Two sisters in Abia State woke up to a cruel and devastating reality; they were evicted from their late father’s home by their uncle not because they committed any wrong, not because they lacked blood ties, but simply because they were female. Their only “offence” was their gender. Their punishment was homelessness, imposed by uncles who should have stood in the place of their deceased parents to protect, care for, and nurture them.
One must therefore ask: when did being born a woman become a crime?
Evicting and disinheriting female children from their father’s house is barbaric, cruel, and a shameful relic of unsupported and outdated practices. It is an act rooted in ignorance, patriarchy, and deliberate injustice to strip a child of dignity simply because she is female.
To cast a daughter out of her father’s home often after she has laboured, cared, and sacrificed within that household is to punish her for an accident of birth. It is inhumane to deny a woman shelter, identity, and inheritance while her male counterparts are embraced as rightful heirs. Such conduct destroys lives, fuels poverty, entrenches gender-based oppression and could lead to depression.
This practice is not culture; it is violence disguised as tradition. It mocks morality, ridicules fairness, and tramples on the fundamental principles of justice and equality. No society that claims to value humanity can justify a system that tells a daughter she belongs nowhere, owns nothing, and deserves nothing.
In modern Nigeria, such conduct is not only morally reprehensible, it is legally indefensible.
The law has spoken clearly and unequivocally that discrimination against female children in matters of inheritance is unconstitutional, unlawful, and void. Any custom that evicts or disinherits a daughter is repugnant to natural justice, equity and good conscience.
To evict a female child from her father’s house is to erase her worth, deny her humanity, and perpetuate generational cruelty. It is a practice that must be condemned, confronted, and consigned to history where all barbaric acts belong.
No child should be rendered homeless simply because she is female. The ejection of daughters from their deceased father’s home is a cruel abuse of power, a denial of dignity, and a direct assault on the equality guaranteed under the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
Customs that thrive on the exclusion, dispossession, and humiliation of women and girls have no place in a modern constitutional democracy. Any tradition that punishes a child for her gender stands condemned by law, reason, and conscience.
A father’s home is not the exclusive inheritance of sons. It is the lawful, moral, and equitable right of every child, male or female. To evict a daughter is to erase her identity, deny her lineage, and strip her of protection, security, and a sense of belonging.
The courts have spoken with clarity and finality. In Ukeje v. Ukeje, the Supreme Court of Nigeria held that any Igbo customary law that denies female children the right to inherit their father’s estate is discriminatory and violates Sections 42(1) and (2) of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. The Court declared such customary law unconstitutional, unlawful, and void, firmly entrenching women’s inheritance rights in Nigeria.
Those who continue to perpetuate this practice are not preserving culture; they are perpetuating injustice.
Enough is Enough!
Female children are not strangers in their father’s house. They are heirs, citizens, and holders of rights that must be respected, protected, and enforced.
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