Demographical and twinning data of an Igbo kindred during the Nigerian civil war

Abstract

In West Africa today, accurate information on twinning and related demography is still scanty. Therefore, I report a personal survey carried out among my own kindred during the Nigerian civil war. Being of the harassed Igbo ethnic group, 257 of them had fled back but six of them did not return. These returnees together with those displaced by the advancing federal forces as well as the ordinary residents constituted the survey population of 1,346 persons. Up to 58.7% were aged below 21 years. Of the 40 sets of twins identified, the general incidence was 28.5 per 1000 births. However, individual families reached rates of 31.1 and even 82.2. Some women were examples of the concept that twin-prone individuals are highly fecund. Thus, one pagan woman had 2 sets of twins, which were not allowed to survive, during 10 pregnancies, while a Christian woman achieved 9 pregnancies with 4 sets of twins, the 10th pregnancy being a 5th set born prematurely. Future researches should unravel such intricacies of twinning in all nooks of Nigeria.

Keywords

• demography
• twinning
• igbo kindred
• war time research
• historical infanticide