack empathy, and are driven purely by selfish instincts.

Unlike contemporary marriage system, clandestine sex and illegitimate offspring situations were very rare in old Igboland. For a woman to have an illegitimate child, she really had to reject all available institutions of correction and rectitude available to her. Also, were a woman not able to have a child, it simply meant that she was totally barren and could never conceive. Rape was an abomination, and hence very rare, because most men had avenues for venting segxwal pressure.

Whether such a marriage system or even segxwal institution can ever exist again in the Igboland swallowed up by colonial and neo-colonial culture, is an open question.



EDITORS SOURCE

That is the change we ordered.

So the way this gets sustained is that new wealthy people will simply join the old ones in lifting others up, who also join at the end of the chain. Those who aren't interested in doing anything to improve themselves to get rich can stay the way they are, and are taken care of marginally by those who chose to get rich. Rich people who chose not to participate will simply be taxed through a calculated guess, considering his local village or town's poverty rate. Bottomline is that we return to being our brothers keepers.

The fact, that a country as rich as Nigeria is still struggling to provide jobs for her teeming unemployed university graduates, has further entrenched my belief that pure capitalism is not an African thing.

Come to think of it, all we have ever known as Nigerians, through the years, is that the rich get richer while the poor stayed poor, or are even getting poorer.

Don't get me wrong, the general standards of living have improved, and the types of abject poverty from way back in the day are no longer there; but still, the deprivation and the relative degree of lack has never alleviated one bit.

Great numbers of people still lack some of the things long taken for granted in western countries:

(1) Potable water: The rich among us still dig boreholes for water, while the poor have to either fetch water from the streams and rivers, or buy from water tankers.

(2) Healthcare: Most of our people rely on “chemists” and other forms of self medication to treat themselves of common illnesses. They only get to the hospitals when too late.

(3) Electricity: Only the rich are confident of enjoying a limited supply of electricity usually from gen-sets.

In the absence of these three key facilities, even if our food supply has improved somewhat, life expectancy cannot improve concurrently because of the complementary nature of all the instruments of quality living. Little wonder why Nigeria's life expectancy has not changed positively in years!

All these are making me to feel that maybe we should take a second look at the type of capitalism that we practice. Capitalism has many different shades, and the good news is that it can be shaped according to the culture of the people who practice it.

A careful look at the African, nay Nigerian, culture would reveal that -at individual levels- the people tend to look after one another more than counterparts in Europe or Asia for example. It is common to see a single rich Nigerian take on the burden of an entire village. A rich Nigerian is automatically expected to be a philanthropist, and most of the time they become one even if they didn't set out to.
This is African culture. It is taken for granted, yet is very significant if we really want to create an alternative development and economic culture best suited to our mental and cultural mindset.

This issue is significant because, though some of the rich Nigerians take care of their own towns and villages (building roads, schools, hospitals, etc), they never get any form of incentive from the government to encourage them to do more. What we have is a system that encourages everyone to seek wealth for personal financial security, and then collects tax from everyone (and even the poor through VAT), which may not be used by the government in such a way that benefits the less privileged.

Put bluntly, these funds mostly get lost in the bureaucratic wood-works, and are never used to provide the needs of poor people in Nigeria. The “every-man-to-himself” capitalist system only increases levels of competition in society and decreases the spirit of brotherhood among our people. That is how our society has progressively become so caustic that neighbors no longer even greet one another these days.
Neighbors children no longer play together, particularly peoples of different economic classes.

There was a time when a whole village would troop to the airport to welcome home a single member of the community that completed studies overseas. It was that way because every member of the  community felt part ownership of his or her success. Today, what obtains is a frightening level of cynicism, jealousy, envy, and other negative feelings from kin and village members of a successful person. Such a feeling breeds all kinds of evil thoughts and machinations that make Africa a very bad place these days.

Why don't we try a different system, a system that, for example, would give tax credits, breaks and other loan facilities to successful men and women who provide for the upkeep of their own peoples?

These people already know their own communities, are already helping them, and know how best to solve individual needs among their own people. So, it would be a cinch for them to do these more, with enough encouragement by the government. Such a strategy would encourage more rich people to share their wealth where it is needed most -at the local levels. The government can also channel cultural and neighborhood improvement ideas through their “Rich for the poor” campaign and gradually use such vehicle to rebuild our civil society which has all but been destroyed by capitalism unchained.

When, for example, the former governor of Anambra state Mr Peter Obi decided to hand back the schools to the missionaries, that is exactly why the move proved successful. The missionaries used to own the schools, and knew all the issues involved and how to solve them.
Anambra today is consistently ranking top in Nigeria's secondary school education

This new system, if implemented well, can end kidnapping, armed robbery, "yahoo yahoo" crimes, sale of babies, rampaging wickedness -basically all associated societal ills can be rolled back.

Not every human being is entrepreneurial, and not even every human being may want to do 9am – 5pm jobs. Some can help the society in many different but useful ways. Some of these can take care of “chores” in the community such as walking children to and from schools, aiding old peoples in the villages and local communities, keeping watch to help local policing, running errands, doing farm work for villagers during farming season, and basically hanging out in the community keeping it alive, calm, less stressed, and entertained.

Just my thoughts!

EDITORS SOURCE

I can't see anything.