By Patrick Ochei
The quintessential Mother Without Borders, HRM Obi Martha Dunkwu, Omu Anioma/Nneoha has granted interview to BBC English and Igbo, where she spoke exclusively on traditional burial rites and evidence of obnoxious taxes in some communities, making burials dreadful and expensive.
She told the BBC that burial being the last respect for the dead is the right of the dead, adding that in all climes people are buried according to the traditions of the people in question.
Omu however, hinted her interviewers about how in Okpanam a lot of the strenuous aspects of burial where a widow would have to mourn her late husband for six months had been changed and brought down below two weeks.
She also stated that the burial of titled men had equally been reduced to not more than a week of rites without making it stringent for the family to provide cow or borrow to do elaborate burial beyond their capacity; adding that in some instances burials become elaborate based on the financial capacity of the family involved.
Omu Dunkwu affirmed that culture is dynamic and that in most of Anioma communities, people are changing culturally to be able to accommodate the reality of the times in their ways of doing burial and other traditional rites.
Meanwhile, she averred that most difficult traditions affecting women are still kept and sustained by same women in the name of “Umu Ada”.