Those who might not have expected anything of headline making stuff from a traditional ruler such as the Och’Idoma of Idoma must have been surprised at the message from the traditional head of the Idoma kingdom June 13th, 2025 at an Abuja gender equality conversation. Agaba-Idu was not there himself, most likely because Benue State has been on fire for quite sometimes now but his envoy to the conversation was an adequate choice. Dr. John Ochai, the Ad’Ohinmini who represented him is a Veterinary Surgeon and did steal the show.
Put together by the African Centre for Leadership, Strategy and Development (LSD), the gender equality conversation was to commemorate the 2025 Father’s Day from the angle of “Celebrating Positive Masculinity and Male Allyship for Gender Equality”. It had as theme Fathers As Feminists: Redefining Fatherhood for Equality and Justice”. There were activists, academics, international NGO veterans, donors and ‘men of God’.
Beyond the routine obeisance to protocol in the address by Dr. Chichi Aniagolu, the Regional Director of Ford Foundation, for example, there was a panel, an interesting one for that matter, given the diversity of its composition. There were two pastors, an academic, an INGO veteran and then the Och’Idoma’s representative. Of course, each panelist furnished the audience with a view on the theme.
Dr Otive Igbuzor, a key actor in LSD fireworks and moderator of the conversation told the story of his friends who warn him against sending to them anything about feminism. He was illustrating the indisposition of most men to the concept of feminism because of what they think it is about – heady wives or license for out-of-context challenge to patriarchal authority. So, the conversation was an opportunity for each of the panelists to offer testimonies that could clarify.
Dr. Iroro Izu, an academic distinguishes between manliness and crudity or cruelty to women. He sees feminism as a movement and a crusade for asserting gender symmetry.
Dr. Hussein Abdu, an INGO czar, came into the conversation from a constructivist lens, stressing the multiplicity of ways by which gender symmetry could be accomplished. He did admit that current consciousness favour boys or male children vis-à-vis female.
Reverend Isaac Komolafe told us how God created ‘them’ equal and unless we are engaging in willful disobedience of Almighty, then gender discrimination is a no-go area.
The Och’Idoma’s representative was not the first or the last of the panelists to speak. He is taken last here because he took the centre stage. He did because he was coming from outside the vocabulary of the civil society circuit. Instead of that circuit, he was coming in from a space where the gender issues are not exactly as they occur among the elite. For instance, one of the areas of tension in contemporary gender politics is women resisting dropping their surname and replacing it with the husband’s. well, this is not the case in agrarian Idomaland, for instance. Women are called by their father’s name, not by their husband’s name. At worst, they are called the wife of so-so-so. In many, many instances, children are known by their mother’s name, not the father. It only changes when they are registering in school. This is not to say there are no areas of gender tension.
Panelists all
What was interesting in the Och’Idoma’s testament must be the news that the Idoma Traditional Council (ITC), is taking another look at the gender regime. So far, the council has decided on a number of them.
One is the question of where the married woman should be buried. The subsisting practice is for the married woman who dies to be taken back to be buried in her father’s village, irrespective of how many years or how many children or how so integrated she was to the husband’s community. The ITC has decided to reverse this. It may not be a decision acceptable to all or necessarily progressive but it speaks to awareness of the puzzle in taking a married woman who has spent so long in her husband’s community back ‘home’ for burial. Other cultural communities must be dealing with this puzzle too, responding to it in various ways at different times.
The second development the Och’Idoma made known is the guarantee of right of inheritance to the woman, contrary to current practice in which the woman is vulnerable to exclusion or denial of any share of husband or father’s wealth, particularly land. Only unrepentant male chauvinists will oppose this although the problem may be a possible clash between what the ITC has decided and what the legal system says.
There is a conscientisation against desperate preference for male children. It receives its highest manifestation in the story of the man who married a wife and with whom they had four children – all girls. The woman was sacked. And the man married another wife, they produced two children. Again, they all turned out to be girls and another round of sack followed for the wife. It happens in real life as to warrant a campaign against it. The ITC is on that.
The big point in the OchÍdoma’s story may be the paradigm underpinning the on-going reform by the Idoma Traditional Council as it relates to gender. It is the conviction of the council that emphasis on equality is an emphasis on peace. And hence the preference for treating everyone equally, said Dr John Ochai.
The attendee who said that “if every traditional rule were like the Och’Idoma, we would have made progress” may not be guilty of the hyperbolic. The number of questions addressed to the OchÍdoma’s representative when the audience was asked to pose questions, observations and comments should be instructive that the message of the traditional ruler sank. Perhaps what should happen next is a season of migration to Idomaland by gender based INGOs to join hands with the ITC to expand its reforms.
It can still be morning yet on creation day!
