There are some things I find questionable about humanity. When asked where I am from, I am expected to say unequivocally where my father is from. I love my father a lot. Almost more than I love my life. So that is not the point of this sentence. Bearing a child does not necessarily make you a parent. Nurturing and raising one does.
While it makes absolute sense that a child must bear the father’s names, it, however, defies logic that a woman carries a child for 9 months, nurtures that child literally from her own body, and risks her very life in childbirth—yet not only does the child not bear her name, but the child is also not naturally recognised as part of her tribe. A nuanced conversation, but one nonetheless.
I am a child of fortune in this regard—born of an Igbo mother to an Igbo father, my identity flows uncontested like a river meeting itself. But imagine if my mother were Yoruba—the same blood would flow in my veins, yet tradition would erase half my story. They say this is the world’s way. I say some ways of the world deserve to be unwound.
This reality colours the lives of countless Nigerians. To those watching from the shores of privilege, this might seem a mere ripple in life’s great river. But I have lived long enough in these waters to know how deep these currents run and how they shape the landscape of lives in ways too numerous to map.
So I speak what some might call heresy: our children should carry the names of their mothers, too. Let them bear the stories of both rivers that gave them life.
