By Dr. Chinedu C. Ikeanyi
Ogbuevi Ozomma was really hit by the matter.
He was sitting at home with his family recently. His son – 27 years old, born abroad. He told him, “You should go home this December, spend two weeks in the village, and get to know your people. You might end up occupying the family house when I am gone.” The son looked at him and said, “Dad, I love Nigeria for vacation, but live there? I can’t. My whole life is here.”
Ogbuevi Ozomma laughed that afternoon, but at night he could not sleep. Why? If his son will not live there, who would keep his father’s compound? Who will keep his own house he built in the village? That house sometimes stays locked for tens months in a year.
If you are an Igbo in your 60s or there about, living in the diaspora, you know this conversation. We have it at every Igbo meeting, every picnic, every get-together. We left in our 20s and 30s. We hustled. We worked double shifts. God blessed us. We built a life abroad and we built something at home. Now we are getting older, and our children – good children but foreign-born and foreign-bred – are gently telling us, “Dad, Nigeria is not really my home.”
So now in our community abroad, this debate has divided us into two schools of thought. And honestly, I see sense and problem in both.
School One Says: Go Back Home and Marry a Second Wife to Hold the House
I have friends who have taken this path. Their argument is very simple and very Igbo. They say, “My brother, I cannot let my compound become a bush. I cannot let my name disappear just because my abroad children don’t want to return home. I need a family at home to keep the light on.”
And I understand it. When you have a wife and children at home, there is life in the house. The grass is cut. Somebody is there to represent you at the village meeting. When you call home, someone picks up inside your house. For a man in his sixties, that brings a lot of peace.
But let us be honest about the problems on this road.
First, there is the law where we live. In most countries abroad – America, England, Canada, Europe – you cannot be legally married to two wives at the same time. That is bigamy under their law. It can affect your immigration status, your job, everything about you. You may call it ‘traditional marriage back home,’ but it still creates a serious conflict.
Second, and more painful, is your first wife.
My wife and I have married for almost 30 years. She followed me when we had nothing. She suffered with me. She raised our children while I was working and going to school. How do I now sit her down and tell her I want to go and marry another woman in Nigeria?
I have seen this scatter families that were together for 40 years. The woman feels betrayed. She feels that after all the years of building together abroad, you want to take your joint money to go and start a new life at home. It feels like replacement, not continuity.
So, if a man really wants to take this route, how does he settle with his first wife?
You don’t do it by surprise. You don’t go for Christmas and come back with a new wife!
You have to sit with your wife first, before anyone else. Not your kinsmen first – your wife. You have to start by honoring what she has done. You need to bring someone she respects – may
be your pastor, may be her elder brother, may be a respected age-mate. And you have to be clear about money.
The house abroad, the savings, the retirement you built together – that belongs to the family you built together. You cannot secretly wire that money to fund a new family at home without her consent. That is not fair.
And then the most important question: How do you ensure the Nigerian-born and the foreign born children are equal heirs?
You don’t do it with mouth. You do it with paper. You go to a lawyer both abroad and in Nigeria and write a Will. You write it in plain language: “All my children, whether born abroad, or born in Nigeria, are my joint and bona fide heirs. They are equal.” You list their names. You share the property clearly. If you don’t write it, my brother, you are not leaving a legacy. You are leaving a court case for your children to fight after you are gone.
In addition to the above, you have to make both families realize that they are one. Your two wives are co-wives as obtainable in Igbo tradition. They are not competitors. They are teammates with one goal – keeping the family flag flying, home and abroad. The children – home and abroad – should be tutored to know they are members of one nuclear family. The foreign born represents the family abroad, while home-born does same back home. This is line with the Igbo saying that those abroad are there for the home people, while those at home are there for the abroad people.
School Two Says: A Child is a child, No Matter Where He Was Born
The second group – and I lean more towards this – says we are now in a global village. My son born abroad is still my blood. He is still Igbo. I don’t need another family to keep my name. I just need to raise this one well.
He may not farm yam, but he can pay for people to farm it. He can join the village group chat. He can contribute to development through the town union abroad. He can represent the family. This way, you keep your marriage and family intact. You avoid legal trouble. You honor the wife of your youth. And you prepare your family for the modern world, where being Igbo doesn’t have to mean you must live in the village.
But this road also has its own potholes. Let us not deceive ourselves.
This approach only works if you did the work early. Bicultural identity doesn’t happen by accident. You cannot start teaching your son Igbo when he is 28. If you never spoke Igbo at home, if you only took him to Nigeria to stay in a big hotel in the city and show off your car, he will never see the village as his home. He will see it as your home, not his.
And there is the physical reality. Money sent from abroad cannot cut the bush around your compound. A bank transfer cannot stop someone from entering your land. Somebody has to be physically present. As our elders say, if the owner of the house is not there, something else will take over the house.
And when the time comes – who will do the burial rites? Who will hold your title? A son who has only two weeks leave from work abroad?
Where Do We Then Find the Balance?
For me, sitting here at this age with my wife and kids, I think the answer is not in choosing one camp and abusing other. The answer is in the middle.
Don’t marry a second wife just to produce a caretaker for an empty mansion. That is using a woman and her innocent children. If you want companionship because you want to retire partly at home, be honest about it, and do it with the full knowledge and consent of your first family.
And if you believe your foreign born children are your true heirs – and they are – then give them a reason to be heirs, not just a name. Give them more than stories. Let them have something in their name at home. Let them know their cousins by name, not just ‘your home people in Nigeria.’ Let them have small responsibilities at home that they can manage – maybe they supervise the harvest, maybe they manage the small rental.
And for all of us, whether we have two children or six, whether they were born abroad or in Nigeria – please let us go and write our Will. Write it clearly. State that all your children are equal, joint and bona fide heirs. Equality must be said. It must be seen.
At the end of the day, the question is no longer just “Who will live in my house?” Or “Who will bear my family name? The real questions are, “Who will remember where my house is?” and “Who will remember what (the character and virtues) my family name represent?”
My children may never live in my village. But I want them to know it is. To be able to go there at will. And say with pride, “This is my father’s house. This is where I come from.”
That for me, is how we keep the lineage alive. These are my views. Yours are welcome.
