Members of the family of 19-year-old Confidence Nwanma, who was allegedly killed by her boyfriend, has declared that the killer boyfriend must marry her corpse in line with the tradition of the family.
The beautiful girl, Nwanma was allegedly stabbed to death last week by her boyfriend, Ladayo in the Oshinle area of Akure, the Ondo State capital, following a disagreement on allegation that Ladayo was cheating.
Ladayo said Nwanma got information that he was asking another girl out, so she placed a curse on him that he will never succeed in life if he sleeps with another girl. He asked her to take back the curse but she refused and he stabbed her.
The deceased’s father has now stated that in order for his daughter to be buried, her alleged killer will have to marry her corpse.
This, he says, is the custom of the people of Oru East Local Government Area of Imo State. Mr Nwanma explained that failure to perform the traditional rite would cause calamity to befall the family of Ladayo.
He told Punch Metro:
“In our place, it is mandatory that the man must marry the corpse of our daughter. We must observe the custom by taking the corpse to our village where the marriage would take place.
“It is mandatory that he pays the dowry in double because he brought our daughter dead for marriage.
“He would observe all the dictates of the custom before our family would let him go. Without this, every young person from the family of the man will never get to the age of our daughter. They will die a sudden death just like our daughter.
“This is not our making; it is the way our ancestors put it down even before we were born. Our people all over the world are waiting for the court judgment. Whichever way it goes, the boy must perform the marital rite to our daughter’s corpse.”
Despite his pain, this father is being irresponsible, opportunistic, and money conscious. There is no Igbo custom that demands marriage to a dead person, and no law in Nigeria or in any civilized society permits marriage between a living person and a dead person. This father should bury his daughter and then sue her killer for unlawful death. He should not demean Igbo people by conjuring up idiocy in Igbo’s name.
This is not the first time that a bereaved father has conjured up this disgusting claim — the last time I read something like this, the man making the bizarre demand was not an Igbo man, and just like this man, he wanted the killer of his daughter to marry her before her burial. Law enforcement in Nigeria must ensure that this foolishness of callous fathers (they want to recover what the spent raising the young woman or what they assume she could have fetched in bride price) does not become normal in Nigeria. Survivors of a person cut down in her prime can sue the murderer for unlawful death, not demand a marriage between their dead loved one and a living person.
I beg to differ Nebukadineze Adiele in some Igbo communities if you have not pad a dowry on a lady and befriend her and in the process kill her through violence you must marry her at death before burial is consummated. This happened to one of my in-laws and from what I learned later, this practice also obtains in other ethnic groups outside Igboland.
,