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Some Observations on the Family Unit, Religion, and the Practice of Polygyny in the Ife Division of Western Nigeria1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2012

I. H. Vanden Driesen
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Extract

In an age so overwhelmingly dominated by the planner, statistics and statisticians have come to assume a crucial importance; and so seriously have the latter taken their new responsibility that, in recent times, a veritable flood of data on every conceivable aspect of socio-economic behaviour has engulfed us. In the newly emergent nations this task of collecting and collating information, spurred on no doubt by the knowledge that much remains to be done, has proceeded with a rare enthusiasm, and in all of them the periodic ‘Digest of Statistics’ has become a familiar document.

Résumé

QUELQUES OBSERVATIONS SUR L'UNITÉ DE LA FAMILLE, LA RELIGION ET LA PRATIQUE DE LA POLYGAMIE DANS LE DISTRICT D'IFE AU NIGÉRIA OCCIDENTAL

En 1952, les travaux menés par Galletti, Baldwin et Dina firent apparaître que les families les plus nombreuses en pays Yoruba se trouvaient dans le district d'Ife. Mais, alors qu'en 1952 presque la moitié de ces families comptaient 10 membres ou plus, vers 1968 elles ne comptaient plus que 6 membres au maximum. Dans ce méme laps de temps, le pourcentage des membres d'une famille descendait de 12 à 7·7 personnes et le ménage restreint, de 3 personnes au maximum, devient 3 fois plus nombreux qu'avant. Ces faits ont coïncidé avec le déclin de la polygamie. Tandis qu'en 1952, 73·5% des ménages du district comprenaient 2 femmes ou plus, la proportion tomba à 51·4% en 1968 et le nombre de femmes par famille descendit de 2·6% à 1·9%.

On ne peut facilement établir que cette diminution soit le résultat direct du déclin de la polygamie, mais il y a des présomptions suffisantes pour indiquer qu'elle a été grandement déterminée par une émigration considérable d'hommes et de femmes relevant du groupe d'âge de 20 à 25 ans. En 1968, 41·1% des jeunes hommes de cette catégorie avaient abandonné les villages pour la ville; 63% des parents des émigrants soutenaient que la densité de la population agraire était telle qu'il n'y avait pas d'autre alternative que l'émigration.

La diminution de la fréquence des manages polygamiques pourrait être expliquée par (a) l'extension du christianisme, (b) le fait que l'éducation a sapé les attitudes traditionnelles, et (c) les difficultés économiques à prendre en charge plus d'une femme. Les deux premières explications ne peuvent résister à un examen minutieux, si bien qu'il apparaîr que ce sont les facteurs économiques qui ont le plus contribué au déclin de la polygamie.

Les enquêtes ont démontré que la majorité des cultivateurs exploitant des parcelles de moins de 7½ acres à lintérieur d'un rayon de 20 miles sont monogames: en revanche si la pareelle s'étend sur un rayon de plus de 20 miles, la position est radicalement renversée. D'un autre côté, ceux qui ont plus de 7½ acres sont invariablement polygames, que leurs parcelles soient largement dispersées ou non. Les facteurs économiques ont largement contribué à augmenter le nombre des cultivateurs de la catégorie des 7½ acres et puisque l'insuffisance de terre interdit la prolifération de fermiers très dispersés, il semblerait que ce facteur économique particulier contribuera plus à éliminer la polygamie qu'aucun autre facteur, examiné séparément.

Type
Research Article
Information
Africa , Volume 42 , Issue 1 , January 1972 , pp. 44 - 56
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 1972

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References

page 44 note 2 Nigerian Cocoa Farmers: An Economic Survey of Yoruba Cocoa Farming Families, by R. Galletti, K. D. S. Baldwin, and I. O. Dina, O.U.P. 1956.

page 45 note 1 See, for instance, Tradition and Change: The Role of Religion in Yoruba Society, by A. R. I. Doi and J. K. Parratt; Factors Associated with the Adoption of Three Farm Practices in Western Nigeria, by Robert C. Clark and I. A. Akinbode.

page 45 note 2 A few of the children and old people, being dependants rather than workers, would of course add more to the size of the household than to its working efficiency.

page 45 note 3 The town of Ile-Ife was excluded from the survey, since conditions prevalent there were likely to distort the findings of a study intended primarily to investigate rural conditions.

page 45 note 4 Galletti's returns for the Ife Division include those of the village of Gbongan, which politically belongs to the Ibadan Division. Its inclusion, however, should not distort the nature of Galletti's findings, for Gbongan, being thirty-seven miles away from Ibadan and only eighteen from Ife, is more akin to the latter.

page 46 note 1 Galletti et al., op. cit., p. 71.

page 47 note 1 Ibid., p. 193.

page 48 note 1 For the period June 1951 to May 1952, Galletti computed an infant mortality rate for the Ife Division of 118 deaths per 1,000 live births—an inordinately high figure. No figure for 1968 can be given as the statistics published by the Ministry of Health merely record the ratio of live births to still births at Medical Institutions. Returns of the total number dying at under one year of age are not available for any area in Nigeria except Lagos City—see Galletti et al., op. cit., p. 36.

page 48 note 2 Ibid., p. 198.

page 48 note 3 Two likely consequences of this emigratory movement spring immediately to mind. Firstly, rural Ife is certain before long to be confronted with the problem of an ageing population; and, secondly, the flow of immigrant agricultural labour, already considerable, is destined to grow larger still.

page 49 note 1 Galletti et al., op. cit., p. 72.

page 49 note 2 In order to arrive at the genuine incidence of polygyny, as distinguished from its apparent rate, widowers were dropped from the sample, and those who had lost one or more wives as a result of either death or divorce were counted among the polygynous, and categorized as though their wives were still alive.

page 50 note 1 For Galletti's figures, see op. cit., p. 73.

page 50 note 2 James S. Coleman, Nigeria, p. 95.

page 50 note 3 Population Census of Nigeria 1931, vol. iv, p. 28.

page 50 note 4 Population Census of Nigeria 1952, vol. i, p. 21.

page 51 note 1 Implicit here is the belief that Christian teaching establishes a presumption against polygyny. This is not true of all Christian denominations in Nigeria, for some churches adopt a permissive attitude on the question.

page 51 note 2 Galletti et al., op. cit., p. 73.

page 52 note 1 Western State of Nigeria Annual Abstract of Education Statistics.

page 52 note 2 Doi and Parratt, op. cit., pp. 9 and 38.

page 53 note 1 For the purpose of this particular exercise, those who had not married at least once, i.e. bachelors in the true sense of the term, were not taken into consideration. This category amounted to 9·75 per cent of the total number of farmers with holdings of less than 7½ acres. Since questions pertaining to the dispersal of farm plots were put to three out of every five of those interviewed, the size of the sample on which the findings are based is smaller than that used elsewhere in this paper, i.e. 600 households as against 1,000.

page 54 note 1 Doi and Parratt, op. cit., p. 41.

page 54 note 2 G. A. Olawoyin, ‘The System of Customary Marriage among the Ifes’, pp. 2 and 3—Paper read before the Institute of African Studies, University of Ife.

page 55 note 1 In the Ife Division, where public transport is both scarce and expensive, twenty miles is a quite considerable distance. Despite the improvements effected in the last generation, the costs of commuting to work, in terms of both time and money, are still too high to permit the practice. In a study of commuting habits in the cocoa-belt, the critical travel distance was put at between nine and fifteen miles—see G. J. A. Ojo, ‘Distance Configuration of the Travel Patterns of an Agricultural Community’, forthcoming in the Annals of the Association of American Geographers.

page 55 note 2 A characteristic of the Ife Division is the vast acreage of uncultivated land which lies under Government reserve. Of the Division's total area of 523,520 acres as much as 110, 720 acres, or 21·07 per cent of the whole, is accounted for by unoccupied State-owned forest. The distribution of this land among the peasantry would considerably slacken the rate of growth of the ‘below 7½ acres’ category, and so offset the continued rise of monogamy. It seems justifiable, however, to assume that such a distribution will not occur, for current governmental policy appears to be more concerned with the preservation than with the distribution of State-owned land.