Photo by James E. Overly Chief Emmanuel Ntia, one of Akwa Ibom’s best-known musicians, with his wife and one of his sons.

By Kevin Lambert
Imagine a land without juvenile delinquency. Imagine sharing your house with your mother-in-law, father-in-law, brother-in-law, and, at any other unannounced time, 400 others. In America they would be called sponging relatives. In Akwa Ibom it’s called family life.

It is, it must be said, a working system. In Akwa Ibom, nobody starves to death and there is very little homelessness. Very little of this has been achieved by social legislation—Akwa Ibom’s self-esteem commission is one of the rare instances of government help—but the fact that the family provides a haven for its less fortunate members.
Families have spread out like concentric circles and have a clear, traditional understanding of their obligations. This includes providing food and shelter for any family member —no matter how many times removed — that comes by. They don’t even ask for it, they expect it. There is a saying that "he who does not visit a relative dies of hunger." It signifies the sort of hospitality any member of a Nigerian family can expect.

"We (Nigerians) do the extended family system. It goes beyond the immediate family to the second and third generations," says Ezekiel Ette, PhD, an assistant professor of social work at Indiana University, who is himself supporting 10 people. "We also encompass into the unit some who might not be related immediately, but somewhere. It can extend to a whole village, which is somehow related."
In Nigeria, the concept of family is so overwhelming that a child is never without a adult around, and kids feel supervised wherever they are. Bad behavior can bring shame to the family, a true horror to an African. This is where the phrase "It takes a village" originated.

Photo by James E. Overly Like father, like son: A Nigerian soldier grooms his child to serve.

"In America," says Dr. Ette, "It is a closed system. Once you have the parents and children, people cannot come in and go out. They grow up and go out on their own. In Nigeria, the family unit is porous; people can go in and out."

People can choose to leave a family, of course. "It is not a cultural practice, (but one) brought to the people by urbanization, and it happens sometimes. But those who leave may not make it. They may cut themselves off, and dare not return out of embarrassment." People who are layabouts, mooching from the family food bowl and partying all night, are considered to be a bad reflection on the family. These people start their own families in the city. But the folks at home considered them to be lost.
To Americans, the most surprising aspect of Nigerian family life would be the absolute absence of privacy, and the feeling that the group welfare is more important than individual achievement.

"It is not possible," says Mary Jackson, a 25-year old law student living in Uyo, "to be alone." Nor is it particularly desirable. Privacy is definitely a recent planetary development, a byproduct of the industrial revolution, like railroads. Africans consider an apartment for one to be as cold and forbidding as the South Pole. "If a woman has no children she will adopt one. There are single women living alone, treated with respect in Nigeria, but only if they have a child."

"So," says Dr. Ette, "One day your cousin shows up. It’s an unplanned visit. He may stay a month." Relatives don’t bother calling ahead with warnings. They won’t worry if there’s room, they’ll assume it. And they’ll be right.

One would think that the constant little surprises of finding third cousins sleeping on the couch would be a real complication in life, but that’s only to our way of thinking. And those Nigerians who are what Dr. Ette calls "cultured American Nigerians" share that view. "These Nigerians find that once you go home, 30-40 people are expecting you to give them presents. A few years ago airlines asked why Nigerians had so much luggage."

Diana Vengushi Jatau, a Nigerian living in Virginia since 2000, said that leaving her family was "very hard. I felt like I was pulled out of something I knew, I had learned to abide by and love.
"If I had them here they would be emotionally supportive, their presence here would give me more confidence and security. When I left, a bit of them went missing. And my whole support system went missing. I had to build my own."

Akwa Ibom, being a sort of pastoral area, has one of the strongest examples of family unity in all of Nigeria. Ms. Jackson says that, "We are anchored in the family; people define themselves by their family and its accomplishments. Children are a blessing. If you have a child, you have everything on earth. You are expected to have a family of your own, and something is wrong if you don’t."

She says there is no real teenage rebellion in Akwa Ibom, a statement backed up by the members of the Special Reports team. "If you are 16 you are still a baby to your parents. You are under your parent’s care. You don’t go out on your own and get an apartment. That would bring shame to the family." There is still, due to the importance of family, an "authority structure, called the elders, devolving from the oldest persons in the family, who are still respected." This is changing with urbanization, for good and ill.

The cultural values that can withstand the new world, to her, are the "Art, music and the ability to take care of each other."

Emigration is having a good and bad effect on Akwa Ibomite family values, Dr. Ette says. "It certainly brings in money (It has been estimated that Nigerians remit as much as $12 billion annually). And an émigré’s status is usually increased, often commensurate with the amount of the remittances. But the losers are the traditions and culture and the involvement in day-to-day happenings, which hold a family together almost as firmly as cash.

"They only get piecemeal stories of home. The memories are stop time," he says. "You are working here for what you remember from when you are young."
"Nobody," Ms. Jackson says, "lives in a vacuum. In Nigerian life, the family has been affected by society. The environment affects what we think and do."