Family drags dead pregnant daughter’s lover to the police, insists he marries her corpse
It’s double tragedy for me –Lover
Joy Anyim
south-eastern family from Imo State, simply identified as the Igwe family, has dragged a 37-year-old commercial bus driver, Mr. Sulaimon Balogun, to the police, insisting that he marries their late daughter, Igwe Joy in death.
The Nigerian Xpress gathered that the 36-year-old woman, was seven months old pregnant for Balogun, a native of Epe in Lagos, before her untimely death.
The live-in-couple, who had been together for three years, already had a two-year-old son, before the fateful incident.
According to Balogun, who was invited by detectives at the Homicide Section of the State Criminal Investigation and Intelligence Department (SCIID), he was planning to traditionally marry his lover before her death.
Speaking on how they met, Balogun said he met Joy four years back when she was still helping her mother sell in Ojo area. He said they took their relationship further in 2016 when she got pregnant with their first child and had to move in with him.
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“We were living together for three years. We were not married but had a child together and she was even pregnant with the second child. I have been trying to raise the needed resources to go and do our traditional marriage, but we were yet to gather the required sum of money, before her tragic death.
“On that fateful day, we were in her shop that day, she just told me to excuse her that she wanted to ease herself. We have this container she uses, whenever she is pressed, so she went inside the shop to use same. But instead of urine, it was blood that was gushing out. The blood did not stop afterwards. I had to rush her to a traditional birth attendant, Mrs. Lydia Akinoso. When Akinoso saw the blood, she told us she could not handle the situation, insisting we take her to the hospital.
“We took her to a nearby private hospital, but she was confirmed dead on arrival, by the doctor. The baby also died. For me, it is a double loss.
Sadly, his in-laws did not see this as enough pain for him. They insisted that he pays the bride price of their daughter and observe the necessary marital tradition on her in full. “I was in deep pains of losing both my wife and unborn baby when her parents came up with the instruction that I pass through the marital rites with her even in death. How am I supposed to do this? They got me arrested because they do not want me to run away. Why are they treating me like this? Where do I go from here? It is so painful that I will have to go and marry her in death,” he said.
Recalling his efforts to save his lover’s life, the distraught hubby said, “I tried, I made sure she was registered in a good hospital for antenatal, it is just unfortunate that things turned out this way.”
When the correspondent spoke with the traditional birth attendant, Akinoso, an elderly woman in her 50’s, she said she did not administer anything to the bleeding Joy when she was rushed to her house.
According to her, she advised Balogun to take his pregnant lover to a hospital because it is against her profession to attend to a patient who was not registered at her centre. She said: “I learnt this job from my mother, I have been doing this for over 20 years, and people know that I don’t attend to women who are bleeding. The deceased was not even registered in my birth home. She was only rushed there by her lover and I did not administer anything but referred them to the hospital.”
Commenting on what the Igwe family is demanding of Balogun, Akinoso who is also from Edo State said the punishment on Balogun was even milder when compared with the practice in her hometown. She said, “It is not coming to me as a surprise that the woman’s family is insisting Balogun comes to pay the bride price of the deceased in death. In my village in Edo State, men who are not traditionally married to their lovers and they have had children and are living together, would do same in death. In fact, they will not just marry the dead, they will also be made to have sexual intercourse with the dead.”
The correspondent also sought the opinion of an Imo State native on the said matter. According to Mr. Festus (not his real name), the tradition is not peculiar to Imo State. It is the same in the eastern region.
He said: “If you are living with a woman you were not married to, she has children for you and she dies, we the Igbo expect you to come and tell us what led to her death while in your custody. It is a serious matter. You will also be expected to marry her in death. After all, you were living a husband and wife while she was alive, so what you refused to do when she was alive, you will do in her death. A pastor that I know also experienced a similar fate. We Igbo are considerate. All the man needed to do was to just go to the girl’s family and inform them officially of his interest in her. They would have even assisted him to pay the bride price.”
Asked if such tradition should be encouraged, Festus said although people need to uphold the marriage institution and stop living like concubines, such tradition should also not be encouraged.
“It is a stupid thing to do. As a parent, once your daughter packs out of the house and goes to live with a man, without marriage, it is expected that you wash your hands off their case,” he insists.
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A Yoruba elder and a Christian cleric, who preferred anonymity, said the Yoruba tradition was different from that of the Igbo in such situation.
According to him: “In Yoruba culture, if a man and a woman have been living together, and the wife dies, it is expected that the man takes care of the burial expenses. I have a case like that in my compound, where a man who had been living with a woman, we thought to be his wife died.
“The man married the woman and slept with her for days. It was not a funny experience for him at all. Young people need to understand that before you as a woman or man start living with anyone, you have to be married. It is foolishness and wrong to live with a man you are not married to. They don’t know the implication.”
The clergyman advised intending couples to endeavour to study each other’s culture before settling down in marriage.