Three incidents regarding teenage
pregnancy in Yorubaland remain evergreen in my memory. Some 19 years
ago, on being told that I was posted to a mixed secondary school in the
South-West for the one-year National Youth Service Corps scheme, a
relative (but born and bred in Yorubaland) warned me with all
seriousness: “Be careful! Yoruba girls are very fertile.” I laughed at
such a ridiculous statement, asking her if fertility had anything to do
with race or ethnicity.
A few months later, while discussing
with a Yoruba friend on our small street (a close in which almost all of
us knew one another), one of the teenage girls on the street passed by
with a protruded stomach. I was shocked at her pregnancy. My friend
sneered at her and told me that two other girls of her age on the street
were also pregnant. Given my background as someone who grew up in the
South-East, it was strange to me, but I kept quiet to avoid being
accused of bigotry. The Yoruba friend asked me with surprise: “Why is it
that I have never seen a pregnant Igbo girl? Is it that they don’t do
what other girls do?” I laughed heartily but knowingly.
Some years later, my landlady at that
time sent some snacks to me, saying that her unmarried and unemployed
son had had a baby. I was surprised. Shortly after, the young mother
arrived with her son. I thought the young man had married her. No. She
stayed a few months to nurse the baby, and when the baby was weaned, she
departed, leaving the baby behind with his father. I was shocked. But I
sought an explanation. I saw myself as a baby in kindergarten, being
schooled in a different culture. I learnt that the Yoruba never wish
that their unmarried daughters get pregnant, but if such a pregnancy
occurs, so long as the man claims responsibility, the parents’ anger and
disappointment will be lessened. There is little or no stigma on the
girl, the man, the baby, as well as both parents, once the man has
claimed responsibility and the child has an identifiable father. No
doubt, this worldview has its drawbacks, but that is not our focus now.
Contrast that with the practice in
Igboland, where I was born and bred. When a teenage girl gets pregnant,
it is most likely that the man or boy responsible will deny ever
touching her. He may even disappear from the community, never to be seen
again, especially if he is not an indigene. The Igbo tradition holds
that the baby belongs to the girl’s family, because no bride price has
been paid, even though these days some individuals and families go
against that tradition. But the bottom line is that the girl’s parents
will feel utterly disappointed and ashamed of her. People will make
snide remarks about them not training their daughter properly. Some
parents go to the extreme of sending such a girl away. Her school will
rusticate her. If she is a member of the church choir, Block Rosary,
Girls’ Guide/Brigade, Red Cross, etc, in her local church, other girls
will be warned by such a church society never to be like “the prodigal
daughter.”
To avoid public odium, she will stay
indoors throughout the pregnancy. Her chances of marriage are
drastically reduced, as every prospective suitor who hears that she is a
single mother will change his mind (unless she becomes successful later
in life). If she eventually finds a husband, it may be as a second
wife: to a man whose first wife has not had a child or son, a widower, a
man her father’s age, or a man below her dreams of a husband. She may
never return to school to avoid ridicule, and her dreams to become a
doctor or lawyer dies.
On the contrary, if she miscarries,
aborts the pregnancy, or loses her baby during delivery or shortly
after, she becomes “a good girl again,” and can walk about with more
confidence, even though some may still sneer at her silently for a year
or two.
So, in response to my friend who said
he had never seen a pregnant Igbo spinster, this is the reason. It has
nothing to do with Igbo girls being more chaste than other girls in
Nigeria. In the distant past, the Igbo society had no respect for a girl
who was not a virgin during marriage. Today, virginity before marriage
is no longer an issue. The unspoken law is: Thou shall not be caught
pregnant before marriage. An Igbo proverb describes this mindset aptly:
All dogs eat faeces, but it is only the one that bears the remnants on
its snout that is called Faeces Eater. Consequently, Igbo girls
are more exposed to sex education and contraceptives. When those two
fail, they resort to abortion, commonly called D & C (dilatation and
curettage). But if the baby is born, some resort to dumping of such
babies in a pit toilet or a bush, where they may die or be found by
someone else.
However, while teenage girls don’t need
their babies, there are some women who need children desperately:
Married women with no child or no male child. Such women are most times
put under intense pressure by their mothers-in-law or husbands. They are
constantly threatened with divorce or a second wife, or they are
branded witches or “men”. To make matters worse, there seems to have
been a rise in childlessness among married couples in recent times.
Furthermore, in most Igbo communities,
adoption still has a stigma. An adopted child is seen as not a “real
son/daughter of the soil.” Everyone wants a child that society will
believe is a biological child.
And so “demand” meets “supply.” Some
smart alecs discovered this and took advantage of the situation by
setting up baby factories under different guises. Childless women are
given some special “herbs” that make them have a false sense of
pregnancy. They look bloated like pregnant women and feel some sensation
in their wombs. They are warned never to visit any other hospital or do
any scan, to avoid losing the baby. They are told to come in and live
in the so-called maternities from the fifth or sixth month of
“pregnancy” for special attention. So they travel from the big cities of
Lagos, Abuja, Port Harcourt, etc, to these remote villages in the
South-East to “deliver.”
Meanwhile, the so-called midwife that
administers the special herbs has a baby factory where pregnant girls
are housed. Some of these girls were kicked out by their parents; some
ran away from home to avoid the heavy consequences; some are lured in
from poor homes with a promise to be handsomely rewarded if they could
take in. Any day one of these girls in their custody is delivered of a
baby, the woman with a fake pregnancy is given an injection that makes
her feel she is in labour. When she wakes up, she is presented with
“her” baby. She pays between N400,000 and N600,000, depending on the sex
of the child, believing she actually delivered a child, unless a future
DNA or blood test comes up. Even if she suspects that she did not
actually deliver any child, she keeps it a secret and raises “her
child”. She organises a big thanksgiving in her church with a
soul-lifting testimony of “divine visitation and favour” after 15 years
of marriage, with a lot to eat and drink at home after the church
service. The pressure on her from family and society eases off, because
now she has a child, who will keep her husband’s lineage alive.
The real teenage mother of the child is
paid off with an amount that is less than N100,000. She is not much
bothered because her burden and stigma have been removed. She returns to
her family and education and continues her normal life as “a good
girl.”
So from one Igbo state to another, baby
factories and baby thieves are discovered regularly. During
interrogation by the police, one point runs through their stories: they
are rendering a service to society by ensuring that children are raised
by those who have the financial capacity to take care of them. There is
no sign of remorse in them for being involved in a heinous crime. As far
as they are concerned, they are making the world a happier place.
Therefore, it is not enough for fellow
Igbo people to feel mortified that such baby factories and baby-stealing
stories are emanating from different parts of Igboland. The time has
come for Igbo families and communities to stop treating pregnant
teenagers as the worst sinners on earth. Pregnancy before marriage
should not be encouraged, but if a girl makes such a mistake, she should
not be treated like an outcast for life. Such stigmatisation does not
discourage girls from having pre-marital sex. What it does is to make
them devise means — no matter how atrocious — to ensure that they are
not single mothers.
The sad truth is that most teenagers get
pregnant because of naivety rather than promiscuity. The girls who are
really sexually hyper-active never get pregnant! And even when they do,
such pregnancies are terminated in a matter of weeks before anyone can
notice.
In the same vein, the pressure on
married women to have children or male children as well as the stigma
associated with adoption makes many women undergo emotional trauma and
also resort to illegal ways of having children that society will call
their biological children. Action usually begets reaction. We must not
cling to a vacuous moral high ground that drives people to worse crimes
in their bid to be seen as chaste or well-trained.
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