Sunday, September 13, 2020

Nigeria's slave descendants prevented from marrying who they want

https://news.yahoo.com/nigerias-slave-descendants-prevented-marrying-231415021.html

Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani - Nigeria
,BBC•September 13, 2020

In a tragedy reminiscent of Romeo and Juliet, a couple in Nigeria killed themselves earlier this month after their parents had forbidden them from marrying because one of them was a descendant of slaves.

"They're saying we can't get married... all because of an ancient belief," the note they left behind said.

The lovers, who were in their early thirties, hailed from Okija in south-eastern Anambra state, where slavery was officially abolished in the early 1900s, as in the rest of the country, by the UK, Nigeria's colonial ruler at the time.

But descendants of freed slaves among the Igbo ethnic group still inherit the status of their ancestors and they are forbidden by local culture from marrying those Igbos seen as "freeborn".


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Marriage is not the only barrier slave descendants face.

They are also banned from traditional leadership positions and elite groups, and often prevented from running for political office and representing their communities in parliament.

However, they are not hindered from education or economic advancement.


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Some slave descendants are today among the most prosperous in their communities, but no matter how much they achieve, they are still treated as inferior.

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Descendants of slaves among the Igbo fall into two main categories - the ohu and the osu.

The ohu's ancestors were owned by humans, while the osu's were owned by gods - people dedicated to community shrines.

"Osu is worse than slavery," said Ugo Nwokeji, a professor of African studies at the University of California, Berkeley, who thinks the osu were wrongly classified as slaves by the missionaries.

"Slaves could transcend slavery and became slave masters themselves but the osu for generations unborn could never transcend that."

Discrimination against the osu does tend to be worse.

While the ohu are marginalised as outsiders - with no known places of origin or ageless ties to the lands where their ancestors were brought as slaves - breaking taboos about relations with the osu is accompanied, not just by fear of social stigma, but of punishment by the gods who supposedly own them.

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