Why Same Clan Marriage is a Taboo? – The Science Behind Clan System

There is a culturally based system in Southern Kaduna tribes that associates a person with the ancestors of the unbroken male lineage. This system is known as Clan system. Let’s say, if a person is associated with Mingyuo, then the person is linked to the ancient Ankwai-Mingyuo.

Almost all Nigerian tribes practice they Clan system. In the Oegworok culture, they are linked with two moieties which are Kwashang and Ankwai, each moieties is made up of three (3) houses or clans;

Kwashang

1.     Kallahu

2.     Lawal (popularly pronounced Lawat)

3.     Kadau/Katta

Ankwai

1.     Mingyuo

2.     Mingwuab

3.     Kwagwuak

They are known as clans, in other words roots. Every other Oegworok have evolved from these six (6) clans and what the clan symbolizes is that it protects the particular male lineage.

Why Son or a Male Child is important in Clan System

In the Clan system, the identification only passes down in males, but not in females. What it means is that the lineage is passed down from father to son, but never from father to daughter. In case of marriage, the association of daughter gets transferred. For instance, if a person belonging to Mingyuo clan has a son, and that son gets married to a daughter whose father belongs to Kallahu, then the daughter is automatically associated with Mingyuo clan.

In case a person does not have any daughter, then the lineage ends with him. That is why it was preferred in the ancient and contemporary Oegworok societies to have at least one son to protect the ‘clan’. You might probably be asking questions like “Why should only sons carry the clan of their fathers, why not the daughters?” This issue has also been common among the feminists. What they lack is the genetic science behind this, a clear biological answer that is 100% logical for it. Before getting into that, let’s look at this  rule.

A Boy And A Girl Belonging To The Same Clan Cannot Marry

There exists one important rule in the Clan system: a boy and a girl belonging to the same clan cannot marry, even if they are not siblings and belong to distant families. There is a genetic science behind this too. Two people from the same clan marrying can cause genetic disorders in their offspring. How? We will come to that later.

Let’s get into another rule in the clan system.

Clan system, even of their roots cannot be same. It’s the same logic as that of Object

Oriented Programming:

Consider this: Class B and Class C both derived from Class A. Now, considered Class D, derived from Class B and Class C both. In simpler terms, Class B is the parent of Class D, Class C is also the parent of Class D, but Class A is the parent of both Class B and Class C. The root of Class B and Class C is class A. Replace B and C with different Clans, they might seem different, but their root is still class A.

Now let’s understand the science behind this in depth using parent this time:

Consider this also: Parent B and Parent C both derived from Parent A. Now, considered Parent D, derived from Parent B and Parent C both. In simpler terms, Parent B is the parent of Parent C, Parent C is also the parent of Parent D, but Parent A is the parent of both Parent B, Parent C and Parent D. The root of Parent B, Parent C and Parent D is Parent A. Replace B, C and D with different families from the same clan, they might seem different, but their root is still from Parent A.

Chromosomes and Genes

There are 23 pairs of chromosomes in humans. In each pair, one comes from the father, and the other comes from the mother. In total, there are 46 chromosomes in every cell, with 23 coming from father and 23 coming from the mother. Out of these chromosomes, sex chromosomes determine the gender of the offspring.

The resultant cell has either XX chromosome pair or XY chromosome pair. X chromosome decides female attributes and Y chromosome determines male attribute. So, if the pair is XX, then the child will be a girl, or if the pair is XY, then the pair will be a boy.

Only son gets a Y chromosome from his father, and cannot from a mother (since female only have X chromosomes). But the daughter can get the X chromosome from both father and mother. Thus, Y chromosome is always preserved through male lineage, from grandfather to father to son to grandson……..

Crossover can happen when both X chromosomes in a daughter have been obtained from both the parents.

The Y Chromosome and the Verdict of Clan System

It is the Y chromosome which gets passed down between men in a lineage, Y chromosome will never be in any woman. Thus, Y Chromosome plays a crucial role in modern genetics to identify Genealogy, that is the male ancestry of a person. So, the system was designed to trace the Y chromosome to its roots. So if a person belongs to Mingyuo clan, then his Y Chromosome has come all the way from the ancestor Ankwai thousands of years ago, and if the person belongs to Lawat, then the Chromosome came from Kwashang to the person.

This also clarifies why females belong to the Clan of their husbands when they marry. Women do not carry Y chromosome, only male will carry the father’s Y chromosome. Thus, the Clan of the woman is said to be that of the husband.

But why can’t male and female from the same Clan marry? Let’s know more about the important Y Chromosome in the lineage:

The Weakness of the Y Chromosome

X Chromosome has a similar pair in the human body, but Y chromosome does not. It means X chromosome can pair with both X and Y, but Y chromosome needs X chromosome to pair. The size of chromosome is only decreasing with evolution, with scientists debating that the Y chromosome would not be able to survive more than a few million years into the future, leading to the extinction of mankind. The logic is simple without both male and female, reproduction is not possible. But they debate if the Chromosome will be able to completely take over the functionality.

The reason for the debate is that there is no process for Y chromosome to repair itself by crossing over with its Chromosomal pair. To clarify, X chromosomes can pair with another X chromosome. So, when one X chromosome gets damaged, it allows itself to be repaired by copying DNA from other Chromosome in that pair as they are identical in nature. But Y chromosome can only pair with Y for XY combination, and thus cannot mix and match with Y except for small 5% of X which matches with Y, while the remaining 95% of Y chromosome is crucial in the development of male cannot match at all.

It is also that the Y chromosome has to depend on itself to repair itself in cases of damages. For that, it creates duplicate copies of its genes within itself. But it doesn’t limit the DNA damages in Y chromosome which escape its local repair process from being propagated into offspring males. Thus, Y chromosomes accumulate more and more defects over a prolonged period of evolution.

To summarize all this, Y chromosome, crucial for creation and evolution of males, has a fundamental weakness to continue the normal evolution via a chromosomal mix and match to create better versions of every successive generation. That is causing scientists to believe that male chromosome might be extinct in the future.

But that is not to say that humanity will be extinct since female only require XX chromosomes, they can be cultivated by injecting X chromosomes into the cell.

The Clan System – an attempt at protecting the Y chromosome from becoming extinct

It is proven in modern Genetics that marriages between cousins will increase the risk of causing genetic disorders. If you want to know more, Let’s say there is a recessive dangerous gene in one person. This means that the person is carrying a dangerous abnormality causing the gene in one of his chromosomes, but the effect has not been expressed due to the corresponding gene pair Chromosome is stronger, and is preventing from the abnormality to appear and activate. This gene will remain intact and hidden unless the person keeps marrying outside the same genetic imprint. When they marry someone with the same genetic imprint, there are high chances that their children will have the defective gene activated and cause abnormality in them. Thus, marrying to the same cousins will always have a chance of producing defective genes, or rather, the defective genes to be activated, and thus, leading to abnormalities. It is not an opinion, but a biological fact.

 Is Clan System relevant today?

Just to make sure that things are on the right track, what we discussed above only proved two things:

1.     Clan system is the same as the male lineage that follows via Y Chromosome.
2.     Cousin marriages within immediate families are known to cause genetic disorders.

With that, we know that Clan system was developed thousands of years ago, and they tried to do it to protect the disorder by limiting the marriage system. It might have had its benefits in the early days, but now, when we have come far off after evolution and civilization, the system might not be relevant today, or it might be. The answer must be given by science. If there are any proofs that genetic studies found no problem with same clan marriages, then the question is raised against the Clan system.

Having said that, Clan system is scientific and still has a major say in marriages today.

By

Edward Joshua

Language Art

Kaduna State College of Education, Gidan Waya

In Affiliation with

Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria

edwardjoshua75@gmail.com

+2348105714113

28th March, Its My Birthday

I might not be the richest person in the world or the world’s president but I havehappiness, peace of mind, people like youand most importantly the gift of life. Thank you, God, for blessing me with such priceless gifts. On  my birthday, I celebrate these little but priceless things. Happy birthday to me

A CONCISE REVIEW OF DR. VICTORIA LEO GAMBO’S AUTOBIOGRAPHY: CHEATING DEATH WRITTEN AND PRESENTED BY AMOS D. BIVAN, DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH, KADUNA STATE COLLEGE OF EDUCATION GIDAN-WAYA ON THIS AUSPICIOUS DAY, 2ND DECEMBER, 2017

It is axiomatic to intone that a book is not judge by its cover but by its contents. Permit me to say that the aforementioned expression says it all about Dr. Gambo’s autobiography Cheating Death, which takes her readership into a journey of introspection with an artistically narrative skill running through the various chapters of her debut from "The Dawn" through “The Terminal Cycle" of her experiences on this tumultuous lane called life. Part one of the book presents the prologue; while Part two showcases: The dawn of the living legend, the quintessential Victoria Leo Gambo, PhD. Life in the village, At the nick of time; Drowning: the River Wonderful experience, Appendisectomy, Thyroidectomy, Pneumonia, Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar!! Part three unveils: The eight types of accidents as encapsulated thus: (1) The initial cycle, (2) The unwritten obituary (3) Accident within accident (4) Mother of all accidents, (5) Accidental accident, (6) After the crucified Christ (7) The recurrent accident, (8) The terminal cycle, and lastly, part four is the summation of this narrative.

Cheating Death, sequel to none is Gambo's brain child weaved out of the series of vicissitudes of her life, a 126 page book of the school of life. Segmented into four parts, chronicles eight accidental mishaps and victories. The aforementioned, loan credibility to Shakespeare's supposition that: "When misfortunes come, they come not as single spies, but in battalions." In the case of the quintessential Swadkasa, they did not come trickling or in battalions, but in quick successions and bouts.

The writer in Cheating Death has deployed a third person narrative point of view in her desire to convey her harrowing experiences to her readers. At a point she started her story as a narrator, by using her voice, and then at some other point introduces a narrator who tells the story - in which there are other characters who, in turn, add their own voices to the autobiography as contained in part three, of the book from page 79. It is appropriate to subscribe that:

Every life is, more or less, a ruin among whose debris we have to discover what the person ought to have been-Jose Orteha Y. Easset (1883-1955).

The book through the use of flash  back technique went down memory lane to show us how Swadkasa’s life is more or less, a ruin among whose debris we have to discover what person she ought to have been by graciously cheating on death through divine manipulations. Her humbling incidents are captured in lucid, simple and yet flambouyant words; sometimes expressed with some form of literary craftsmanship and dexterity by injecting some poetic-prose expressions to colour the autobiography. An average reader may find certain word and expressions very difficult to comprehend, the book is coloured with mostly theological, medical and literary registers interwoven into the overall fabric of the story. Its cover is beautifully designed to depict the unwritten obituary of a fallible being that cheated on death by divine orchestration, This literary piece is enlivened with a major of humour and equally solemn moments, which plays on the readers' emotions through the use of vivid imageries and appeals to their sensory impressions through the deployment of the "tactile," "olfactory," "gustatory," and "kinaesthetic" imageries, Sometimes you laugh and at times you almost weep out your heart and at some other moments you feel like stepping into the story to revert some ugly unpleasant incidents ... due to the emotion aroused in your mind.

Cheating Death is not only an avenue for a celebration of life and God's faithfulness by Dr Gambo, who had almost kissed death severally and yet, turned her back too readily on death and it messengers. But the book is also a reminiscence of her life-time testimonies and experiences tattooed for us and generations yet unborn to appreciate and appropriate the awesomeness and richness of God's mercies towards mortal beings like ourselves, The indefatigable woman, with the nine (9) lives of a cat, survived all the eight series of accidents just as cats survive mishaps that would otherwise be seriously damaging to other animals.

I crave leave at this juncture to say that this book is not only a must buy, but rather a must read, as saying this is just stating the obvious. Reading it then, will connect you to the fountain of God's mercies and graces for longevity and purposeful living on earth, where we shall one day re-echo John Donne's words that: "If ever any beauty I did see which I desired", t 'was but a dream thee." Swad, as she is seldom referred to, had also seen and attested in her third testimony "Dreams: Hell, Purgatory and Heaven" to the foregoing remark. May I end this review with these quotations:

Cowards die many times before

Their deaths;

The valiant never taste of death

but once.

Of all the wonders that I have

heard.

It seems to me most strange that

men should fear;

seeing that death, a necessary

end,

will come when it will come. -William Shakespeare

"A cat will be your friend but never your slave. " - Theophile Bautier. The indomitable Swad, is a friend to death, but not its slave!

I wish you an exciting and a fulfilled time as you savour this recipe Cheating Death and queue into the graces that abound in feasting on it.

bivanamos@gmail.com

Keep Your Identity Too Small

I finally realized today why politics and religion yield such uniquely useless discussions.

As a rule, any mention of religion on an online forum degenerates into a religious argument. Why? Why does this happen with religion and not with Javascript or baking or other topics people talk about on forums?

What's different about religion is that people don't feel they need to have any particular expertise to have opinions about it. All they need is strongly held beliefs, and anyone can have those. No thread about Javascript will grow as fast as one about religion, because people feel they have to be over some threshold of expertise to post comments about that. But on religion everyone's an expert.

Then it struck me: this is the problem with politics too. Politics, like religion, is a topic where there's no threshold of expertise for expressing an opinion. All you need is strong convictions.

Do religion and politics have something in common that explains this similarity? One possible explanation is that they deal with questions that have no definite answers, so there's no back pressure on people's opinions. Since no one can be proven wrong, every opinion is equally valid, and sensing this, everyone lets fly with theirs.

But this isn't true. There are certainly some political questions that have definite answers, like how much a new government policy will cost. But the more precise political questions suffer the same fate as the vaguer ones.

I think what religion and politics have in common is that they become part of people's identity, and people can never have a fruitful argument about something that's part of their identity. By definition they're partisan.

Which topics engage people's identity depends on the people, not the topic. For example, a discussion about a battle that included citizens of one or more of the countries involved would probably degenerate into a political argument. But a discussion today about a battle that took place in the Bronze Age probably wouldn't. No one would know what side to be on. So it's not politics that's the source of the trouble, but identity. When people say a discussion has degenerated into a religious war, what they really mean is that it has started to be driven mostly by people's identities. [1]

Because the point at which this happens depends on the people rather than the topic, it's a mistake to conclude that because a question tends to provoke religious wars, it must have no answer. For example, the question of the relative merits of programming languages often degenerates into a religious war, because so many programmers identify as X programmers or Y programmers. This sometimes leads people to conclude the question must be unanswerable—that all languages are equally good. Obviously that's false: anything else people make can be well or badly designed; why should this be uniquely impossible for programming languages? And indeed, you can have a fruitful discussion about the relative merits of programming languages, so long as you exclude people who respond from identity.

More generally, you can have a fruitful discussion about a topic only if it doesn't engage the identities of any of the participants. What makes politics and religion such minefields is that they engage so many people's identities. But you could in principle have a useful conversation about them with some people. And there are other topics that might seem harmless, like the relative merits of Ford and Chevy pickup trucks, that you couldn't safely talk about with others.

The most intriguing thing about this theory, if it's right, is that it explains not merely which kinds of discussions to avoid, but how to have better ideas. If people can't think clearly about anything that has become part of their identity, then all other things being equal, the best plan is to let as few things into your identity as possible. [2]

Most people reading this will already be fairly tolerant. But there is a step beyond thinking of yourself as x but tolerating y: not even to consider yourself an x. The more labels you have for yourself, the dumber they make you.

Notes

[1] When that happens, it tends to happen fast, like a core going critical. The threshold for participating goes down to zero, which brings in more people. And they tend to say incendiary things, which draw more and angrier counterarguments.

[2] There may be some things it's a net win to include in your identity. For example, being a scientist. But arguably that is more of a placeholder than an actual label—like putting NMI on a form that asks for your middle initial—because it doesn't commit you to believing anything in particular. A scientist isn't committed to believing in natural selection in the same way a bibilical literalist is committed to rejecting it. All he's committed to is following the evidence wherever it leads.

Considering yourself a scientist is equivalent to putting a sign in a cupboard saying "this cupboard must be kept empty." Yes, strictly speaking, you're putting something in the cupboard, but not in the ordinary sense.

Thanks to Sam Altman, Trevor Blackwell, Paul Buchheit, and Robert Morris for reading drafts of this.

FIRST AID AND THE MANAGEMENT OF BREAST CARE

BREAST CARE DEFINITION

Breast care means care given to the breast by the mother during her prenatal period. 

BREAST DISEASES

 These are the diseases which normally attack the breast e.g Breast cancer.

  

CAUSES OF BREAST CANCER

1.     Age

2.     Obesity

3.     Certain jobs

4.     Genetics

First aid management of Breast Cancer (Prevention)

1.     Eating adequate diet

2.     Exercise

3.     Getting enough sleep

Treatment of breast cancer

1.     Chemotherapy: - Medicine are used to kill the cancer cells, these are called Cyto-toxic drugs.

2.     Radiation therapy: - controlled doses of radiation are targeted at the tumor to destroy the cancer cells. This one is usually done or used after surgery. As well as chemotherapy to kill off any cancer cell that may still be around.

3.     Surgery: - Lumpectomy surgically removing the tumor and a small margin of healthy tissues around it.

            In breast cancer, this is often called breast spurring surgery. This type of surgery may be recommended if the tumor is small and the surgeon believes it will be easy to separate from the tissue around it.

SIGNS AND SYMPTOMS OF BREAST CANCER

Everyone’s breasts are different, and your breast can change with age and at different month. It’s important to get to know how your breast normally looks and feel and it will be easier to spot if there are any unusual changes for you.

1.     Lump may not be seen, but might be felt.

2.     Skin texture e.g. dimpling or puckering.

NORMAL SIGNS AND SYMPTOMS

1.     Change in size and shape (Swelling)

2.     Rashes

3.     Discharge from the nipples

4.     Pain in the part of the breast or the armpit.

C.P.R (cardio pulmonary resuscitation)

DEFINITION

-         Cardio pulmonary resuscitation is a medical procedure involving repeated compression of the patient’s chest performed in an attempt to restore the blood circulation and breathing of a person who has suffered cardioeorest.

-         C.P.R can also be defined as a lifesaving technique useful in many emergencies, including heart attack or near drowning, in which someone’s breathing or heart beat has stoped.

PURPOSE OF C.P.R.

The main purpose of C.P.R. is to safe lives or restore back blood circulation of a person that suffer heart attack or his/her breathing has stopped.

PRINCIPLES OF C.P.R

1.     First of all you remove the casualty from the danger in order to avoid lost of live (Death).

2.     Compression:- restore blood circulation. Put the person in his or her back on a firm surface. Kneel next to the person’s neck and shoulders. Dress the heels of one hand over the center of the person’s chest, between the nipples place your elbows straight and position your shoulders directly above your hand. Use your upper body weight (Not just your arms) as you push straight down on (compress) the chest at least 2 inches (appropriately 5cm) but not greater than 2.4 inches. Push hard at the rate 100 to 120 compression a minute.

3.     Air way: - Clear the air way if you are trained in C.P.R and have performed 30 chest compressions, open the person’s air way using the head- till and chin – lift maneuver. Put your palm on the person’s fore-head and gently lift the head back. Then with the other hand, chin forward to open the air way. Check for normal breathing, taking not more than 5 seconds. Look for chest motion, listen for normal breath sound, and listen to the person’s breath on your chest and ear. Gasping is not considered to be normal breathing if the person is no breathing normally and you are trained in C.P.R, begin mouth for mouth breathing. If you believe the person is unconscious from a heart attack and you have not been trained in emergency procedure, skip mouth to mouth breathing and continue chest compression.

4.     Breathing :- Breath for the person rescue, breathing can be mouth to mouth breathing or mouth to nose breathing if the mouth is seriously injured or can’t be opened with the air way open (using the head tilt, and chin lift maneuver). Pinch the nostril shut for mouth to mouth breathing and cover the person’s mouth with yours, making a seal. Prepare to give two (2) rescue breathe. Give the first rescue breath lasting one second and watch to see if the chest rises. If it does not rise, give the second breath. If it doesn’t rise, repeat the head tilt, chin lift, maneuver and then give the second breath.

Thirdly, chest compression followed by two rescue breath is considered one cycle. Be careful not to provide too many breaths or to breathe with too much force.