A Pastor Fights To Stop Old Men From Marrying Young Girls In Nigeria
Philip Akpan and his children at the front of their home in the Ugbakoko community near Obudu. Photo by Selase Kove-Seyram/Tiger Eye Foundation.
OBUDU, Nigeria — A few months after their wedding in the central Nigerian city of Jos in 1992, Richards Akonam, a pastor, and his wife Grace moved to the southeastern Nigerian state of Cross River to work as missionaries. In Obudu, a small town which lies near the Nigeria-Cameroon border, Richards started working with a local preacher to set up Bible classes; while Grace, a nurse, poured her energy into expanding medical information to remote communities.
Richards and Grace started a fellowship called Faith House Missions to teach local communities about the gospel. They went on medical outreach programs and started setting up churches in remote villages around the towering Obudu plateau. It was during one of his missionary trips to Imale village in 1997 that Richards stumbled on 9-year-old Vivian who, locals say, was married to 68-year-old Papa Iyanga.
Vivian’s mother was sick, and her father, unsure of how to pay for medical bills, gave his daughter in exchange for some money alongside two goats, four young pigs, three chickens and some fabrics.
Richards was shocked when villagers told him dozens of girls are trapped in similar circumstances in the village. Girls and young women — some as young as 7 — are used to settle debts or as currency to solve needs — for example, health care costs for a sick family member.
This tradition, known as “money marriage” is common among Becheve communities in Cross River as well as a handful of communities along the Nigeria-Cameroon border in Nigeria’s extreme southeastern corner.
It was in Imale that Richards vowed, with support from his wife, to fight against this tradition.
An age-old tradition
On a scorching Sunday afternoon in the village of Amana near Obudu, most worshippers had just retired from Sunday service and were making meals and attending to other chores ahead of the new week.
The only tarred, winding main road which cuts through several villages up to the Obudu Mountain Resort – a favorite vacation spot among Nigerians – is bustling with people and motorcycles and, occasionally, cars. The air is fresh, and a pall of mist hovers over mountain peaks that tower over the village. Tall trees and bushes sandwiching the road flutter and creak in the gentle breeze. Off the main road, a dusty track cuts up to a hill, exposing mud homes, men engrossed in good-natured banter and children playing in the dust.
Tribal leader Philip Akpan stares at the children quietly, almost absent-mindedly. Akpan said money marriage has endured in Becheve communities through the time of his great-grandparents.
“Even my mother herself was a money woman,” said Akpan, who is in his late seventies.
He explained that money marriage was a reaction to another kind of marriage that existed in Becheve communities known as “free” or “love” marriage. Love marriage, he said, allowed a man to live with a woman he loved without any formal or civil ceremony.
In this circumstance, the man doesn’t pay any dowry. But all the children born during the marriage belong to the woman’s family and she could leave with them any time she or her family desired. Most likely she would return to her parents, who would have to take on the burden of care.
However, under money marriage, the husband controls everything – his wife and her children – and is responsible for caring for his in-laws. This creates a greater incentive for a father to sell his daughter for marriage. After all, the husband is, for all intents and purposes, responsible for everyone.
If a “money wife” dies without bearing children, her family provides a replacement. And if her husband dies, she is handed over to his brothers or relatives. The husbands, who are mostly old men, have no problem allowing them to sell sex, remarked Akpan who lives in Ugbakoko community near Obudu. He has a “money wife” who is 21 and has five children already.
A country of young brides
Nigeria accounts for the largest number of child brides in Africa, with some 22 million girls who were married in childhood, according to Unicef, the U.N.’s children’s agency. This represents 40% of child brides in the continent.
To tackle this conundrum, the Nigerian government adopted the Child Rights Act in 2013, raising the minimum age of marriage to 18. The act prescribes a penalty of 500,000 naira (around $1,300) and/or imprisonment for a term of five years for any person who marries a child or the person to whom the child is betrothed or anyone who promotes child marriage.
For the law to become operational, each of Nigeria’s 36 states need to formally pass it into law. But, as things stand, only 25 states have passed the act into law. Cross River state, where the money marriage tradition happens, voted for the act to become law in 2009, but there’s little will to implement it.
With no formal authority to run to, the girls and young women trapped in this tradition are often scared to return to their homes, said Dorathy Etagwa, because their families would turn them back to their husband.
Etagwa was married off when she was 6, to a “very old man” she said, but she fled to a new village in 2012 when the old man died and his younger brother refused to inherit her.
“Money wives are treated like slaves,” she said briskly, trying to rein in her emotions. Her voice, as measured as it was, had become wobbly. “You have no freedom; nobody will allow you to go school and you will work like a machine, [non-stop].”
Dorathy Etagwa was married to an old man at the age of 6. Photo by Selase Kove-Seyram/Tiger Eye Foundation.
Richards, a gracefully thin and tall missionary, knew that tackling this tradition required unwonted determination. The communities would fight back, he reasoned, because it was a social norm, a practice that preceded the present-day generation of adherents.
“We began to include it in our teachings” to the small crowd coming for Bible study, said Richards, mission director of Faith House Missions. The pulpit became a tool for advocacy, a weapon for changing the minds of young converts who were happy to follow Christ. Gradually, he and Grace took it upon themselves to condemn money marriage beyond small gatherings.
“Every time I talk in Becheve communities I speak against the evil of this kind of marriage,” Richards explained. His face, marked by two fading tribal marks on his cheeks, morphed into a grimace. He spoke with a firmness in his voice, forceful yet colored with a sporadic tincture of tenderness to win over families to his cause.
Around that time, Grace, his wife, had become well known around communities due to the numerous medical outreaches she was conducting, occasionally with support from Christian organizations. As she reached pregnant women and conducted oral vaccination, she often howled exhortations discouraging communities to stop carrying out the practice. And, together with Richards, she held meetings with families with “money women” to rescue some girls.
Fighting to end a slave-like tradition
But the pair wanted to do more. So in 2013, they officially started the RichGrace Foundation to rescue the girls by buying them back from their husbands through donations – then help the girls receive either schooling or training in vocational skills.
“Money marriage is evil,” Richards said. “It is like slavery: it doesn't give girls the right to go school; it doesn't give girls the freedom that other girls elsewhere have.”
After listening to Richards and Grace, Monica Abebe, a tall, wiry, weather-beaten woman in her mid-seventies regretted her decision to offer two of her granddaughters in exchange for money. At some point in her life, Abebe remembers, her siblings and children began to die. She lost six out of 12 children to an unknown illness she felt was caused by “my enemies.”
Desperate for a solution, she consulted a traditional healer who told her to bring some items for a traditional sacrifice – including goats, a basket full of chickens, bags of African locust beans, and plenty fresh fish – to a shrine. The poor grandmother reached out to older men in her village for support. The two old men who gave her money to purchase those items asked for her granddaughters – Vivian, then 7, and Happiness who was barely 9 – in return.
“I was not happy that my mother was taking my children away to give to the men,” Kate Akasa, their mother, admitted. “But I did not want all of us to die so I had to let her carry them so we can do the juju to fix the problem.”
Monica Abebe (third from left) and Happiness (four from left) at their home mashing the pulp from peels and fibers of fermented cassava roots. Photo by Selase Kove-Seyram/Tiger Eye Foundation.
A lot of what the Akonams, both of whom are 52, do is to act as a middleman between the two families to get the girls back and to provide money needed to reach an agreement. The goal is to convince the girl’s parents or relatives and get them to accept that their daughters need to be brought back. Together, the Akonams and the girl’s family would approach the husband, asking for the release of the girl.
In 2017, Happiness, now 19, and Vivian, now 21, fled and returned separately to their grandmother’s mud-brick home in Utanga village. Both say they grew tired of the ill treatment in the hands of their “husbands” and their in-laws. Unlike Happiness’ “husband” who never bothered about her whereabouts, Vincent, the man who took Vivian, pestered Abebe to send her back or refund his money.
“It was like war,” Abebe said of his constant disturbances, as she mashed the pulp from peels and fibers of fermented cassava roots in a plastic sieve.
On the cracked wall of her mud home, the framed photo of one of her late sons hung loosely. He was fitted in a green uniform and a beret. He worked with a telecommunication company at the Obudu Mountain resort, Abege said faintly, gazing at the frame. An old plastic jug with a lid, a leather handbag and a plastic cup are collecting dust near the photo. On the floor – pots, stainless bowls and spoons, plastic buckets, wooden chair, and machete – all lay there.
Richards regularly visits her to reassure her of his support. She needs it, he said, at least to keep her strong and calm in the face of mounting pressure from Vincent’s family.
In some cases, RichGrace Foundation has to repay the debt or whatever the husband or his family brings forth as the total payment during the girl’s stay with them.
In August 2018, Richards offered Abege 30,000 naira ($83 then) to pay Vincent, but he declined and demanded for 100,000 naira ($276 then). His family confiscated one of Abege’s mud homes in Obudu and made her sign an agreement stating that they won’t release the homes until she pays off the debt. She pulled up a nearby bag and showed the agreement which is written, in blue ink, on a paper. Abege said she cannot raise the money.
Richards also takes some cases to the police to stop the husband’s family from harassing and intimidating the girl’s family for those who had returned home. But he laments that the local police are slow to act.
Most men do not refuse as long as the girl’s family is willing to repay all the costs that were incurred in marrying and raising the girl but also those which had gone into supporting her family whenever they came knocking on the men’s doors for help. The men often keep records of whatever they gave to their in-laws. The girl’s family rarely do.
Take the case of Rose, who was sold at the age of 10.
In 2010, her mother took her to George Alfa, then in his late 40s, whom she claimed was a relative that wanted to send her to school. It later turned out that it was a hoax, but Rose couldn’t return to her family and had to stay there. Her mother had received 20,000 naira (then $128) and goats in exchange, so Rose could not go back home.
Richards wanted Rose to return to her family. She had been married for four years and wasn’t allowed to go to school. She spent her time doing chores and working on her husband’s farm. After negotiating with Rose’s family, he arranged for the girl to return home in mid-2014.
Richards used donations from his church to repay 50,000 naira ($309 at that time) to Alfa. This amount covered the initial money and goats he had given to her mother as well as the money he used to buy beer, beef and other materials for the marriage ceremony.
Faith House Missions signed an agreement in which Richards, the husband, a local witness and Rose’s family agreed to absolve Rose from the marriage and return her to her original family. Since then, the couple and a small team of local missionaries have rescued over 50 girls and young women and helped about 15 of them to receive education mostly in cities outside Cross River state. Some 40 received training in tailoring, hairdressing and soap making, including Etagwa, now 35.
She is married again and has a son with a young man she says she “truly loves” but needs support to put her tailoring skills to good use. “I need money to buy equipment and rent a shop,” she said. And therein lies a bigger challenge for Richards and Grace: with limited funding, there is only so much they can do.
Much of the support the couple receives come from private donors as well as the Child Survival and Development Organization of Nigeria – a nonprofit started by former First Lady of Cross River Onari Duke – which often provides financial support to help some of the rescued girls receive education.
They use part of the funds to settle any money and gifts received by the girl’s family so that their husbands can let them return to their original families and start afresh. The girl’s family are, with increased awareness now, very happy to have their daughters back. Local charities have taken note of the couple’s efforts to turn lives around.
“Richards and his wife are giving these girls hope and offering them a chance to realize their dreams again,” said Godwin Egba, founder of Defining True Leadership, a local nonprofit which organizes career workshops for young people and builds libraries in schools. “Girls in that area are at risk of not fulfilling their dreams unless we collectively join forces with him to stop money marriage.”
Fighting money marriage comes with its own share of hazards, too. Richards said he receives text messages and calls from people bullying him to stop their advocacy. He pulled up his cell phone to play recordings of threats. One caller threatened to kill him. Another warned that he would be badly beaten if he ever comes to their village again. He shrugs and returns the phone to his pocket.
“The threats mean we are making progress,” he said, chuckling. “We have just one life, not two life, and if this life is invested in what is right it is a whole lot.”
Some progress is being made. In August 2018, chiefs from all Becheve communities convened a town hall meeting where they announced a community law banning money marriage, largely because of the Akonams’ efforts.
“We have stopped money marriage now,” said Peter Awand, a community chief in Ugbakoko village. “You won’t see it again here.”
But Awand’s tone lacked the firmness of conviction. It came off like an ill-thought-out reaction and sounded cold and detached, or like a child who believes thorny problems can be wished away by wishful thinking rather than strong-willed opposition. That the Akonams are continuing to fight the practice till today means it is still there and, in some areas, driven underground.
It’s still happening in remote villages, particularly those around the mountains with rugged terrains inaccessible to cars and motorcycles, said James Nwogwugwu, a mission worker with the Anglican Communion.
“It is a terrible story,” Nwogwugwu said of money marriage. “...I see it as slavery which is against the constitution of our country.”
He is planning to set up an awareness-raising program in remote villages close to the Obudu plateau to “fight against money marriage,” he said.
And Richards is not resting yet. He has been inviting journalists to the area to speak to the girls and spread the word about this tradition in cities and towns. And he railed against the “money marriage” custom at a local TEDx event organized in Calabar, the capital of Cross River state, in early 2018. He is currently working with local activists to launch an online campaign called EndMoneyMarriage and even co-authored a book on the marriage in 2017 to increase awareness about this tradition.
The battle, for the Akonams, is not over yet, and they wouldn’t rest until the tradition is totally abolished. The couple envision a future where girls and young men in Becheve communities will rise to the peak of their careers, totally unencumbered by traditional custom.
“These girls can be doctors, they can become nurses or engineers, or even something greater,” said Richards, a father of three, “and it is for the good of the community.”
Linus Unah is a journalist based in Nigeria, who has reported for many outlets including The Guardian, Al Jazeera and The New Humanitarian. He is on Twitter @LinusUnah. This reporting was supported by a grant from Tiger Eye Foundation based in Ghana.