Recently, a video surfaced on social medai portraying Irigwe people as practicing polyandry, a marriage practice where a single woman marries more than one man simultaneously, sleeping with one husband today and sleeping with another tomorrow. The video is offensive to Irigwe people, not for any reason other than the fact that the video attaches Irigwe people to an identity that isn’t theirs plus the fact that they view such a practice with scorn.
The Irigwes are found in the southwestern part of Bassa in the north of Plateau State, Nigeria. A drive from Jos, the biggest city in Plateau State, to the heart of Irigweland would barley last for twenty five minutes. Thus, it isn’t a corner of the world that is so remote and vague to warrant the type of parody Lerin’s video sold.
Lerin Nicodemus. credit: Gistreel.com
Before the coming of Christianity to Irigweland, there was a traditional marriage practice. If a woman marries her husband and later feels unsatisfied, the man comes back, one day, to discover that she is gone. On inquiry, close friends will mention a particular village she often talked about. The man sets out the next day to find his wife and restore his marriage. He finds the man in whose house his wife slept. The man hosts him in the conventional way you would host a guest and then sends him off with his wife. If the woman is determined to marry that strange man, she goes again. The husband repeats the process of restoring his marriage until she goes the third time, when he would have given up. If she is still not satisfied she goes again, to a third man. This is what Walter Sangree, an American anthropologist, referred to as secondary and tertiary marriages in his deeply researched writings about Irigwe people.
Could this marriage practice be what Lerin NIchodemous referred to as polyandry in her video? If so, then we are all attached to polyandry, one way or the other. Take the case of a marriage practice, in some cultures, where a man can give his wife a double or triple divorce. When this happens, she must be married to two or three different men (as the case may be) at different times before meeting the criteria for remarrying her first husband.
There are practices that look strange in many other cultures. Take the case of a man who offers his wife for a night to a man that visits him. It is part of the hospitality to the visiting man, especially if he appears handsome.
The Irigwes are polygamists. A man can marry as much as four wives, if he so desires. Thus, they cannot be polygamous and polyandrous simultaneously.
Lerin looked and sounded so confident in her video that one would think she deeply researched on the topic before posting. As said in the preceding part of this writing, Irigwe land isn’t too far away. Thus, it is accessible. If Lerin looks around her, she is likely going to find Irigwe neigbours, as long as it is within the borders of Nigeria. She could also visit Irigweland and see things herself.
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