Why Alekwu frowns at female adultery: The traditional religious perspective

By Jack Okopi

In pre-Christian Idoma cosmology, a balance between the spiritual and physical keeps the world in order just like ancient Egyptian’s maat.

Female adultery disrupts this while adultery of a man don’t. This is deeply rooted in ancestor worship. Ancient Idoma worship the ancestors both male and female and since the woman gives birth in presence of midwives, it is almost impossible to miss the biological mother but because a woman can have affair in secret, it is possible for a man to raise another man’s child thinking he/she is his own.

When a man invokes echi he say “echi k’Ada nomum” that is”the idol of the father who bore me”. This invocation would not work because the father is not his father.

Again, if the bastard is the first born, he will take over the family “Ekachei” and pour libation on behalf of the others trying to appease his ancestors who are in fact, not his ancestors. When the father dies, he plays a key role in “inalegwu ota” to appease his spirit and if the father is to be made Alekwu afia, it is only him that can summon his spirit into the realm of the living.

Finally when he dies, the Alekwu Ogb’ogba of all his ancestors starting from Apa would be invoked to open the door for him to pass into the afterlife where he would join his ancestors. This is an aberration
After his death, his lineage becomes one of the clan from the ancestor that is not his father.

This is why Alekwu sometimes kill the bastard child to avoid this great disruption in the natural order