FINALLY, LET ME SHOW YOU THE FIRST THREE CHAPTERS OF THE ULTIMATE BOOK, Psychometric Family Counselling THAT I HAVE BEEN UPLOADING PIECEMEAL

THE ULTIMATE BOOK ON FAMILY COUNSELLING AND THERAPEUTICS

BY THREE FAMILY HEADS IN BIAFRA

Dr Jideofo Kenechukwu Danmbaezue, D.Sc.

Mrs. Alice Nwakego Chineme Mbaezue, Ph. D.

Sri Andrew Okoliwkwu Awuka Okeukwu, KSJ

PART I

THE THEORETICAL BASE FOR PROFESSIONAL PRACTITIONERS OF FAMILY COUNSELLING

*AM I PREPARED FOR

RESPONSIBLE PARENTHOOD?

The Role and Duties of Parenting

*This was what the back cover of one of the earlier publications looked like.

 

IN BIAFRA, TRADITIONAL WEDDINGS ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN IMPORTED RELIGIOUS SOCIETY WEDDINGS AS IS SHOWN BELOW

 

CHAPTER ONE

 

MARITAL CUSTOMS AND LAWS IN IGBO LAND

Sir Andrew Okoliukwu Okeukwu, KSJ

A form of marriage has been found to exist in all human societies, past and present. Its importance can be seen in the elaborate rituals and complex laws that surround it. Although these laws and rituals are as varied and numerous as human cultural organizations are, there are some universals that do apply in each society. The legal function of marriage is to ensure the sexual rights of the partners with respect to each other and to define the relationships of children within a community. Marriage has historically conferred a legitimate status on an offspring. It entitles him or her to the various privileges set down by the traditions of a particular community, which includes the rights of legitimate participation in the activities of the kindred, ownership and inheritance of properties and privileges accruing to the family lineage. In most societies, marriage establishes the permissible social relations allowed to bona fide members, including the acceptable selection of future spouses. Until the late 20th Century, marriage was rarely a matter of free choice. In Western societies, romantic love between spouses came to be associated with marriage, but in most other developing nations of the world, this was not the primary motive for the choice of spouses in matrimony. One's marriage partner was carefully chosen. In Igbo land for example, many norms and mores determine the legality of each marriage!
Endogamy, the practice of marrying someone from within one's own ethnic group is the oldest social regulation of marriage. When the forms of communication with outside groups are limited, endogamous marriage is a natural consequence. Cultural pressures to marry within one's social, economic, and ethnic group are still very strongly enforced in some societies in Nigeria and other communities along the coastal lines of Sub- Saharan Africa.
Exogamy, the practice of marrying outside the group, is found in societies in which kinship relations are the most complex, thus barring from marriage, large groups who may trace their lineage to a common ancestor. Once there is any blood relationship, the engagement is cancelled. This is where the Igbo surpasses other ethnic groups in enforcing pre-marital genetical counselling.
In our traditional societies in which the African extended family system remains the basic unit, marriages are usually arranged by elders in each concerned family unit. The assumption is that love between the partners comes after marriage and more thought is given to the socioeconomic advantages accruing to the larger family from the marriage than romantic love. By contrast, in modern societies that have accepted western lifestyles where Christianity and nuclear family predominates, educated young adults now opt to choose their own mates. It is assumed that love determines proper marriage, and less thought is normally given to the socioeconomic aspects of the match. However, this has increased divorce rates due to misconceptions of the traditional values attached to the pre-literate marriage customs that ensured the longevity of marriages.

What is a family in Igbo land?

The answer is simple. “Ezi-na-ulo”, is what the Igbo call it. Literally, it simply means “members of a compound and a house”. Therefore, a family comprises those members who share their lives together within a household located in a compound.  Naturally, there is a father plus a mother of the home and a compound in which they live in and happily interact. The father is the king of his domain. He has married a wife or wives and has subsequently produced children. He takes responsibility for all their needs:

·        Shelter, Food and Clothing

·        Hospital Bills and School Fees

·        Defence and Transport

·        Loans and Investment

In short, our people are right by calling him “DIBIA-ULO” - the doctor who diagnoses and treats all the problems in his house. To be a ‘dibia’- implies a protracted training as apprentice, internship and housemanship before freedom to start one’s own medical practice. So it is implied that a teenager or an adolescent who has not endured the long tutelage under his father can never be a good dibia-ulo. Another saying of our people brings out the real job of a husband: “Okokporo anaghi ama mgbe ogara na ama ogo ya” (a bachelor hardly knows when he has passed the road that leads to the homestead of his father-in-law). What I think this implies is the need for keen observation of the local norms and mores of the community, the absence of which translates into an irresponsible husband that is not good as future son-in-law.

To be a dibia-ulo therefore:

·        One must have a compound he calls his own before contemplating marriage.

·        The bachelor must make his own nest as a fowl does when it is preparing to lay eggs.

·        A prospective husband must not only have a place to call his “ezi” but must also build a homestead, “ulo,” where he hopes to pack in with his future bride and begin to produce babies. So he must be self-reliant, independent and buoyant enough to settle all the hospital bills surrounding pregnancy and child birth.

·      It is only then that he is qualified to seek a bride. But today, what do we find; sons still living under the roof of their parents marrying. It is a shame. Some even impregnate a girl and run home to beg daddy to foot the bills for formal engagement and marriage rites.

In summary: A Family in a traditional Igbo setting comprises;

A.  A responsible man that builds a home,

B.  At least a man and a woman with their children,

C.  The wife or wives are dependent on him,

D.  He is the mechanic, the plumber and doctor of the family,

E.  He shoulders the good, the bad and the ugly in his home,

F.  His failure to take good care of the wife spells divorce and a broken home.

In societies with arranged marriages, the universal custom is that someone acts as an intermediary or matchmaker. This is very true in Igbo communities, whereby the intermediary's chief responsibility is to arrange a marriage that will be satisfactory to the two families represented. Some form of dowry or bride price is almost always exchanged in societies that favour such arranged marriages. This is more like an insurance policy that preserves the life of the marriage when problems arise! On the other hand, among the educated class, especially those that want to exhibit their acquired western education, youths are allowed to choose their own mates. Dating is permitted so that spouses-to-be meet and become acquainted with their prospective marriage partners and members of their families. Successful dating may result in courtship that usually leads to formal traditional marriage rites and religious weddings.

In Igbo land, marriage is a village affair or in the least, a kindred affair, whereby it is not only the bridegroom that is the husband of the new bride but all his kinsmen and women. The woman is called: ‘our wife’ by the people. Therefore to marry in our culture entails pre-marital investigations or research into the family backgrounds of both bride and groom. This is the unique aspect of traditional marriage that benefits the couple. It is the most advantageous aspect of Igbo wisdom. Whereas Western societies resort to professional marriage counsellors and family therapists, we have this pre-marital counselling done for the couple before their formal wedding.

It has so many advantages:

1.   It excludes genetic diseases if properly conducted,

2.   It pre-empts anti-social behavioural traits in the offsprings,

3.   It protects most of the community’s religious taboos,

4.   It enforces traditional norms and mores,

5.   It protects the newly married bride from inordinate jealousies, and finally

6.   It publicises that one is no more a bachelor or a spinster.

In our culture, the first is the most important parameter for the marriage to get the blessings of parents and members of the African extended family system. One really wonders how our ancestors were able to fathom the need for this PRE-MARITAL GENETICAL COUNSELLING long before the arrival of the first white man on the shores of Africa and prior to the arrival of Western medicine, psychology, sociology or anthropology and Christianity.

Some of these shall be the focus of our discussions in this comprehensive textbook on scientific family counselling. As an existential family therapist of thirty-five years standing and the father of seven married sons and three daughters, let me share my varied experiences of counselling them with fellow parents-to-be. We need to go back to our roots to reduce the current increase in divorce rate and failed marriages.

CHAPTER TWO

THE SOCIOLOGY OF FAMILY LIFE

Mrs. Alice Nwakego Chineme Mbaezue

Introduction

Family as a sociological construct is the smallest social relationship that identifies those united through bonds of kinship or marriage. This simplest version of the concept of ‘family’ is represented by the nuclear variation and is present in all societies, primitive or civilised. Even the sub-human species, our closest cousins on the evolutionary tree: chimpanzees and gorillas have nuclear families.

Ideally, a family provides its members with protection, companionship, socialisation and security. The structure of the family and the needs that the family fulfils vary from society to society. The nuclear family—a husband, his wife and their children is the main unit in some societies. In others, it is a subordinate part of an extended family, which also consists of grandparents, uncles, brothers and other relatives. This is the commonest variation in Africa, especially among the Igbo of the South-East of Nigeria.

A third family unit variation that has forced its presence on us is the single-parent family. In this aberration, men and women who are incapable of maintaining marital relationships arrange to have children without legal or formal marriage. In some others, children live with divorcees, a widowed mother or father who caters for them without the help of the opposite mate. The latest in the country’s capital is concubinage with children reared by ‘live-in lovers’, without formalising the co-habitation by either traditional or religious rites of marriage.  In Nigeria today, this type is referred to as “Abuja marriage.” It definitely leads to single parenthood.

The Historical Development of Families

Social scientists, especially anthropologists, have developed several theories about how family structures and functions evolved.

·        In prehistoric hunting and gathering societies, two or three nuclear families, usually linked through bonds of kinship, banded together for part of the year but dispersed into separate nuclear units in those seasons when food was scarce. The family was an economic unit: men hunted, while women gathered and prepared food and tended children. Infanticide and expulsion of the infirm that could not work were common.

·        Some anthropologists contend that prehistoric people were monogamous, because monogamy prevails in non-industrial and ethnocentric forms of family organisation in some contemporary societies to date.

·        Social scientists believe that the modern nuclear family structure developed largely from that of the ancient Hebrews, whose families were patriarchal in structure, while later some cultures changed to matriarchal versions due to economic adversities whereby an impoverished man could not singly fend for nor care for a pregnant woman. (For details, see Patrilineage and Matrilineage). The family resulting from the Greco-Roman culture was also patriarchal and bound by strict religious precepts. In later centuries, as the Greek and then the Roman civilisations declined, so did their well-ordered family life.

With the advent of Christianity, marriage and childbearing became the central concerns of moral theologians and canonists, usually regarded as experts in religious teachings that deal on family life and the rearing of children. The purely religious nature of family ties was abandoned in favour of civil bonds after the Reformation, which began in the 1500s. Most Western nations now recognise the family relationship as primarily a civil matter.

The Modern Family

The modern family differs from pre-western forms in its composition, size, functions and the roles of husbands and wives. The only aspect of the family that continues to survive all change is the provision of affection and emotional support by and to all its members, particularly infants and young children. Specialised institutions now carry out most of the duties performed by the agrarian family: economic production, education, religion and recreation. Early education, career prospects and professional jobs usually separate members of the family. This is because family members often have to get employment and so work in different occupations and in locations away from the home.

Primary, secondary and tertiary education is often provided by the state, by religious organisations or private groups. Religious training and recreational activities are available outside the home, although both still have a place in family life. The family is still responsible for the socialisation of children. Even in this area of family life orientation, the overwhelming influence of peer groups, current electronics gadgets and the print media have assumed a larger role than is necessary, most being diversionary and non-beneficial.

© Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

Marital Status in U.S. by Age and Sex

This chart shows the percentage of American women and men in various age groups who are married, divorced, or widowed, or who have never been married. Only a small fraction of the U.S. population (less than 5 percent) over age 65 has never been married. The opposite is the case in Africa.

Microsoft ® Encarta ® Encyclopaedia 2004. © 1993-2003 Microsoft Corporation.

Family Sizes and Economic Emancipation

Family composition in industrial societies has changed dramatically. The average number of children born to a woman in the United States of America for example, fell from 7.0 in 1800 to 2.0 by the early 1990s. In other countries in Europe, some couples do not want any children at all, while in Africa and other Third World countries it is a crime not to marry and have as many children as God permits a couple, and this results in very large and unmanageable families. The remote causes of poverty and economic adversities stem from this primitive and naïve emphasis on ‘having as many children as God allows’

Consequently, the number of years separating the births of the youngest and oldest children has declined. This has occurred in conjunction with increased longevity. In earlier times, marriages normally dissolved through the death of a spouse before the youngest child left home. Today, husbands and wives potentially have about as many years together after the children leave home as before. Some of these developments are related to ongoing changes in women’s roles.

Women in all stages of family life have joined the labour force. Rising expectations of personal gratification through marriage and family, together with eased legal grounds for divorce and increasing employment opportunities for women, have contributed to a rise in divorce rate worldwide.  The frequency of divorce cases is not peculiar to advanced countries. The increase in broken marriages, single parenthood and widowhood is now so high that most religious groups cannot cope with pastoral counselling. In the 20th Century, extended family households declined in prevalence. This change is associated particularly with increased residential mobility and with diminished financial responsibility of children for ageing parents, as pensions from jobs and government-sponsored benefits for retired people became more common.

The Rise of One-Parent Families

By the 1970s, the prototypical nuclear family had yielded somewhat to modified structures including the one-parent family, the stepfamily and the childless family. One-parent families in the past were usually the result of the death of a spouse. Now, however, most one-parent families are the result of divorce, although some are created when unmarried people bear children. In 1991, more than one out of four children lived with only one parent.  Most one-parent families, however, eventually became two-parent families through remarriage.

A stepfamily is created by a new marriage of a single parent. It may consist of:

·        A parent and children and a childless spouse,

·        A parent and children and

·        A spouse whose children live elsewhere, or

·        Two who collaborate to end their one-parent families.

In a stepfamily, problems in relationship between non-biological parents and children may generate tension: the difficulties can be especially great in the marriage of single parents when the children of both parents live with them as siblings.

The Arrival of Childless Families

For many years, the proportion of couples that were childless declined steadily as venereal and other diseases that cause infertility were conquered. In the 1970s, however, the changes in the status of women reversed this trend. Couples often elect to have no children or to postpone having them until their careers are well established. Therefore, the novel preponderance of childless families may be the result of such deliberate choices by the concerned couples.  In addition to this is the availability of birth control measures and easy access to professional counselling and appropriate contraceptive drugs.

Since the 1960s, several variations in the family unit have emerged. More unmarried couples are living together, before or instead of marrying. Some elderly couples, most often widowed, are finding it more economically practical to cohabit without marrying.

Homosexual couples also live together as a family more openly today, sometimes sharing their households with the children of one partner or with adopted or foster children. Communal families, made up of groups of related or unrelated people, have long existed in isolated instances (see Communal Living). Such units began to occur in the United States during the 1960s and 1970s as an alternative life-style, but by the 1980s, the number of communal families was diminishing.

The variation is not possible in Africa for close-knit kinship system forbids it. Some norms and mores prohibiting inter-marriage between consanguineous relatives are enforced here more than in any other area.

Worldwide Innovations

All developing countries, especially in Africa and Asia are witnessing innovations that are not only nauseating but also sacrilegious to the average traditionalist and debilitating to the ethos of the rural dweller! Industrialised nations are experiencing the shift in family lifestyles similar to those found in France, United Kingdom and the United States of America. The problem of unwed mothers—especially very young ones and those who are unable to support themselves—and their children is an international one, although improved methods of birth control and legalised abortion have slowed the trend somewhat. The predominantly Muslim Middle East are secluded from these anomalies because they accept polygyny and women accept their place in the home. China and Japan have their ways of coping with the innovations.

The value system of the younger generation looks down on the marriage institution and religion does not play the crucial roles it did before now! Consequently, marital breakdowns, separations and divorces are rising astronomically in every country worldwide. Moreover as celibacy is flagrantly flouted by so many, paedophilia is equally now in vogue, increasingly, sexual immorality exists even where religious and legal impediments to them are strongest. 

Today, smaller families in terms of numerical strength and a lengthened post-parental stage are found in most industrial societies. Urbanisation and social anomie combine forces to denigrate stability in marriages and stable family life. Unchecked population growth in developing nations threatens the family system. The number of surviving children in a family has rapidly increased as infectious diseases, famine and other causes of child mortality have been reduced. Because families often cannot support so many children, the reduction in infant mortality has posed a challenge to the nuclear family and to the resources of developing nations.

A Large family size contributes to the impoverishment of most rural African communities. But the greatest cause of poverty in third world countries is poor governance by insensitive political leaders who pilfer their countries natural resources.  There are cases where a nuclear family has as many as thirteen siblings! In some Igbo communities, as well as other nation groups in Nigeria women get titles for bearing and raising more than ten children. In such rural communes, the idea of restriction on the number of children a couple should have is an anathema. Family planning and other such health or socio-economic calculations are jettisoned to the young mothers chasing the title “Igbu Ewu Ukwu”, that is “killing a goat to honour the waist woman for her ability to give birth to many children” In other words, it is a sure sign of superiority in feminist circles and the crown of motherhood! The biological mother of the author of this book has eleven children; 4 males and 7 females! Who can convince our sisters and wives to stop chasing this all-important title? Again, it is done to avert the fear of a husband taking a second wife because he needs to have many children. Large family size is rooted in our ‘Igboness’, despite our education and self-acclaimed westernisation!

A UNIQUE MATRILINEAL LINEAGE AMONG IGBOS OF AFIKPO

In Ehugbo, an agrarian community, the hoe ogu and its smaller sister uwelle rank second to the machete oge in farm work. In Ehugbo cultural life, the woman is the hoe handle the egu while the man is the iron piece the ogu.  Without the female-folk the male-folk  cannot perform effectively. At birth and during the ululation okokoriko, the final chant for a female child ends with ulo mue my own house. Because of the matrilineal relationship ikwu in Ehugbo, all the children delivered of one woman are of the same ikwu as the woman.

On the other hand, a male child’s ululation chant ends with onye oke mue – literally, the one who stands for my share. The full meaning of this expression is manifested in adult life when he gets married and has children. Though he is the biological father of the children, they are related to their mother. Thus in a nuclear family of five offsprings, they and their mother are of the same ikwu, while the father is alone, making a ratio of 6:1. So as the woman’s family roots increase through her, the man’s root remains stagnant. For a better clarification, let us assume that the woman of this write-up is of the Ibe Awo kindred and the man (husband) is that of Ibe Okwu.  At present, there are thirty such matrilineal relations ikwu in Ehugbo.

In summary, in this ancient community, inheritance of land and some other items of property, landed or movable, is generally matrilineal among the Afikpo people of South-East of Nigeria. It is not very common in other rural areas.

For more information and Cross References in Parenting Duties, read these:

• The parenting instinct, see Instinct
• Neglect or harming children, see Child Abuse
• Deficient family settings, see Family (sociology); Single Parents; Homosexuality; Foster Care
• For how parents negligence affect children’s behaviour, see Child Development; Personality / Disorders
•For legal duties of parents to children, see Parent and Child
•For social programmes for children’s well-being, see Child Welfare
• For comprehensive commentaries on Child Psychology by writers and experts on parenting and child development, see Benjamin McLane Spock; Anna Freud; Maria Montessori; Donald Woods Winnicott

THE ORIGINAL SATIRICAL DEDICATION

THAT THE PUBLISHER THREW OUT

To all lovers whose hearts had been broken before.

It is definitely not the end of the world as they would soon find out. Adam’s heart was the first to be broken! He survived it even though he lost his composure and therefore refrained from naming any children his wife bore until the arrival of the one “in his likeness and in his own image“; whom he quickly named; Seth. Joseph, the Carpenter, also survived his marital crisis when he listened to a midnight divine counselling from an angel and implemented what he was told in the dream. Your broken hearts can also be mended by this book.  

 See KJV of the Bible

To all Religious Leaders whose pastoral careers had been dented.

The fact that they witnessed the collapse of marriages; whose ceremonies they presided over barely three months after their high society celebrations; does not make news. It is common all over the globe. That the wedding was the talk of the town did not preclude the crash because the personalities of the partners were not evaluated by psychological tests and so they were not matched socio- economically nor psycho-politically. This book provides alternative remedies!

To all prospective bachelors and spinsters of this global village,

Who deserve better pre-marital counselling that should correspond with the emerging trends in romantic love. Physical attraction alone that leads to indulgence in pre-marital sex spells social insecurity for those lacking emotional maturity. This is one of the remote causes of the current desecration of the marriage institution that precede separations and divorces in most countries of the world. This psychometric book is a prophylactic approach to remedy the social malaise whereby couples are enduring their marriages instead of enjoying them. Buy and give copies to your loved ones. Good Luck!

INTERDISCIPLINARY PEER-REVIEWS

The psychological tests developed by my professional colleague deserve annual reviews in our ever-changing world. They definitely need enculturation for those communities whose socio-cultural milieus differ significantly from the Igbo world-view in which they were synthesized. Besides this extraneous variable, I congratulate this revolutionary clinician, Flt Lt Dr J. K. D. Mbaezue (rtd), who rejected so many teaching appointments and settled for the tedious job of providing indigenous inventories, scales and tests for the counselling world. I was the first to get his psychological test on marriage compatibility, which he developed in Abakaliki in 1984. He has come a long way. He belongs to the second genre of Nigerian-trained clinical psychologists after Prof. P. Omoluabi of the University of Lagos and I of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka who belong to the first generation. He has been in private practice since graduation in 1982/83 academic session, beside the three years civil service scholarship beneficiaries do. I once gained from his expertise in existential family therapy when ‘brain-drain’ and ‘seeking for greener pastures’ rocked the ivory towers of this nation. It was a wonderful experience. I wish I had earlier benefited from all his family programmes in my youth. I highly recommend them. Master his psychological tests to become effective in family counselling.

Prof. Bernice N. Ezeilo, Professor of Clinical Psychology, UNN.

Sir Kenez 007 was my admirer way back in 1973 without my knowledge. I only got to know this after his numerous visits to our alma-mater to seek my counsel in all his research efforts many years later. I have followed his clinical career since 1979 when he gained admission into the School of Medicine, College of Medical Sciences of the Ugbowo Campus of University of Benin.  He is the first postgraduate of a Medical College in our noble profession. This twenty-five year product, the first of its kind in Africa authenticates his ingenuity in private practice. I had the unique privilege of criticising, modifying and shaping his standardisation methods. We disagreed occasionally. He understood and appreciated them in good faith. Enjoy the fruits of our academic rigmaroles. They will make your marriage and family life happy self-fulfilling. He also has three career psychological tests for school guidance counsellors.

Prof. Peter Omoluabi, Professor of Clinical Psychology & Dean, Soc. Sciences, UNILAG

Dr J. K. Danmbaezue is my military mentor and an elder brother. We confide in each other. For years, I wondered why he refused lecturing in academic institutions as his peers did, where he could have reached the professorial position that he deserves. Today, I am wiser. I quartered him for the ninety days he spent in Lagos to see that this book is a masterpiece. I criticised so   many of his radical formats. Thank God, his publisher eventually convinced him to toe my line. Definitely, this book will help me as well as other pastors in our ministries.

Pastor Nicholas Mbaezue-Daniel, General Overseer, Evangel Chapel, Lekki Area, Lagos.

This book can be divided into three sections as we have in medicine, namely;

Part I in our medical parlance is the same as ANATOMY & PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE,

Part II in like manner is exactly the THEORY& PRACTICE OF FAMILY THERAPY, while

Part III is CLINICAL IVESTIGATIONS, DIFFERENTIAL DIAGNOSIS AND PSYCHOTHERAPEUTICS.

I can now say that we have a new profession midwifed by this radical psychologist who never ceases to amaze me with alternative ways of looking at everything. He animates his environment and turns a depressive occasion into a vibrant one with his creative jokes and anecdotes. I assure you, he has a bagful of them at anytime.  ‘Laughter is the Best Medicine’ is his gospel, furthermore his presence in any gathering turns into a hilarious one punctuated with therapeutic vibes from all branches of knowledge. The DEDICATION page of this book proves me right. However, don’t take him on religious diatribes unless you have made up your mind to become an apostate. He was dreaded as a reincarnation of Martin Luther and so he left the seminary.

Prof. Alexius C. J. Ezeoke, Emeritus Professor of Chemical Pathology, UNEC / UNTH, Enugu.

“Dr Danmbaezue and his colleagues have shown that Marriage & Family Counselling can be scientific like other branches of medicine. It is to our credit that our continuous interaction with him throughout our ten-year research on HIV-AIDS has paid off. He has shown his ability to transform a profession many regard as a subjective one into an objective, quantifiable and replicable one. The psychological tests he developed and standardised over a period of twenty five years are the tools that have raised the Counselling Profession into an enviable one.”

Prof. Bede C. Ibeh, Professor of Paediatrics, Fmr. DVC UNEC & Dean of Medicine, UNTH, Enugu.

 “I didn’t know what the word ‘workaholic’ implied till the third year of my marriage to Dr Kenez. Now, I am a professor when it comes to explaining it. Combine a divergent thinker and a perfectionist, mix the result with a radical revolutionary and add a pinch of enthusiasm in academic excellence, what you get is a workaholic.  Workaholics do not look at the clock when deadlines are to be met. A page is read and re-read a hundred times if that is what it costs to have an error-free script. God save any secretary that marries such a human machine. Thanks to the arrival of laptops, I have been relieved of taking shorthand notes at midnight and transcribing them before noon the next day! I doff my hat to the wizards who  invented these secretarial gadgets called; computers. They came to my rescue. However, the silver lining in our home is that he is very humorous when the task is finished. He then becomes human once more by metamorphosing into a laughter-machine churning out jokes that are not only sarcastic and romantic but at times heretical and sacrilegious. This book is his seventh, whereas we have only three children by choice. May be when other women count their children, I’ll have to add seven to the three human beings to give me a winning number of ten.” He has no bank accounts and insurance policies. I gave him this title; ‘Ph.D in everything’ when he expounded his theory, ‘a man who has five mouths to feed 7760 hours annually is already operating five bank accounts’. Do you agree?

Oyiridiya I of Umuelechi a.k.a Mrs. A. N. C. Mbaezue, HOD, Business Education, ESCE (T) Enugu.

The eagle has landed. The publication of this masterpiece is a realisation of my utmost dream. Neophyte parents and grandparents can now give their progeny a wedding gift more precious than gold and silver. I know that some cellular phones cost more than two hundred thousand naira, yet young adults buy them. Our book forestalls all the errors such youth often make in selecting marriage partners. They are easily misled by the glittering appearances and sex appeal of their would-be spouses. They are mistaken. I know, because I have ten such youths from my groins. Incompatibility in thoughts, words and deeds are the foundation stones of an insecure marriage destined for heartaches, heartbreaks and eventual divorce. The older generation hadn’t the opportunity of using psychological tests to evaluate their choices of life-partners. Now, the younger generations have no excuses. “Had I known; blab – blab – blab” is only for fools who refuse to use the contents of this book on the issue. Avoid the mistakes we made. Use them to select the best option of a life-time partner and make the necessary psycho-socio-economic   adjustment you need before signing on the dotted lines.  Among the Igbos, the words of elders are often the words of wisdom. God guide you if you heed my advice.

Sir Andrew Okoliukwu Okeukwu, KSJ International, DURURAKU I of Oru West LGA. Imo State.

A hunter shot down an eagle in a typical tropical forest in 1969. Fate, however, still led him to the nest of the female eagle he had shot. He rescued the hatchlings, three in number, he saw in the nest. He took them home and asked his wife to rear them as other semi-domesticated hens they had. The mother-hen taught the eaglets to feed as her chicks did.

Of the three, only one survived for two years. One was carried by a kite. The other was lost in a torrential downpour during the rainy season. The sole survivor turned out to be a male at a year and half and wrestled to death another kite that swooped down to steal another chick. The hunter dotted on it for that bravery, but he never regretted being the murderer of its mother. 

The brave eaglet fed by scratching the ground and eating worms or insects as the mother hen had taught her brood. One day, a white-headed real eagle swooped down cackling; you don’t belong there, look at your wings, come off the ground, you belong to the sky, I’ll teach you to fly and feed like a royal eagle and hunt like me.

The brave eaglet swung into action. After five minutes of stampeding and fluttering its wings, hopped onto a nearby log of wood and took its first flight in two years of captivity and soared into the sky. He looked down on the hunter, his wife, the mother-hen and its chicks as if bidding them goodbye.

That brave eaglet that flew off to independence is Dr Kenez, the Hunter is Nigeria, the hunter’s wife is Nigerian Universities Commission, the mother-hen is NAP, Nigerian Association of  Psychologists and the chicks are the numerous classroom, chalk and blackboard professors. You can win two hundred dollars if you mail to us the correct identity of the mother eagle. Use our e-mail or telephone numbers shown in this book. Attach a scanned copy of your purchase receipt.

Barr. James Mmegwa, LLB (London 1959), Retired District Attorney, Ihiala LGA, Anambra State.

“Ägunabu Umuelechi, Dr Kenez, is my protégé and a war veteran of Degema Strike Force of the Biafran Commandos (BA 6532) during the fratricidal civil war in Nigeria. Kenez does not fully accept the common aphorism; He Who Pays the Piper Dictates the Tune. Rather, he emphatically insists; A Piper Who Rejects a Pay, Plays His Original Tunes.

He sees alternatives where others do not. That is his trade mark. For example; The Igbo say that a baby sitter employed to carry a newborn has no need to stay any longer when the infant dies. Most people agree, but Dr Kenez disagrees! He has two more alternatives; the babysitter more often than not, is a female and so she can wait till another baby is born. If the waiting passes five years and there is none, then she can rightly depose the madam of the house and bear a child for the man who employed her. Don’t laugh!

Psychometric Family Counselling, a Kenezian Approach” is the actualisation of that Kenezian philosophy of life. Since our Ministers of Education and other Educational Administrators have refused to play their roles and duties as regards the ever-increasing rates of divorce nation-wide and internationally, a solution has been provided by this original thinker after twenty-five years of research. This type of textbook has been long overdue in our Colleges of Education and Universities, because there was no standard book for lecturing, training, examining and producing competent Marriage and Family Counsellors. That excuse is now history!

The curriculum for training out scientific counsellors and efficient therapists is here at last. Therefore, the ball is now in the courts of the NUC, our Educational Administrators and our Commissioners for Social Development, Youths and Sports to canvass for a unit in every tertiary institution to stem the tide of family disintegration worldwide. The era of no pre-marital counselling for our beloved children is gone. All Government and NGOs as well as Religious Organisations, now have the appropriate instruments and tools to slow down the pandemic of pathological marriages resulting in separations and divorces. Here, I rest my case.

Onowu Dr Christopher A. Ezike, FRCS (London 1955), Emeritus Surgeon and President, HAFANI.

 

The production cost of this comprehensive textbook is; 991.000 man-hours plus $180 per copy of the coloured ones. So, our cover price of $200 is very cheap when compared to the cost of wrist watches, ear-rings, wedding suits or gowns and cakes or the benefits new couples derive from its well-researched content that ensures a stable and happy marriage. This is the best birthday or wedding present for your lovely children. For students who want to become professional counsellors, it is a worthwhile investment that will earn them a living.

MAY THE ALMIGHTY CREATOR REWARD EACH OF US WITH PEACE AND LONGLIFE!

CALL FOR FOUNDATION MEMBERS OF FAMILY LIFE COLLEGE

After several years of conducting family counselling and therapy services, we have decided to tackle the problem head on by establishing an institute where the youth can be given the opportunity of learning first hand what marriage is all about every long vacation for ages 15 - 25. Join us today.

THE MISSION STATEMENT OF FAMILY LIFE COLLEGE

Every individual nature is part of the cosmos. To live virtuously means to live in accord with one's nature, to live according to the natural and eternal laws the designer of the universe intended by employing truth and right reason in all we do. Because passion and emotion are considered irrational movements of the soul, the wise individual seeks to eradicate the passions and consciously embrace the rational life. “True law is right reason in agreement with Nature; it is of universal application, unchanging and everlasting; it summons to duty by its commands and averts from wrongdoing by its prohibitions. . . . There will not be different laws at different countries or communities, or different laws now and in the future, but one eternal and unchangeable law will be valid for all nations and for all times.” The laws governing all living things; birth, growth, respiration, movement, nutrition, excretion, reproduction and finally death hold sway in every place on planet earth under normal temperature and pressure. Humans have the same anatomy and physiology despite our differing languages, child-rearing practices, skin colour, racial differences and social statuses. We are the offspring of the Almighty Creator of the macrocosms and microcosms we share. Our survival in our variety of physical environment follows the same laws. No man is an island. We need each other!
Rev. Prof. J. J. Kenez also contends that natural laws are sacrosanct for they were made by the Almighty Architect and Engineer who created every being on planet; EARTH. They are divine and eternal; because they are universal and are no respecters of places and times of birth, parentage, race, educational level or religion! There are so many self-evident examples; the movement of the sun and moon regulate the hours of day, night, weeks, months and years; so also do gravity, temperature, pressure, emotion, motivation, conception, pregnancy, labour and birth regulate family life. If anyone disagrees, let him provide evidence to the contrary. The founders of FAMILY LIFE COLLEGE, therefore, posit that human slavery, in whatever form it is used to deny any Homo sapiens and others their fundamental human rights, was/is and will forever remain illegal! Caste systems must be abrogated both in civil and religious circles all over the world to arrive at;

·        ONE ALMIGHTY CREATOR, ONE CREATED UNIVERSE, ONE HUMAN FAMILY,

       ONE GLOBAL FAITH   and   ONE   MODE   OF   WORSHIP; is our creed

·        SERVICE TO HUMANITY INTERNATIONALLY, is the lifestyle of all members,

·        LOYALTY TO THE ABSOLUTE TRUTH, in every thought, word or deed is our ethics  &

·        OBEDIENCE TO NATURAL & ETERNAL LAWS OF THE CREATOR, is our gospel

If you want to be a foundation member of the board of directors for this humanitarian FAMILY LIFE COLLEGE send us a proposal of what you can contribute and attach a brief CV, your contact addresses and a current passport sized photo of yourself.

Two Previous Booklets on Marriage

YOU CAN ONLY GET THE BOOK IN PERSON AS IT IS TOO LARGE TO UPLOAD ON TO THE INTERNET SITES I HAVE. 

Write me, if you know how to do otherwise, i am still a novice.... contact me via ...................saintkenez@yahoo.co.uk ........ 

GOD BLESS ALL OF US AS WE MAKE THE BEST DECISIONS OF LIVING A HEALTHY, SUCCESSFUL AND HAPPY FAMILY LIFESTYLES.