“My husband died a year after we got married,” began Chinwe Eze , a young mother of three who told the story of how she was forced into marriage when she fell pregnant for the young man that rejected her pregnancy. “I was 16 then, and he was 65.”
Chinwe, who hails from Ezinifite in Anambra State, was sent to stay with her uncle when she was ten. Six years later, a twenty-year-old trade apprentice impregnated her. He accepted the pregnancy but wondered how he, a “boy-boy” , could take care of a pregnant girl. Chinwe’s uncle accepted the N20,000 that the apprentice could raise and bundled her back home to her mother.
“My mother was still struggling. I tried to join her in the okpa business but things were not working. My late husband’s family started pressurizing me to come back. I weighed the two options and decided to go back,” she added. Chinwe’s life mirrors the condition of many other girls who were forced into marriage on account of “unwanted” pregnancies. These hapless girls have become easy prey to elderly men and even women who desperately want to have their own heirs. They are unceremoniously married off to such people to breed babies for them. In some parts of South-east Nigeria, this practice is seen as normal due to the elevated status given to the male child by customs and traditions.
“She told my family that we will have to pay her N273,000. Where will I get such money from? I am in bondage right now, and I don’t know how to free myself from it,” she lamented. Kosarachi explained that the young man who impregnated her was only 16 at the time and could not take care of her. His family was not interested. So, when an elderly woman approached her family for her hand in marriage, she hurriedly accepted.
“It is pathetic! Many of the women who have passed through this condition are elderly now, but they are still in pain. Yet the society is still condoning this sort of thing. I feel the women involved should come out and speak up against a practice that destroyed their childhood,” she said.Mrs Okeke attributed the reason for the continuity of this sort of marriage to the culture of the people which mandates that every child “must have a father whose name he will bear.
Mrs Okeke harped on the need for everyone in the South-east of Nigeria, including religious and community leaders, to speak up against the practice because it negatively impacts not only the girls but on everyone in the society.
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