BY FRANCIS EWHERIDO
Last week, I focussed on male siblings changing or trying to change their fathers’ wills to disinherit their female siblings. But it goes beyond siblings. Sometimes the whole family is involved. Once a relative dies, they use fraudulent culture and tradition to set aside the late relative’s will. Some people used to feel that once you have your will in place, you can rest assured that on your demise, there will be no rancour in your family as far your estate is concerned. Not anymore. Wills written with sound minds are being challenged in courts with some of these cases dragging on for decades.
It is worse if the relative died intestate (without writing a will). We have seen this happen over the years and it is distasteful. It is terrible when the children of the deceased are minors. The extended family tread carefully if the children of the deceased are adults. So, our focus is on when the children are minors.
My friend told me of his friend who died in his late 40s or early 50s. They took the corpse to his village for burial. Since his village had no electricity, the widow went with the generator they were using in Lagos. After the burial, she was putting their luggage in the truck in preparation to come back to Lagos. Then the eldest brother of her late husband asked her where she was taking the generator to. She answered that she was taking it back to Lagos. “So, we in the village don’t like good things, abi?” He ordered the younger family members to bring down the generator. The family went back to Lagos without the gen set. Electricity supply was very poor then and the uncles denied the children one of the little comforts they were enjoying when their father was alive.
The family never supported the widow and the children after their brother died. My friend played the role of a father. He never goes into details about his good deeds, but I suspect he substantially contributed to supporting the deceased immediate family and seeing the children through school. Where was the eldest brother who inherited the generator as the widow was struggling with the upbringing of their three children?
In those days (I don’t know if the practice subsists till date), wives were counted as part of a deceased’s estate and inherited by relatives upon the death of the husband. We have this saying that the burial of a relative whose wife has big buttocks (you can also add “whose wife is beautiful”), is conducted swiftly so that the inheritor can take over ASAP. I would not have bothered much if the responsibilities the deceased left behind were also swiftly shared, but no; they inherit the “assets” and jettison the “liabilities.” There are some cases that are particularly pathetic. Families “distribute” children of their deceased relatives among themselves and treat them as domestic workers (“houseboys” and “housegirls”). Some times they send them to school, at other times, they don’t. Even when they send them to school, they put them in public schools while their children are in private schools.
There are very few government-owned primary schools and secondary schools that are as good as privately-owned schools, but the bulk are substandard. Why can’t these children attend the same schools their children attend? If it’s universities, I do not mind because government-owned universities are as good and sometimes better than privately-owned universities. The only advantage privately-owned universities had was stability in the school calendar. Stability seems to be returning to government-owned universities now. These days, the decision on which university you want your wards to attend should be determined partly by the course they want to study. Some universities are renowned for being very strong in some courses.
The other situations I find annoying are where relatives and siblings of the deceased drag properties with the children of the deceased. For me, once you lose a loved one, the loss is paramount and you should mourn the loss you suffered instead of dragging his properties with his wife and children. Anything your sibling or relative did not give to you while he was alive or did not bequeath to you does not belong to you. Siblings and relatives should be self-respecting. Where were you when your late sibling/relative was accumulating wealth? Some relatives and siblings find it hard to let go. They see the wife as an outsider who was not there when they were growing up and going through thick and thin with the deceased. The truth of the matter is that after marriage, the couple are no longer two but one. No matter how you feel, you have to respect that, especially in marriages that produced offsprings.
My advice is to those who are the first to become successful in a family is to realise that a tree can never make a forest. Build your siblings. Help them to grow. As I wrote last week, “No tree can make a forest. A hurricane easily blows away a single tree, but find it more difficult where many trees are located in close proximity…If you don’t help to build them (siblings) up, in the days of trouble which are almost inevitable, you will have no family member of substance to stand by you.” And if you don’t support and build your siblings, if you die prematurely, your siblings will not be solid enough to be the backbone your children need, especially if they are minors or adolescents.
Having said that, I know there are some family members who are not interested in putting in the hard work. They are lazy and only interested in the good life on the expense of others. These are not the siblings/relatives I am referring to, but if you have the capacity, support them to meet their basic needs of food, shelter, clothing and training of their children, go ahead and support them. But you have no business supporting a luxurious lifestyle of a sibling/relative. Luxurious living is meant for those who can afford it. I am sorry, but I called someone a madman recently. He wanted support to send his son to study abroad. Meanwhile, he does not even have the resources to buy a domestic flight ticket to Abuja or Lagos from where the son will travel abroad. Is that not madness? But he will go about scandalising the rich sibling for not supporting him.
Even if your rich brother sends his children abroad to school, it is because he has the capacity. If you do not have the resources, your children should school in Nigeria. Nigerian schools are good enough. How many of our past and current heads of state, governors and legislators, CEOs of big organisations, etc., did pre-university and first degrees abroad? Majority of them studied in Nigeria. There is no empirical evidence that those who studied abroad automatically have advantage over those who studied in Nigeria.
My final advice is that surviving relatives should allow the will and wishes of the departed to prevail. It is immoral to alter their will and wishes because they are dead and not in a position to defend them.
