THREE TERRIBLE CULTURAL PRACTICES FROM NIGERIA'S PRE-MONOTHEISM-ERA
Before the advent of monotheistic religions and the
entrenchment of Western civilization in what we now know as Nigeria, there were
some inhumane and immoral practices that neither culture nor native religion
could justify.
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| Widow Maltreated |
Below are some of the very worst cultural practices:
1)
Osu
Caste System
2)
Twin
Infanticide
3)
Widow
Maltreatment
1- Osu caste
system: “Osu”
is Igbo for “Outcast”. This is a caste system that segregates and restricts
marriage and other interactions between the Nwadiala (regular or “real born”
members of society) and the Osu (its outcasts).
A person became an outcast upon defiling the land by
committing a taboo or as a result of any act that amounted to treason against a
reigning ruler or the community. This stigma is then carried on for
generations, therefore visiting the sins of the father upon the child
indefinitely.
The Osu Caste System was officially abolished on 28th
December 2018 in an abolition ceremony titled “Nigeria; Osu Caste System in
Igboland Ends Today.”
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| Osu Cast System |
2- Twin
infanticide: In
the Southern parts of Nigeria, especially amongst the Ibibio people and the
Efik people, it used to be a common practice to kill newborn twins or to
abandon them to death in some remote locations as they were considered bad luck
in their families and the community at large.
This stemmed from the belief that the father of one
of those babies must be an evil spirit and that the mother must have committed
a taboo to be so conceived. Hence, in most cases, even the twins' mother
received her share of social and familial ostracism.
This abhorrent practice was slowly but surely
eradicated through the efforts of Mary Slessor a Christian missionary, and by
1915, twins and their mothers were considered as safely integrated into these
societies. Although, after this time, authorities have had to stage
interventions looking into spontaneous rumors about twin killings, the practice
is no longer a customary norm.
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| Identical Twin |
3- Widow
maltreatment: Most
commonly in the Igbo culture, when a woman lost her husband, she would be put through
a series of humiliating tribulations in the name of making sure she didn’t kill
her husband; ensuring that she understood what a crown jewel she had lost; and
also to prove the depth of her grief.
A widow would be stripped of every societal niceties
and dignity. She was considered a shamed or fallen woman who could only manage
to redeem herself by enduring and cooperating to the maximum during the
sufferance of all these indignities. The things a widow had to endure were:
shaving of head and hair from other body parts; forcefully drinking the water
used to wash her husband’s corpse; being forced to sleep on the same bed or
being locked up in a room with his corpse; seizure if the property if she by
husband’s relatives; forcefully remarriage to the closest relative of her
husband e.t.c. While some laws have been passed to abolish this practice, we
cannot truly say that it is well in Nigeria’s past.
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| Widow maltreatment |
We are firmly positive that such practices, and
others like them, will only keep losing ground especially because of our ever-growing
enlightenment as a population.
Which inhuman practices do you know of?
