Part 2: A cultural shift
By Edoamaowo Udeme
The Nigerian Constitution protects the equal rights of all citizens including the right not to be discriminated against either expressly or through the practical application of any law. Customary law is also recognised and protected in the Constitution. However, despite the existing laws and legal precedents set by the Supreme Court, certain cultural and traditional practices have persistently overshadowed women’s inheritance rights in some parts of South/South Eastern Nigeria. Nevertheless, some individuals have challenged these prevailing beliefs. In this piece, Edoamaowo Udeme interviews men who are challenging these customs and features an interview with a woman who is a beneficiary of this cultural shift.
Nigeria’s domestic laws and international legal obligations mandate equality in law, land rights and inheritance. However, practices that perpetuate discrimination are enforced and sustained by custom, even though the judiciary has repeatedly upheld the right of women to inherit land.
These cruel and discriminatory practices against women injure their prospects for survival by denying or restricting their inheritance rights.
According to Gender Across Borders (GAB), women in many African countries don’t have access to and control over land. Yet, they play vital roles in nutrition and food security as the producers of food.
“This limits the types of food crops they can grow as well as their economic security,” observed GAB in 2012.
Further, a paper on land rights in international human rights law published in the Malaysian Journal on Human Rights noted that land ownership can be a critical source of capital, financial security, food, water, shelter and resources.
The Global Land Tool Network, an international alliance that seeks to alleviate poverty through land reforms that increase access to land and tenure security, found that landlessness in rural areas is strongly associated with poverty and hunger.
Several scholars argue that women’s lack of sufficient land rights negatively affects their immediate families, education, and the larger community. With land ownership, women can develop a more equitable income within the household.
A key observation by Tim Hanstad of Landesa Rural Development Institute suggests that providing sufficient land rights for women is beneficial because women are less likely to be victims of domestic violence and their children are more likely to stay in school longer. Land ownership also enables easier access to microcredit. These are just a few benefits that women in South-South/ South-Eastern Nigeria are unable to access as long as they are denied their inheritance rights.
These traditional or custom-based gender differentiations are discriminatory and unconstitutional. However, some individuals are challenging these discriminatory practices. The Scroll talked to some people who are going against the tide to uphold women’s right to inherit property. Here are excerpts:
Dr Clement Usoro, 75
Dr Clement Usoro, 75, is one of the few who has ended the disenfranchisement of girls in Nigeria. An indigene of Ikot Ekpeyak Ikono in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State, South-South Nigeria, Usoro had lived in the United States of America for over four decades before permanently relocating to his hometown. In his lifetime, Usoro has shared his properties with all his children, regardless of gender.
“As it stands now, I don’t need money from my children. I’ve trained them well, and they are well-settled and financially stable. But the care I need from them now, I get more from my daughters. Only female children can provide it.
“For instance, when my first daughter visited from the US, I asked her to get me some personal items. If I had asked my son, he might have brought a few, but my daughter brought enough to last over two years. Female children even care for you more in your old age,” he said.
A key observation by Tim Hanstad of Landesa Rural Development Institute suggests that providing sufficient land rights for women is beneficial because women are less likely to be victims of domestic violence and their children are more likely to stay in school longer. Land ownership also enables easier access to microcredit. These are just a few benefits that women in South-South/ South-Eastern Nigeria are unable to access as long as they are denied their inheritance rights.
These traditional or custom-based gender differentiations are discriminatory and unconstitutional. However, some individuals are challenging these discriminatory practices. The Scroll talked to some people who are going against the tide to uphold women’s right to inherit property. Here are excerpts:
Dr Clement Usoro, 75
Dr Clement Usoro, 75, is one of the few who has ended the disenfranchisement of girls in Nigeria. An indigene of Ikot Ekpeyak Ikono in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State, South-South Nigeria, Usoro had lived in the United States of America for over four decades before permanently relocating to his hometown. In his lifetime, Usoro has shared his properties with all his children, regardless of gender.
“As it stands now, I don’t need money from my children. I’ve trained them well, and they are well-settled and financially stable. But the care I need from them now, I get more from my daughters. Only female children can provide it.
“For instance, when my first daughter visited from the US, I asked her to get me some personal items. If I had asked my son, he might have brought a few, but my daughter brought enough to last over two years. Female children even care for you more in your old age,” he said.
If Usoro’s daughters decide to relocate back home tomorrow, they can comfortably survive with their share of the properties, including landed properties. Moreover, Usoro has taken it upon himself to enlighten members of his community by regularly holding meetings to offer advice, encouragement, and empowerment on various issues.
2. Unyime Udoisong, in her 40s
Despite having step-siblings of both genders, she inherited her share of her father’s property after his death. Her father left a will, ensuring that all of them were accommodated.
“I doubt if there were any laws on women’s inheritance when my father died in 2006, but he had ensured we were all taken care of. Right now I am surviving on the property he left. I have something to fall back on. I may decide to rent out my share of the property for survival if need be. All thanks to my father who didn’t ignore his female children,” she stated.
3. Udeme Monday, 50
Udeme Monday hails from a region where women and girls are often relegated to the background, but he has chosen to change this narrative, despite facing ridicule for his choices.
“I wasn’t even aware any law existed when I made up my mind in 2007 that my family could never go through that. From the day I got married, everything I acquired and continue to acquire is in my wife’s name. I have only one child, a daughter. Needless to say, everything I have belongs to her because it’s already in her mother’s name. I’ve been mocked and laughed at, but I don’t care. One thing is for sure, nobody will challenge my daughter when I am gone.”
4. Gladys Emmanuel, 31
Gladys Emmanuel, an advocate in Nigeria, not only understands the legal principles underpinning women’s inheritance but also comes from a family that believes in equal rights for men and women.
“The law is very clear as to rights in general. Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognises all human beings as having equal rights and dignity. This means that any practice which advances any form of discrimination regardless of whether a person identifies as male or female is unlawful. This invariably means that acts of discrimination with regard to ownership of land are archaic and need to be expunged from our daily living.”
“I come from a family where there are no restrictions or embargoes as to what a woman can do or the heights she can attain. We believe in equal access to inheritance. The effect of this practice is that women from my family do not feel disadvantaged or restricted at all,” Gladys added.
Outside of the confines of the goodwill a few women enjoy from their families and communities enabling them to inherit land, there is no legal and policy framework empowering women and granting them explicit rights to land in their capacity as citizens with full legal capacity as envisaged by both the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW, 1979) and the Protocol to the African Charter on the Rights of Women in Africa (Maputo Protocol, 2003).
Feminist lawyer and activist Joy Ngozi Ezeilo says this has given rise to judicial activism where the courts are setting legal precedents empowering women to access and inherit land.
“More efforts are still needed to totally liberate and enforce the rights of women to customarily inherit property,” she wrote in this article.
Gender roles vary in different societies and can be changed over time since social values and norms are not static. A visit to states in South-South/ South-Eastern Nigeria emphasises these points. Women can be seen involved in all aspects of trading and farming. In some rural communities, women are not allowed to plant high-income crops like yams. Husbands plant the yams, while the wives settle for lower cash crops like corn and okra. They are only allowed to weed the farmlands of husbands who planted yams, and they need their spouse’s permission to harvest the yams.
The situation is a far cry from what prevails among the Efik people of Cross River State. Here, a woman is allowed to own properties, inherit from her parents, and can even be a family head, unlike her counterparts in the same South-South/Eastern Nigeria.
Beyond the expectations of men to be economic providers of the family and women to be caregivers as observed in other cultural contexts, Efik women have occupied positions, shared privileges and/or participated in what would have been exclusively male responsibilities/benefits in other cultures.
“Our women had been seen the same way the men are seen – our partner in life. A man cannot live without a woman, so, we regard both men and women as equal. What is good for the man is also good for the woman,” reads an excerpt from research examining gender roles among the Efik.
To ensure that women do become economic hostages when they get married, the community practises what is called mkpo nduk Ufot (we give you so much) where the bride is provided with moveable assets including furniture and food crops.
“The Efik value our daughters to the extent that, when we give our daughters out in marriage, we take so little from you. Almost nothing is taken from you to drum it into your ears that we are not selling our daughter to you. If, by circumstance or any event of life, you don’t find her compatible anymore, please kindly return her to us. Don’t touch her. Don’t beat her. Don’t harm her. Don’t torture her. Just bring her back to us, and then the small palm wine we took from you. We will gladly return it to you,” observes another excerpt from the research report on gender roles.
“The Efik customary rules of inheritance are not strictly patrilineal (where only male children can inherit their deceased father’s property). This is due to the practice of appointing even daughters as successors. Hence, they can not only inherit their parents’ property but can also be appointed as heads of their families,” says Bassey E Koofreh of Kooffreh & Kooffreh Chambers.
Outside the Efik community, the narrative that women cannot inherit their parents’ property is gradually changing with individuals like Dr. Usoro, Unyime’s father, and Akpan Udeme leading the way to empower their daughters.
This article was produced with the support of the Africa Women’s Journalism Project (AWJP) in partnership with the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) and with support from the Ford Foundation