SHOCKING! Touching A Married Woman Seductively Can Kill Her Husband And Children!!!

Adultery is morally wrong and abominable no matter who commits it but not among the Isokos/Urhobos whose gods punish women who commit adultery while the  men are spared.

Yes, as far as the Isoko/Urhobo tradition is concerned, if, like the  Biblical Solomon, the married man has
one or more concubines , the wife has no right to complain to the elders of the man’s family
or that of the community. If she does, she is put away.  The husband has the right to marry as many wives as he likes whereas a married woman is not sexually available to anyone else besides the recognized conjugal husband and dares not allow her hand to be held by another man without her being accused of adultery against her
husband, the ancestors, and the community at large. Talk about oppressive subjugation of women to the whims and caprices of men!

The understanding of adultery in Isoko/Urhoboland isn't just a situation whereby a married woman allows a man who is not her husband
to have sex with her but so much as allowing a man express gestures such as tapping her buttocks, holding her hand, fondling her breast or genitals.

There is this story about what happened to a medical student who, with his little medical knowledge, had offered to treat his brother's wife for typhoid at a time when the husband was away from home. The husband's job took him to sea for indefinite periods most of the year and the younger brother, an undergraduate who he was sponsoring, lived with them during the holidays.

He injected his sister-in-law, in the buttocks, with ampicillin sodium injection to help her fight the bacteria.  When the husband returned from sea, the woman told him what the brother did and how grateful she was for the relief she got after the treatment. The husband was furious that his wife had exposed herself to another man. It didn't matter whether or not the supposedly educated husband knew that the choice of buttocks as a place to apply the injection is sound medical practice. Traditional belief overrides medical consideration. The right and the privilege to see and touch any part of a woman’s body belongs solely to the husband. Buttocks, regarded to be a private part, was definitely off limit! The help rendered by the brother, came to be construed as an intrusive and abominable act, and he had to be dragged before the elders.

Now, a curious thing happens in cases of intimate contacts like this and more serious cases of adultery. Usually, Eri/Erivwi, (the spirit of the ancestors) will attack the woman with some ailment and even kill her husband and children until she confesses or an oracle reveals it. That is not what is curious. it's the atonement.
The atonement is based on a strongly held belief among the Isokos/Urhobos that one who has defiled the ancestors needs purification to avoid their wrath. The woman is stigmatized for the rest of her life and required to sacrifice a goat to appease the deity and to ritually cleanse her before she can continue her marriage if the man wouldn't send her away. I'm not aware if the man is made to do same when he strays. Did I hear you scream 'chauvinism at its peak'!


Any gesture or appearance by any man that remotely suggests an attempt, intended or unintended, to seduce someone else’s wife in Isoko and Urhoboland, if discovered, can draw the intense fury of a husband and his relatives. Because of these ‘restrictions’, a man must be very careful not to touch a married woman, make any statements that may be construed as seductive, cast glances or stare at someone else’s wife. Many times, the relatives are known to have approached the offending man and demanded osaye, compensation for infringing on a “husband’s right".

 The amount of compensation required in less serious cases as that of the medical student, is entirely up to the 'caprice’ of the elders but is usually taken or accepted in the form of money which could be huge, kola nuts and ogogoro, the local gin.  It is therefore, not unusual, to find women come forward to confess to past misdeeds and to seek protection from the ancestors. Many of the women who sought the protection, usually do so when a child is sick  or when they experience complications in a pregnancy or during childbirth, and wants to avoid any harm coming to them and their children.

It is even believed the oracle will tell if another man, other than your husband, so much as touches you. Now, If that rule applied strongly in Lagos and elsewhere, the oracle would have more goats than it can eat considering the number of ignorant incurable-touchers that touch women as a matter of habit when talking  to them not to talk of the amount of e-kissings that happen online.

What do you think about this traditionalbelief? Should it be squashed or upheld?