"Who are you acquiring all these hectares of land for? chibuzo the palm wine tapper asked to mock Anene inability to have a male child. "Or do you now have a child that can pee while standing , that we don't know of ?". Anene who already knew where the conversation was heading, quietly excused himself to his house.
The people of Umuhia are mostly farmers, and it's like a tradition for the male forks to sit around trees in the evening after coming back from the farm to chat away time. They sit in age grades. It was in such gathering that Anene was mocked for having only daughters.
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The tradition in Umuhia is that only male children are entitled to inherit houses or lands. Unfortunately for Anene, who had inherited vast hectares of lands, does not have a male child to inherit it from him, when he is gone. And that has been a thing of mockery to him by other villagers, especially when people intentionally want to steal his land and he takes up the issue to elders for settlement.
Anene moment of torture started, when he had given birth to a daughter for the third time. He was worried and wanted to have a solution to that. It led him to seek advice and meeting of medicine men to help him find solution to his problem . " rub this in your manhood before going into your wife" one among the medicine men said. " drink this with your wife by noon before having intercourse with your wife" another said. "Get the testes of a white rabbit and join it with Banga soup, it will do the magic, my grandfather, my father and I did the same thing, you can see for yourself the numbers of male children in our house" another person advised. From the trials of all the advice, he gave birth to another four daughters making them 7 daughters before he finally resigned to his fate.
Another mockery started when he decided to send his first daughter Ada to the university. " a woman's place is in the kitchen, why waste money on them?" some said. " it is a plan for him to squander all his land in the guise that he is sending this prostitute to school so that he won't leave any land for me his cousin to inherit since he has no male child" his cousin brother argued. Anene maintains a deft ear to their mockery and accusations.
Until Ada graduated from law school. With her knowledge of the law, she educated the women of Umuhia on their rights. And she was amazed at how vex the women had been of that tradition of disinheriting of the female child even though they have been pretending to be OK with it.
The women of Umuhia through Ada instituted an action against the community and prayed to the court for the ban of the tradition of disinheriting the female child as it was repugnant to natural justice and equity. The case was dragged to the supreme court. And ended in favor of the Umuhia women.
There was unrest in the city that night. Because that judgment changed the fate of all eastern Nigerian women. The men felt the judgment has reduced their status and powers in their families, as such, they wanted to cause chaos that night by attacking the hotel where Ada was staying. But the situation was curtailed by the security agencies.
