HELLO

Uyo — In Akwa Ibom State a man may have to marry the corpse of his girlfriend, if the culture demands this. After several fruitless efforts to see the Eberefiak Oku Uyo (Clan head of Uyo and custodian of Ibibio culture) in his palace for comments on the matter, one of the Uyo chiefs met at the palace, Chief Effiong Udoh Akpan told Daily Trust "Such marriages are conducted between a boy friend that sees a girl that he likes, invites the girl to his house and decides to live with her in the house without initiating the process of traditional marriage up to the time the girl died while living with him. After fulfilling all the traditional marriage rites, the boy friend is then given the permission by her parents to go ahead and bury her. That is entirely a different procedure. "The corpse of the lady will be laid in state and the boy friend will come and lie down beside the corpse. He must lie down beside the corpse for a whole night because she is his wife. The boy friend wi...