SUNDAY SERMON: God’s Position on Female Inheritance, Custom and the Intervention of Law

By Tony Okafor

Igbo culture and tradition have often been compared with those of ancient Israel in several respects, particularly in their emphasis on lineage, ancestry, family and land.

In ancient Israel, where inheritance was largely structured through the male line, God expressly approved female inheritance.

When the five daughters of Zelophehad petitioned Moses because their father had died without a son, God approved their claim and directed that their father’s inheritance should pass to them.

There was, however, a caveat. Because tribal inheritance was tied to ancestral identity, the daughters were required to marry within their father’s tribe so that the inheritance would not pass to another tribe.

The principle was nevertheless profound: being female did not make a child a stranger to her father’s inheritance.

Igbo society, too, has never been as monolithic as some portray it. In some communities, fathers gave married daughters parcels of land to preserve the bond between them and their natal families. Some Igbo societies have also historically retained matrilineal traditions.

As society evolved, equity became a necessary instrument for mitigating the hardship that rigid customs could impose. Culture is not Scripture, and tradition is not immutable law.

As people of faith, discrimination cannot be the title of our Holy Books. It is against this background that the intervention of the Anambra State Government deserves recognition.

The Supreme Court, in Ukeje v. Ukeje, held that a customary rule denying female children the right to inherit from their father’s estate is discriminatory and unconstitutional.

The Anambra State Government’s intervention seeks to give practical and effects to that principle where unlawful disinheritance occurs.

But there is an equally important message to women: this must not become a war between sisters and brothers.

A woman who is comfortably married, while her brothers are struggling to survive, should not automatically turn her father’s property into a battlefield simply because the law recognises her right to inherit.

A legal right is not a command to exercise that right without compassion. Equity does not encourage double portions. Where brothers and sisters can reach a fair and voluntary family arrangement, justice may be better served without bitterness, litigation and legalese.

The law must protect every daughter from discrimination. But families must also remember that inheritance should not destroy the very family it is meant to preserve.

Where tradition conflicts with justice, let justice prevail; where justice meets compassion, let humanity prevail too.

Ubi jus, ibi remedium- Where there is a right, there is a remedy.