Sunday 18092016

metro
SUNDAY VANGUARD, SEPTEMBER 18, 2016, PAGE 17
By Emmanuel Unah
Everywhere you look in
Calabar, Cross River State
capital, you find estates which
have been abandoned due to
squabbles over the sharing of
inheritance.
The squabbles are sometimes so
fierce that machetes and the dreaded
charm, Ekpetiaba (kills within five
days), are used by desperate
members of families to eliminate or
subdue siblings in order to take
ownership or the lion share of
estates.
The recourse to squabble is
occasioned by the fact that the
tradition of Efiks, who predominantly
inhabit Calabar, gives every member
of the family of deceased parents the
right to share in inheritance,
including females, unlike in other
traditions. like the Igbo, where
women do not have claims to the
estates of deceased parents.
Sometimes the struggle ends in court
and drags on for several years during
which all parties to the dispute stay
off the estate, thus occasioning the
dilapidation of the property.
The struggle for estate can also
overshadow the burial of the
deceased. There was the
case of an aide to a former governor
of Cross River
State who died in
a car crash.
Following the
death. the wife
and family
members became
embroiled in a
struggle over the
man’s estate
while his
corpse’s burial
was delayed.
There was also
the case of a
journalist,
Edem, who
made claim to
one of the
houses of a
deceased
woman he
called “aunt”.
Edem, who works with a national
newspaper, said he had been
engaged in legal tussle over a twostorey
building in an estate with a
popular politician, Bassey, who he
described as his uncle and is now
late, until 2008. He told Sunday
Vanguard that litigation over estates
left behind by dead relatives
sometimes drags for decades and a
lot of money wasted in the process
by those contending for the property.
“Some of these cases drag on for a
long time, from the High in Court to
the Appeal Court and up to the
Supreme Court and, until they are
decided, nobody has the right to
assume
ownership or authority over any
portion of the land or property” ,
Edem said.
Narrating what led to the prolonged
tussle between him and his late
uncle, Bassey,
Edem said his deceased aunt was
very rich and died without her own
children; so she willed her estates to
her brothers, sisters and their
children.
Meanwhile, in his own case, the
journalist said the woman wrote: ‘The
house I live in should go to my
brother, Edem.’ He narrated: “But my
uncle claimed that the property was
willed to my father and not me since
the woman wrote ‘my brother’; and I
am not her brother, so the property
should become his own since my
father was dead”.
He said the man failed to take
cognisance of the fact that he bears
“Edem” like his father and that the
woman had always referred to him as
‘brother’ since the demise of his
father. “My father died many years
ago when my aunt was still strong, so
if she wanted to will the house to my
CORPSES ABANDONED AS …
Calabar families go to
war over inheritance
father, she would have
changed it before she died since
my father had passed on many
years before her”.
There was also a celebrated
tussle between two brothers,
James and John, which raged
for years over the ownership of a
hotel in Calabar left behind by
their late father. The hotel,
located close to a strategic
roundabout near the University
of Calabar, was a source of
constant physical combat
between the two brothers until
Cross River State Ministry of
Justice intervened.
A source close to the siblings
told Sunday Vanguard that the
elder brother was in Cameroon
doing his private business
when the father was alive and,
when the man died, the younger
one took over the running of the
hotel and, by the time the elder
came back and demanded for a
part of the estate, his sibling told
him off and that was what led to
the fight until the Ministry
officials came and shared the
place.
They gave the bigger portion to
the elder brother and the
remaining part to his sibling
while erectings wall to
demarcate the two portions.
Even with the sharing, the
relationship between the
siblings was so fractious such
that a spoon from one section of
the hotel could not cross to the
other and no one, even the
customers, was allowed to take
drinks or food from one section to
the other.
There is a current case in court
The squabbles are
sometimes so fierce
that machetes and
the dreaded charm,
Ekpetiaba (kills with
in five days), are
used by desperate
members of families
to eliminate or
subdue siblings in
order to take
ownership or the lion
share of estates
where a young man,
Ndifreke, who, soon after the
demise of his father, allegedly
grabbed the documents of the
property of the deceased,
located along White House,
and, before his other siblings
could realise what had
happened, he had sold the
estate to a People’s
Democratic Party, PDP,
stalwart for eleven million naira.
He then went to Lagos and
squandered the money. When he
came back, he was arrested while
other members of the family are
battling to recover the estate from
the PDP chieftain. Litany of cases
Cases on inheritance are so
many in Calabar. In the state
Ministry of Justice alone, the
department that administers
estates for families is overflowing
with files as there are over four
hundred such cases currently
being handled by the
Administrator General of the
state.
Mr Joe Abang, the Attorney
General and Commissioner for
Justice in the state, said he is not
relenting in his efforts to ensure
that every member of families
involved in such cases is fairly
treated.
“Yesterday, I had a two-hour
meting with the director in charge
of the administration of estates. It
is in that unit that there was a
complaint that the ICPC had to
come here. I have told the head
of the department there that for
every estate that he handles, I
should be informed no matter the
circumstance”, Abang said.
According to him, most Africans
tend towards polygamy but the
present generation of Africans
seem to be more polygamous than
their grandfathers.
“The younger
African man marries
one wife because the
Bible says so, but the
grandfather who
married four wives was
better off because
everyone in the
community knew the
wives but this one has
one wife and thirty
concubines. And in his
life time, he was seen
as a good man with
one wife with three
children, but when he
dies the concubines start
coming and they come
with children who have
same features and more
resemblance of the man
than the ones in the
house”, the Commissioner said.
He said in law, facts speak for
themselves; so one cannot shut
out those who are not ‘officially’
known in the family who just
came out and, to compound
matters, the man may have died
without a will.
“We can see from such scenario,
the man has just created a
problem for the entire society
especially those who are in the
administration of justice and
estates. Woe betide you if you
share the estate among five
people because, after six months or
one year, those who did not hear that
the man is dead may suddenly hear
and start coming from Kaduna,
Abuja, Ibadan and you cannot shut
them out. You then begin to readjust
and the others will say-they don’t
know-those-ones because their father
did not mention them and so trouble
starts”.
He said the ministry usually gives a
window period after giving due
notices for the sharing of estate of a
person who dies interstate so that
others can come and make claims.
“There is no way two people cannot
fight when money is involved; what
someone takes to be common, two
people can fight to death while
struggling to take possession of it.
That pair of sandals, that shirt, that
jean trousers that you think are
common could lead people to killing
one other. The complaints would
come but to save people from the
greater evil of fighting aimlessly, it is
better to make a will before one
passes away. Let us know his 20
wives, where they live and what is
assigned to each beneficiary. “