For an Esan woman, marriage could mean leaving her father’s compound, moving to another town, raising children in her husband’s household and spending most of her adult life among his relatives. Yet when she died, tradition could reverse that journey.
A woman from Uromi who married a man from Ekpoma could live and die in Ekpoma, but her body was traditionally returned to her relatives in Uromi.
The reason was not simply that she was born there. Traditional Esan society understood a married woman as someone who had entered another household without losing her original identity and connection to her paternal family.
Death made that distinction especially important.
The custom reveals a deeper Esan understanding of marriage, lineage, family responsibility, ancestry and even suspicion surrounding the death of a married woman.
Marriage Did Not Erase a Woman’s Birth Family
Traditional Esan society was organised around strong family and lineage relationships. A person’s paternal origin was particularly important because descent, succession, family authority and inheritance were largely structured through the male line.
Marriage therefore changed a woman’s household, but it did not simply erase her relationship with the family into which she was born.
Historical descriptions of Esan burial customs make this unusually clear.
According to accounts based on C. G. Okojie’s study of Esan society, the corpse of a married woman was traditionally returned to her family. The example given is striking: if an Uromi woman married an Ekpoma man, lived all her life in Ekpoma and died there, she was still regarded as an Uromi woman and was returned to her relatives in Uromi.
This was one of the clearest differences between the traditional treatment of married women and men.
A man’s membership in the community where he had been accepted could determine where he was buried. A married woman’s connection to her place of birth remained significant even after years of marriage elsewhere.
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The Journey Home Could Begin After Death
In earlier Esan society, death did not immediately lead to the kind of funeral arrangements familiar today.
There were no modern mortuaries, refrigerated storage facilities or contemporary funeral homes. The handling of the corpse followed established community customs.
When a married woman died away from her birthplace, arrangements were made to return her body to her family.
One ethnographic account describes the journey particularly vividly. When an elderly woman died, members of the community where she was born could accompany her back in a communal procession involving drumming, singing and dancing.
The journey was therefore not merely transportation.
It was a return.
A woman who had left her father’s community as a bride could be carried back to that same community at the end of her life.
Why Was She Returned to Her Father’s Side?
The answer begins with the structure of Esan kinship.
Traditional Esan society was patrilineal. A person’s paternal lineage was central to identity, family continuity and inheritance.
This meant that a woman’s connection to her father’s family remained significant even after marriage.
Her husband acquired important rights and responsibilities through the marriage. Her children belonged to his lineage. She became part of his household and community.
But she did not become a woman without a history of her own.
She remained the daughter of her father’s family.
This is why describing the practice simply as “Esan women belong to their fathers” misses the point.
The custom was about lineage and origin, not about pretending that a woman had no relationship with her husband’s family.
Her life could be centred in her husband’s home.
Her ancestry still pointed back to her paternal family.
Burial Was About More Than Where Someone Died
The location of a grave mattered because burial was deeply connected with family identity and traditional religious ideas about death.
In traditional Esan society, burial was not simply the physical disposal of a corpse. Funeral ceremonies helped establish the deceased person’s place among the dead and maintained the relationship between the living, the dead and the family lineage.
This is also why burial ceremonies could have serious consequences for family authority.
Among the Esan, the person who performed the required burial ceremonies of a deceased parent could acquire important rights and responsibilities within the family. In many accounts of Esan customary law, burial rites and inheritance were closely connected.
The grave was therefore part of a larger social system.
It marked where a person belonged, but it could also be connected to who carried family authority after death.
There Was Another Reason: Suspicion Over a Woman’s Death
One of the lesser known explanations for returning married women’s bodies was the need to avoid suspicion of foul play.
The traditional account specifically explains that when an Uromi woman died in Ekpoma, returning her body to her relatives helped prevent suspicion about how she had died.
This detail changes the way the custom can be understood.
The practice was not only about ancestry.
It also recognised that a woman’s natal family had a legitimate interest in her death.
If she died in her husband’s community, her own relatives were not simply expected to accept whatever account they were given and walk away. Her body was returned to them, allowing her family to participate in the burial and fulfil its responsibilities toward her.
In a society without modern forensic investigation, hospitals and police procedures as they exist today, customs surrounding the movement and burial of a corpse could also serve important social functions.
The woman’s death remained a matter involving two families.
Her Husband’s Family Was Not Irrelevant
It would be wrong to interpret the tradition as meaning that an Esan woman’s husband’s family ceased to matter after her death.
Marriage created strong relationships between families.
The woman lived in her husband’s household. Her children were connected to his lineage. His relatives mourned her and participated in the funeral.
Yet her natal family retained its own responsibilities.
This created a distinctive situation in which two families could have legitimate claims to the memory and funeral obligations surrounding the same woman.
The custom therefore tells us something important about traditional Esan marriage.
A woman could move physically from one community to another without completely changing her lineage identity.
Burial and Inheritance Were Closely Connected
The deeper story becomes even more revealing when burial customs are considered alongside inheritance.
Traditional Esan customary law placed considerable importance on the performance of burial ceremonies. The person who performed the appropriate ceremonies could acquire substantial authority over the deceased person’s estate.
This was particularly important in relation to fathers and sons.
The first son traditionally occupied a central position in the burial and succession of his father. In many Esan communities, completing the appropriate burial ceremonies was connected to assuming the position of family head and exercising rights over family property.
This helps explain why women historically faced restrictions in performing certain burial rites for their fathers.
The issue was not simply ceremonial.
It was economic.
If performing the burial gave the performer inheritance rights, allowing a daughter to perform the burial could potentially transfer family property outside the lineage, particularly if she was married into another family.
The custom therefore reveals an important contradiction.
A woman could remain permanently connected to her father’s family in questions of identity and burial, while traditional rules could restrict her ability to inherit her father’s estate.
Belonging did not automatically mean equal property rights.
The First Son Had a Different Role
The importance of the first son is particularly significant in understanding traditional Esan family organisation.
In many Esan communities, the first son had responsibilities that extended beyond ordinary family membership. He could become the head of the family after his father’s death and was expected to perform important burial ceremonies.
In Uromi, for example, the traditional Ominjiogbe was associated with the first son of the first son in the family genealogy and had responsibilities connected with the ancestral family structure.
Burial was therefore connected to succession.
The death of a parent could trigger not only mourning but also a transfer of authority.
That is one reason funeral customs in traditional Esan society could be elaborate and carefully controlled.
They were simultaneously ceremonies of grief, family recognition and succession.
Women Were Not Completely Excluded in Every Circumstance
The old system was not completely without exceptions.
In some Esan chiefdoms where the Arebhoa system operated, a woman could assume the position normally occupied by a male heir when her father had no surviving son. In such circumstances, she could perform the appropriate burial ceremonies and inherit her father’s estate.
Legal and historical studies of Esan customary law record this as an exception to the broader rule.
This matters because it shows that Esan customary law was not a single, unchanging rule applied identically everywhere.
Different communities had variations.
There were also circumstances in which influential women could obtain permission from the family elders to perform burial ceremonies on behalf of younger brothers, although such permission did not necessarily give them personal inheritance rights.
The distinction between the general rule and these exceptions is important when discussing Esan history.
From the Burial Bush to the Family Compound
The physical setting of Esan burial also changed considerably.
Older accounts describe separate traditional burial grounds, often located in what was known as the burial bush. Different categories of people could have different burial locations, while prominent rulers and certain important people had special burial arrangements.
Over time, westernisation, Christianity, urbanisation and changing attitudes toward public health altered these practices.
Traditional burial grounds declined, while homes, family compounds, churches and modern cemeteries became increasingly important.
The location of the grave changed.
The idea of family responsibility surrounding death did not disappear as quickly.
Christianity Changed the Funeral, Not Every Cultural Meaning
Christianity introduced new ways of understanding death and new forms of funeral ceremony.
Church services became central to many Esan funerals, and traditional practices were sometimes rejected as incompatible with Christian teaching.
Yet traditional burial ideas proved remarkably resilient.
Recent research involving communities across Esanland, including Uromi, Ekpoma, Irrua, Ubiaja, Ewohimi, Igueben, Ebelle and other towns, shows that traditional funeral practices continue to influence contemporary Esan funerals. Researchers have documented the continuing importance of Itolimin, the final or second burial ceremony, even among predominantly Christian communities.
The modern funeral may therefore contain several layers at once.
There may be a church service, a modern coffin, a family gathering and a burial in a contemporary cemetery, while older ideas about lineage, responsibility and the proper honouring of the dead remain present.
The Tradition Also Changed With Women’s Rights
The older rules concerning women and inheritance have also faced growing challenges.
Modern Nigerian law, education, Christianity, urbanisation and changing ideas about gender have increasingly questioned customary restrictions that disadvantaged women.
Recent discussions of Esan customary law show that practices once treated as established rules are being reconsidered and, in some circumstances, changing.
A recent account of the codification of Esan common laws highlighted the case of Esther Joseph of Ebelle, who reportedly performed the burial of her father and inherited his landed and other property, illustrating the changing position of women under contemporary interpretations of Esan custom.
This does not mean that every traditional rule disappeared overnight.
Rather, it shows that customary law, like other forms of law and social practice, has continued to change as Esan society itself has changed.
A Daughter Could Leave Home, But Her Origin Remained
The most revealing part of this tradition is perhaps the simplest.
Marriage could take an Esan woman away from her birthplace.
She could spend decades in another town. She could raise children there, become known by her husband’s family name and build an entire life among people who were not her childhood neighbours.
Yet traditional custom could still regard her as belonging to the family from which she came.
When she died, the direction of movement changed.
Instead of remaining where she had lived with her husband, her body could begin the journey back to her paternal community.
From Ekpoma to Uromi.
From another household back to her relatives.
From the place where she spent her married life to the place where her story began.
That journey was not merely about geography.
It expressed an older Esan understanding that marriage could change a woman’s household without completely changing her lineage identity.
Why the Custom Still Matters
The traditional burial of Esan women reveals a society in which marriage, family and ancestry were more complicated than the simple idea that a woman “left her family” when she married.
She left one household, but she did not necessarily lose her natal identity.
Her husband’s family mattered.
Her children belonged to another lineage.
But her paternal family remained the community of her origin, the people who could claim her body and take responsibility for her final return.
The same system also reveals the unequal position women historically occupied in inheritance and family authority. The right to return to one’s paternal family after death did not automatically provide a daughter with the same economic rights as her brothers.
That contradiction is part of the history.
For generations, Esan society maintained a powerful idea of lineage: a woman could marry away, but she did not simply cease to be her father’s daughter.
And when death came, tradition could make that truth visible one final time.
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Author’s Note
The traditional return of a married Esan woman to her paternal family was rooted in the importance of birth, lineage and family identity in Esan society. Marriage changed where a woman lived and connected her to her husband’s household, but it did not erase her connection to the family into which she was born. The practice also reflected wider customs surrounding burial, inheritance and family responsibility, showing how deeply death was woven into the social structure of traditional Esan communities.
References
Okojie, C. G. Esan Native Laws and Customs with Ethnographic Studies of the Esan People. Ilupeju Press Ltd., 1994 reprint.
Ukhun, Christopher E. and Inegbedion, Nathaniel A. “Cultural Authoritarianism, Women and Human Rights Issues Among the Esan People of Nigeria.” African Human Rights Law Journal, Vol. 5, No. 1, 2005.
Airoboman, Felix Ayemere and Osagie, Joseph Inegbenebho. “The Phenomenon of Death and Its Moral Implications Among the Esan of Edo State, Nigeria.”
Aluede, Charles O. and Ikhidero, Solomon I. “We Honour Our Dead Relatives Just as You Indirectly Do: Interrogating the Second Burial Phenomenon in Esanland, Edo State of Nigeria.” Umẹwaẹn: Journal of Benin and Edo Studies, Vol. 8, 2023.
Itua, P. O. “Disinheritance of Women Under Esan Customary Law in Nigeria: The Need for Paradigm Shift Towards Gender Equality.” Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2021.
Ehiakhamen, Justina O. “The Practice of Inheritance in Esan: The Place of the Female Child.” Cultura.
