By: Gabriel Ikisang*[i]

There are different reasons for which people may want to mourn a son. This guide is useful for those keeping their eyes on the big goals of their son’s property or their son’s wife. For eye-service tips on how to pretend you weren’t actually the one who killed your son, check out our guide on mourning louder than the bereaved here.

Mourning Requirements

A mournable dead son, his wife, their property.


For individuals using the “she” pronoun—meaning women related to the chief mourners—tears are a good way to start the day, for without it how shall the neighbors know you are pained at your loss? But note that more than a day’s tears can cause bodily and emotional weakness that may disrupt your mourning process.

Strength too is important, to uphold your culture and fight lawyers. Regular muscle conditioning as well as voice volume lessons are recommended.

Last but not least, an inhumane heart.

The Mournable Son[ii]

In addition to the standard definition of son, your son must have been well-standing in life to deserve of mourning. A medical doctor, a school principal or a successful business man is a mournable son. This is so because the above and their caliber possess the ability of fulfilling one important requirement: Belonging to more than one man and one woman; otherwise known as Family Acceptability.[iii] For a son to be worthy of mourning, the whole family must own him: uncles must talk often about how they blew phlegm out of his nose in his infancy even if these uncles had had a fight with the son’s father in those days and never visited. Aunts—especially those who had then gone searching for greener pastures in Lagos—must talk about how they bathed the son and fed him. But above all, brothers, especially those that envied the son because he didn’t live in a rented house like them, must boast of how they lent the son half the money he used to build his three properties.

In the light of this, all should see that this guide—unlike some others in this volume— isn’t a motherhood guide. In fact, experts have confirmed that mothers are in the large part incompetent in mourning their sons. The case worsens when such mothers’ husbands are dead. Thus, the pronoun “you” in this guide is largely plural, collectively referring to the consanguineous conglomeration of brothers, uncles, in-laws and their supportive female counterparts—sisters, wives, aunts—who have kindly gathered to mourn their son.

How to Mourn a Son

Begin with being foolishly sure that the deed has been done, that his wife has killed him. You can complement this with a huge sigh of relief. Be ready to cry soon, so don’t express your happiness that you’ll finally share your son’s property among yourselves.

Call other relatives and tell them your son’s wife has killed your son. If you use the “she” pronoun, cry at this point. As much as possible, call your son by his name and his wife by the noun “wife” or the pronoun “she”: Mike’s wife has killed him or She has killed him are good examples. That way Mike will be the human being you all care about and “she” will be the undeserving animal that came to dismantle the family. She has killed him, you should say. It should not matter if Mike died of AIDS or kidney failure, it should not matter if “she” had been the one caring for him with her money and time. What should matter is his property, and for that, your son’s wife must be accused of murder.

Next, have a family meeting to decide what to do about your son. Discuss how he should be buried, how his wife should be interrogated and accused, and who will take care of the “whole process.” Family members in the village would know a great deal about how to go about the “whole process” as it involves old harmful traditions.

Some of your son’s brothers or uncles should go to your son’s wife and accuse her of killing your son. She should be told that, according to the ways of your fathers, she’ll have to take part in some rituals to prove her innocence. Depending on her literacy and economic stand, two outcomes are possible.

1st Outcome: Compliance

In this case, do wicked things to her. The goal is to make sure she hate and fear you, becoming mentally tired of seeing you in her live. Thus, she’ll leave all of her husband’s and her property to you. These are examples of evil things you can do to her:[iv]

  1. Shave her hair and pubic hair and make her wear black clothes. This can facilitate her loss of self-esteem and confidence, giving you that upper hand in the fight towards your mourning goal.
  2. Force her to sleep with your son’s corpse for many days. According to native doctors, his spirit (which perpetually wants to be with her) would have a chance to possess her or take her soul.[v] This will completely clear every obstacle to the goal.
  3. Force her to drink the water used to wash your son’s corpse. This will make her sick, and probably die.
  4. Strip her beside your son’s grave. This is a must if you have your eyes on the goal of marrying her for free as your fourth wife. Tell her that she’s been found innocent, but must choose to marry you, her late husband’s brother, as obligated by “the ways of your fathers.” Be stupid and behave as though she’s a property and not a human being, and inherit her. She’ll probably be too tired to resist at this point. Plus, she’s likely to have forgotten her self-worth, marrying you easily.

All the above should be done without fear of arrest or the law. It should help your nerves to know that the “Harmful Widowhood Practices” provision in the VAPP Act[vi] is only words on paper; it is never ever enforced. This does not only apply in the more than 50% of 36 states that still haven’t adopted the VAPP, but all over the country.

N.B: In order to clear your consciences and look good in the eyes of men, these things must not be portrayed as discrimination but as the way of your fathers. It should not matter if you are an elder in your church.

2nd Outcome: Defiance

This is likely if your son’s wife is educated and knows her rights. In this case, she would say bad things about your culture. Take offense at this. Pretend that your culture does not have bad things in it. Pretend that you did not hate your culture when you had to loan from a bank to pay your wife’s bride price, when your father was mourned by his brothers and you were starving because your mother lost all she had to greedy in-laws.

Be angry and tell your son’s wife—all of you in many voices—that since she does not want to partake in the rituals, she had killed your son. Say you must rescue your son’s property from his murderer. Pretend not to know that she worked for that property as well.

It is likely she’ll not agree. She’ll say something about the law and shall threaten with a lawyer.[vii] In cases where your son left a will allocating their property to her, it might seem really difficult. Nonetheless, don’t relent. She’d just lost a partner, that’s enough to suffer, enough to sabotage her fight. Besides, the law will only back her up if you retreat. So, never forget that the Nigerian legal system is filled with holes from which the powerful can always escape. In this case you are the powerful, not only because you outnumber her but also given the fact that she is likely to be chased away from her job for being a widow and that no bank will give her a loan because she does not have a husband.

Finally, the case will be thrown out of court in a matter of weeks, and you’ll achieve your goal of stealing property that doesn’t belong to you.[viii] And as you all wished for, “she” will suffer; her children will starve. Forget totally that in mourning a son, you’re killing a daughter, that you have daughters whose husbands shall be mourned. This is not important.

We hope that this guide will be able to help you properly mourn your son.


  • This guide deals with mourning a “Son” as defined by faithful citizens resistance to positive change and declassification of roles that may engender discrimination. On how to mourn the other filial beings who may also use the “he” pronoun, refer to Section Four, where you will be guided on not just how to act on the news that such a being (being of your family unfortunately) has been killed by a mob, but also on learning they will serve a fourteen-year jail term for being human.

[i] A son (“he”) is primarily a human born with a penis between his legs. From childhood, sons show signs of violence, play football, should be clothed in dull colors. To raise perfect sons, parents should buy their sons toys like guns and footballs, prevent them from kitchen work and flog then if they wear their mothers’ heels. Else, a serious mutation can occur whereby the being, though possessing of a manhood, looses his sonliness.

[ii] Do note that louts and other economically unstable “he” individual such as those living in rented apartments, though may qualified as son are not mournable, thus are not regarded as sons in this context.

[iii] Certain schools of thoughts antagonistic to our honored and age-old tradition of mourning may term this “claiming”, where the in-laws involved are portrayed in the awfully bad light of greed after the successful son’ material possessions. These SoTs tend to take our definition of son more serious than we the advocate when against us in arguments about mourning. We should make clear that only sons who are men are mournable, and as it is clear with the high number of male children unworthy of envy today, to be a man is still not a day’s job.

[iv] For a comprehensive training on how to wickedly torture other human beings, check our guide: How to Physically Oppress Widows, LGBTX, House Boys/Girls, Apprentices, Madmen, and Suspected Market Pilferers for Desired Results.

[v] Kill her out of love to be with him.

[vi] Violence Against Persons (Prohibition) Act. An anti-mourning federal law that fortunately is not being adopted by many states and not being enforced where adapted. Some anti-mourning groups showing radical tendencies and dissatisfaction still criticize the “backwards” mentality of our government for having made the law just in 2015 only after the Same Sex Marriage Prohibition Act, which is in more utility and which they say is barbaric. Mourners must guide against this forward-moving tendencies.

[vii] The law allocates spouses their death partners’ property. That’s why it is strongly recommended to make your sons marry under religious or customary law because these deny women of inheritance rights for your own good.

[viii] On how to share, fight over, and kill over stolen property, check out this guide.

Gabriel is a student and writer.

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