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There is No Tradition of same gender marriage in Igboland

In an article “Tradition of same gender marriage in Igboland,” published in the Nigerian Tribune, Lagos: Friday, June 19, 2009, Leo Igwe wrote: “One of the contentious issues in the debate over homosexuality and same sex marriage is whether a marriage between persons of the same gender is totally alien to African culture and tradition. Those opposing same sex marriage have continued to argue that same gender union is foreign to Africa. On the contrary, I have tried to draw their attention to the fact that there is a strain of the same gender marriage in African tradition particularly in Igboland.”

Contrary to Leo Igwe's opinion, there is absolutely no tradition of same gender marriage in Igbo land. One would normally ignore the article if Leo Igwe had not tried to drag a whole Igbo nation into his pseudo-philosophical exegesis

HON AMBROSE CHUKWUDI MEZU

HON. A. C. MEZU
(October 7, 1935 – January 5, 2008)
by Dr. S. Okechukwu Mezu

Hon. Ambrose Chukwudi Mezu (popularly known as AC) was born on October 7, 1935 by Clement Ugwuezuonu Mezu and Rose Nlemdiuwaoma Mezu nee Akuta who were married a year earlier (1934) and Mr Clement Mezu, was then the headmaster at Imerienwe Central School. A precocious and brilliant student, Ambrose Chukwudi Mezu attended elementary school at Christ the King School (CKS) Amaimo in Ikeduru and later at Our Lady’s School, Emekuku, before proceeding to St. Patrick’s College, Ikot-Ansa, Calabar for his secondary education.

He was the first of the eleven children of Rose Nlem and Clement Mezu (seven boys and four girls, namely Hon. Ambrose Mezu, Engr. Leo A. Mezu, Dr. S. Okechukwu Mezu, Mrs Patricia Ishiguzo, Mrs Christiana Okwu, Mrs Bibiana Chukwu, Miss Stella Mezu, Mr. Augustine Mezu, Mr. Onyewuchi Charles Mezu, Mr. Cosmas Chiaka Mezu, Mr. John Mezu. With his meager teaching income and her earnings from sewing our Pa Clement Mezu and his wife Rose Nlem Mezu virtually labored to give each one of their children the best of education.

The Man Called Ambrose: Hon. A.C.Mezu (1935- 2008)

At 12.30 a.m. on Sunday, January 6, 2008, Feast of the Epiphany, barely into the New Year, Hon. Ambrose Chukwudi Mezu passed away. It was not just the shock that Ambu (as family members and friends called him) is no more but it was the crystal clear, irrevocable finality of death that struck an unmistakable chord in my heart and brain.

So many memories abound of the man called Ambrose – flamboyant, fun-loving, classily fashionable, grandiloquent, loquacious even, but intrepidly courageous and brutally honest.

Nigerian Elections 2007

S. Okechukwu Mezu. Nigerian Elections 2007:Chronicle of Shame and Deceit. Baltimore, Black Academy Press, 2007, 168 p

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Preface

This Nigerian Election Must Not Be Allowed to Stand

Nigerian Elections 2007 have come and gone. It was a chronicle of shame and deceit: shame to the country and deceit of the population. It must not be allowed to stand.

As early as December 2006, Nigerians knew and the world confirmed it that the Obasanjo’s government and INEC (Independent National Electoral Commission) would not be ready for the election. Pierre-Richard Prosper, a former US Ambassador-at-Large for War Crime Issues, led a ten-man delegation from the International Republican Institute (IRI), Washington D.C. that spent one week in Nigeria to assess the country’s readiness for a free and fair election in April 2007.