By Chijioke Ngobili
Beyond the differing opinions sweeping through this space on the issue of the reemergence of polygamy among the Igbo as fueled by Yul Edochie’s recent case, I am compelled to ring a bell at the ignorance understandably exhibited and advanced here by many of our Igbo women and even young men out of emotional solidarity but one which is inimical to memory and truth as well as to facts.
These Igbo women and some young men, as I have observed so far, have been harping bitterly on the badness or evilness of polygamy and how “it never ends well.” This is very false and exaggerated. But I do not blame them. They are all Christians or of arch Christian backgrounds if you check them. But what they do not know is that they are expressing propaganda deeply ingrained in their own parents/grandparents (in some cases) and in them too, which has, over a century, become the reality they see, construct and accept.
The history of the demonization of polygamy among the Igbo is well documented and is out-and-out a Christian propaganda engineered by the missionaries beginning with the CMS as far back as the early 1860s in Ọnịcha in today’s Anambra State. The first Igbo person of note who was manipulated into believing that polygamy was ungodly, evil and therefore should be rejected by a Christian convert was John Samuel Okosi who was a respected and nobleman in the Ọnịcha society at the time. The missionary, Rev. J. C. Taylor manipulated him into renouncing polygamy before he was baptized “John” as one of the earliest Igbo Christians. But, by 1865, Okosi, an Igbo Christian of over 4 years, could not bear the presence of practising an imposed monogamy. Resolved to bring back his wives whom he had dismissed to join the Christian fold, John Okosi—a wealthy and noble Ọnịcha man—politely wrote the bishop who was Ajayi Crowther telling him of his decision. Of course, Crowther rejected it but desperately made monetary and honorary proposals to Okosi just to not lose him because he is an important figure in the church that was filled with converts from very low social statuses/backgrounds. Accordingly, Okosi rejected the bishop’s proposals and took in his dismissed wives, returning to polygamy as well as abandoning the so-called new faith. This caused a massive heartbreak to the CMS Niger mission, particularly to Rev Taylor who headed it and who converted Okosi. Frustrated and helpless, Taylor angrily dismissed Okosi’s little son Gilbert from the missionary boarding school in Ọnịcha which was the first boarding school in Igboland/among the Igbo. Okosi was unfazed and even happier having regained his lost prestige in the society. All these happened between 1861 and 1865. Records of similar cases as well as several others that happened later either with the Roman Catholic Mission, Presbyterian Mission or Methodist are in the archives in Birmingham, Scotland, the CSSp archives in Paris, among others. And these have been properly analyzed and documented by Igbo historians like Professors F. K. Ekechi, Augustine Okwu, and Ogbu Kalu. The problem is that we are not reading and researching our past vigorously and truthfully.
The falsehood that polygamy “never ends well” and “is evil” is well-honed demonization propaganda that has no valid basis in Igbo history and culture. The fact that there are more women who advance this false and ignorant picture of the Igbo past is not without a background. The propaganda was, of course, built to appeal to the ‘jealousy/possessive’ female instincts of the young girls who were converted to Christianity by the missionaries in the wake of the 1890s. Note that white women missionaries did not participate in missionary work in Igboland until around 1891. The Igbo mission field was the turf of the men from 1841 until some progress had been made by 1890.
The first woman missionary in Igboland/among the Igbo who arrived in Ọnịcha in 1893 to take up the crucial assignment of “training young girls as future wives of Igbo Christian men, church teachers and clergymen” was no other than the famous Ms Edith Ashley Warner who eventually stayed among the Igbo for about 24 years before she got sick and retired to England where she died. Warner, in my opinion, and from records so far, was the chief propagandist and trainer who kicked off the systematic demonization of polygamy among Igbo Christian women and profoundly nurtured it for many years into the twentieth century. In fact, Warner, who never was married, monitored her “girls” even after marriage. She consistently organized annual Christian (protestant) women’s meetings where she followed up on their lives as housewives. The idea of “housewife” has no other root beyond this and there is no Igbo word for the word “housewife.” Traditionally, a wife was a wife and was economically independent, being in control of the market economy and sales while the husband was into production.
Pick up Chinua Achebe’s There was a Country and you would see where he mentioned this same Warner as the woman who raised his own mother, Janet Achebe. Achebe’s mother, Janet, was one of the early second set of mentees raised by Warner from around 1900. Warner, it was, who founded in 1895 the first girls school in Igboland that is today known as St Monica’s Girls Secondary School in Ogbunike, Anambra State but was transferred from Ọnịcha to Ogbunike by 1907. Part of Ashley Warner’s program and strategy of training Igbo girls into becoming Christian (monogamous) wives of Christian men was setting up what they called Women’s Home in Idumuje-Ugboko (for the Igbo women on the West of the Niger) and in Obosi (for those on the East of Niger). Up till the 1950s, these Women’s Homes were replicated in other parts of Igboland. Our parents called them “Ama Nwanyị” (in Imo areas) or “Ụnọ Òzùzù” (in Anambra areas) at that time. Ask your parents about this. It was in these cells and programs, coupled with regular church teachings, that the demonization of polygamy among the Igbo was sealed and delivered with precision, sustained, of course, by the new economic order imposed on the Igbo through British colonization. Dr. Onyeidu, a scholar of religious studies who retired from the University of Nigeria has documented this issue of training of women in his books, including the origins of the so-called white-wedding-gown/white-wedding craze. Find his books and educate yourself factually.
Frankly, I find it laughable—even childish—that many of our women and men say “polygamy never ends well” but, when our lineages are traced back to 4, 5 or 6 generations, we are all descendants of polygamous unions! If polygamy among the Igbo ended badly, do you think you would have been born at all? If polygamy among the Igbo was as evil as you were taught to advance, do you think Igbo population would have run into millions even after several genocides that came to climax in the Nigerian genocidal war on Biafra between 1966 and 1970? Please, think more clearly on these.
I know numerous progressive Igbo polygamous families up till the late 1990s. They had their heated issues but they lived in harmony and happiness that shocked me as one born by monogamous parents. Before the widespread demonization of polygamy among the Igbo, there are rules and rituals in Omenana that regulated and censored erratic behaviours of wives as well as their husbands. Thus, a woman would never contemplate harming another woman’s child out of jealousy or do anything evil to a fellow wife in order to have the man all to herself. If she ever does, consequences are in place and swift. On the other hand, a man does not do evil to a wife or mistreat her and go free. Consequences were always in place and swift, owing to the spiritual foundations of life at the time. And, of course, no man disrespected his first wife without informing him of his intention to take another wife. First wives are no joke which is why, in Anambra areas, they are called “Anasị” – a title full of meaning. Late Professor Edmund Ilogu and late Archbishop Stephen Ezeanya have documented some of these things in their publications about the traditional Igbo family life. It was the Christian missionaries who dragged out our women (of course the young girls at the time and not mature women) from this traditional base and fed them all sorts of rubbish to demonize a system that brought them into existence. The Igbo culture/worldview, ever practical, neither demonized polygamy nor monogamy. “Égbé belụ ùgò belụ” was and is still the ancient principle upon which it has survived. Thus, there were monogamous noblemen just as there were the polygamous ones. Okonkwọ and his friend Obierika, in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, were polygamists but then there was the Ogbuefi Ndụlue who was deeply in love even at a very old age with his one wife, Ọzọemena, and who, died just after she learned her husband had died. Such was the Igbo past!
Again, this leads me to remind us that even Igbo women practised official polygamy just as the men. Pick up late Professor Ezenwa-Ohaeto’s most detailed biography of Chinua Achebe and learn about a woman in Ogidi of Anambra State called Ifesọlụonye, who up till late 1940s, boasted of several wives for herself. She even got an honorary Ozo title and incardination from the men because of her nnukwu obi (populous compound)—a mark of a great person. She was a polygamist whose wives respectively kept discreet lovers but brought the children to her! There are several examples like her across Igboland, especially in Igboland West of the Niger. Without the Christian demonization of polygamy, there perhaps would still be women like Ifesọlụonye today, especially in families that had no male child! While many of our women and men advance the Christian/colonial demonization of polygamy among the Igbo, they close their eyes to the many flaws of the so-called Christian monogamous marriage system imposed on our forebears (not wholeheartedly accepted). The imposed Christian monogamous marriage system has stirred more selfishness, individualism, egotism, rancour, bitterness and injustice more than the traditional polygamy. “For better for worse” is the principle of Christian monogamous marriage even when someone’s life is under threat, but the Igbo polygamous marriage had mechanisms that checkmated this and other ills.
I had resisted joining in this discussion as there are more important things to bother about but seeing the flagship ignorance and falsehood advanced by many of our women and some men, I felt the need to put down this long but brief writing.
