Secondary Marriage and Tribal Solidarity in Irigwe, Nigeria1

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Abstract
This paper endeavors to do two things. The first section describes how co‐husband relationships enjoyed by the traditional Irigwe system of secondary marriage helped in former days to keep the tribe's twenty‐five ritual units at peace with one another. The second section examines an instance of legislated social change clearly related to the development of an Irigwe tribal administration in recent decades, and to its continuing effectiveness today. In 1968 both the traditionalist “pagan” majority and the change oriented Christian minority on the Irigwe Tribal Council voted to outlaw all future secondary marriages. The paper considers both political and underlying structural factors which may have led to this action.