Within a doctoral thesis entitled Widowhood Among the Igbo People of Eastern Nigeria Korieh writes the following with respect to the observance of levirate among the Igbo people:

Incidents of widow remarriage today are very isolated and so is levaritic relationships. My study showed only two incident of remarriage, two cases of levirate relationships and five had lovers. Widows are therefore likely to retain this status. Today, levirate relationships are also minimal. Oral information confirms that they were very frequent in the past. ...

Widow Inheritance (Levirate)-Nkushi

Like many other African peoples, the pre-colonial Igbo required that a widow be inherited by her deceased husband's kinsman. In Igbo customs, it means for a widow to be "taken over" [89] or "to be inherited" in a more general sense by a brother of the deceased. For example by the son or brother of her deceased husband. The levir's normative role is to sire children, if the widow's family is not already considered complete; to manage the property held in trust for her minor son'; to assist her by providing labour for clearing, ploughing, planting and harvesting and to contribute to the maintenance of her household. In traditional Igbo society when levirate was more frequent, a young widow is typically more likely to choose the levitate for several reasons;

She was under considerable pressure to have more children as quickly as possible particularly if she has no sons [90].

Young widows also may value the advice of an older man in managing her property [91]

She needs the services of a man to cut her palm fruits for her and help in farm work [92]

She needs assistance in farm work, mending the house and a guardian for her children [93]

A widow in Igbo society is not compelled to become involved in a levirate arrangement. Although the levirate was common in traditional society, it is unlikely that a widow with a grown son would enter into such a relationship. With an adult male heir for her house, such a woman will not be under pressure to continue bearing children. She would probably depend on her sons to perform the male role in the gendered division of labour and give her other assistance that otherwise might be provided by a levir. If such a woman has a lover, it is a man of her choice and generally unrelated to her late husband. I do not have statistical data on the incidence of the levirate; only two case came directly to my attention during field work. However, I think that the levirate would not ordinarily be obvious to an outsider in an Igbo community unless cases were actively sought. For this reason, I conclude that the practice is very uncommon among the Igbo today. Levirate relationships according to my informants is not common today. They attribute this decline to the following reasons;

Resources are scarce and men no longer want to waste their resources to cater for a woman and children who do not belong to him legally [94]

;

A widow and her children in the past increased a man's pool of labour for farm work. Farming is increasingly becoming less important as a measure of wealth and status symbol [95]

;

Theoretically a widow and her children are not the levir's property. So people are no longer willing to raise children which they may not benefit from in future [96];

It brings problems in the family [97]

;

It is against Christian ethics [98]

;

My children will not like it [99]

;

A young widow is expected to go on bearing children especially if she does not already have a large family. The children she bears will belong to her "house" and they are considered descendants of her first (and only) husband, irrespective of whoever their genitor may be. Sons of a levirate relationship have inheritance rights as those born by the mother's deceased husband. They have no right of inheritance in the house of their genitor.

In an answer to "Why did you not take a levir?", most of the widows answered that they have children (65). Many said they were not approached (50). 48 widows said they could take care of themselves and their children. 15 of the widows said that the practice is no longer popular while 5 widows said they had lovers. Only 3 of the respondents said that they were old.

Langely (1979:73) speaking of the Nandi of Kenya of the 1970s, says that "the levirate is looked upon with distaste and is resorted to only in secret." It is my impression that this was not the case in pre-colonial Igbo society. But the situation is different today. The impact of Christianity can not be ignored. My impression of a 1969 widow's reason for keeping her lover secret justifies Langley's opinion:

I was married in the church. When my husband died during the war, I had only two children. His only brother was married already. My father in-law encouraged me to raise more children in my husband's name. It was frowned upon by the church. I did not take communion for a long time. I did not want him to have the same problem.

There is marked discrepancy between reports of male and female informants about what usually happens when a young widow is left with minor children. Male informants generally report that the dead man's brother in traditional society took the widow in the levirate, managed the house property including land and palm trees, and provided for the children by giving the widow cash to buy their needs. Female informants tend to report that widows manage their own property and provide for their children themselves. In general my observation and discussion with informants led me to believe that a brother's voice in property management is nominal unless he is also an active levir. The extent to which the widow rather than the brother manages the property, as well as the amount of help provided to a widow by a levir, is flexible and depends on individual circumstances. In Igbo society today, there is greater tendency towards individualism. This has affected to a large extent kinship and group relationships as well as property management. Educated, independent and self reliant widows have greater control over their resources and its management than was the case in traditional Igbo society.

In traditional Igbo society, levirate was viewed positively, rather than with distaste. Although a lot of women are widowed at a relatively young age, they are becoming more self reliant. Moreover, marriage confers upon a woman with male children some access in a definite estate (her husband's) and these rights are held independently of any on going relationship with a living man. Today, a widow does not either need remarriage (which in any case is not forbidden to her) or a levir to have access to property through her children. This applies also to communal property irrespective of who the biological father of such children may be. A child born by a married woman among the Igbo cannot be illegitimate. It can be argued that the levirate is not in essence an institution designed to tie a woman and her children to her dead husband's family. It is rather an institution designed to provide for the woman and children. The levir has a responsibility to take care of his dead brother's dependants who cannot get along without male assistance.

For older widows, assistance in the form of labour may be provided by adult sons. Further, because of the general level of economic up-liftment for some widows, the argument that a widow should have a levir's help to meet her economic need does not apply to the Igbo society today. Income from other sources can be used to hire labour. In this case the widow will not need the assistance that the levir might otherwise provide. In most families today, a widow's house property may be sufficient to support her and her children. This provides some insight into why this practice has been on the declined. She is freer than a widow in most other African societies to form a liaison with a man or not, wholly on the basis of her own personal preference. In pre-monetary Igbo economy, widows were presumably less able to replace the labour and other kinds of assistance that is theoretically the levir's responsibility to provide.

The practice of levirate was seen as an expression a of single underlying social principle, the social identification of the kin with one another. It can as well be seen as a means of reproducing structural relations across the vicissitudes of the human life cycle. Writing on widow inheritance and the levirate, Radcliffe-Brown (1950:64) notes that "all these customs of preferential marriage can be seen to be continuations or renewals of the existing structure of social relations. All of them are also examples of the unity of the sibling group since brother replaces brother".

The historical analysis of the system lends little support to such a simple interpretation. The search for "primary functions" of marital institutions places in the background precisely what ought to be in the foreground. These include the variable ways in which ideologies about social relations have been implicated in processes of change (Ogbu 1978). In the pre-colonial Igbo society, widow inheritance may have corresponded to Redcliffe-Brown's interpretation. By the end of the nineteenth century however, such important political and economic assets were implicated in the transaction of marriage that widow inheritance is hardly comprehensible as simply an element in position replacement. It was a crucial aspect of inheritance in general at a time when the nature and value of assets at stake were changing rapidly. It may therefore be understood in relation to accumulation and resource control by men. By the late twentieth century the relationship between widowhood and processes in the economic and social field had shifted again, bringing to the fore those elements of widow inheritance that define women's access to the most basic of resources for making a living.

All in all we found that many women now do not like the idea of being turned over from one man to the other as a levir. Men as well do not like the practice anymore. I might re-emphasise one more point here. That is, this practice became more disused because some men began to experience despair when the widow's children grow up. She may inform those children that the man they are living with is not their father. If the children follow their mother or their mother dies before the levir husband, they may give no support to the now helpless old man who spent his life bringing up the woman and his brother's children.

Likewise, this analysis shows that there is a decline in what can legitimately be considered widow inheritance that coincides with a growth in the importance given to patrilineal descent. Both processes result from changes in the ideological and economic system. The patterns of widow inheritance that developed at one period in Igbo history were not only a matter of communal support for widows. Rather, women were also an important means of obtaining political and economic power. As trade with Europeans replaced farming as the major means for accumulation of wealth, "wealth in people" became less important as a means of obtaining political and economic status, and widows lost their value as resources and were no longer wanted [100]. To a great degree, production of palm products which replaced subsistence and tuber cultivation was less labour intensive. But on the other hand, the decline in widow inheritance to a large extent has strengthened the independence rather than the inter-dependence of spouses in property acquisition. These changes in terms of resources control, access to productive resources and greater tendency towards accumulation of private wealth by women may provide some answer to the reasons for the decline in levirate marriages.

Notes:

[89] Nkuchi Nwanyi -to take over a woman

[90] Male informant 1

[91] Male Informant 3

[92] Widow No 7

[93] Widow No. 19

[94] Male informant 2

[95] Male informant 1

[96] Male informant 5

[97] Widow No. 44

[98] Widow No. 15

[99] Widow No 62

[100] See for example Ekechi (1989) Transition and Transformation in Eastern Nigeria (Spring 1996).

For information on the practice of levirate marriages within the Yoruba community please consult NGA33619.E of 27 January 2000.

This Response was prepared after researching publicly accessible information currently available to the Research Directorate within time constraints. This Response is not, and does not purport to be, conclusive as to the merit of any particular claim to refugee status or asylum.

Korieh, Chima Jacob [University of Bergen, Norway]. Spring 1996. Widowhood Among the Igbo of Eastern Nigeria. Thesis Submitted for the Degree of Master of Philosophy in History. http://www.uib.no/hi/korieh/chima.html [Accessed 19 Jan. 2000]