A Popular Nigerian Feminist / Lecturer at Godfrey Okoye University, Chukwuebuka Nnaemaka Chukwuemeka is trending online after he said he wouldn’t mind if his Children bore his Wife’s Surname.

Nigerians didn’t let him finish, they accused him of being a homosexual, Woman wrapper, they went as far as accusing him of the few gay men influenced by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s fight for feminism in Nigeria.

See what he wrote below:

“When I told a friend that I wouldn’t mind my kids bearing their mother’s surname and nativity, he thought it was one of my numerous jokes. But I was serious.
As I tried to give him my reasons for having such inclination, he thought it was one of my feminist sermons. But it wasn’t about feminism.
Most of my ideas about fairness and freedom stem from my personal idiosyncracies. I am easily given to the advancement of free-thinking and liberty, one that does not infringe on another man’s rights and peace. Perhaps this is the reason I easily speak up for feminism, homosexuals and irreligious folks.
Yes, my wife would be free to bear her surname, register my kids’ names with her surname and even make her native town that of my kids’. This is not about feminism. (If feminism preaches such cause, then it is by accident that our thoughts align.) Rather, this is about me, who I am, the way I see life—a NO Big deal.
For instance, I have always preferred to identify Ọkụzụ (corrupted as Awkuzu), my mum’s town, as my native town to whoever that asks. This was not to push a feminist cause, but to avoid unnecessary cynical questions I get from some people when I tell them I am from Ụmụeri (popularly corrupted as Ụmụleri) because of the town’s history of war and violence with some of her neighbours, especially Agụleri and Ụmụọba Anam.
As a banker, I mentioned Ọkụzụ instead of Ụmụeri as my home town. And it worked for me, until Dad challenged me to rise to the task of clearing to the world the hidden virtues of his townsmen and be the voice to correct those narratives I do not want to be associated with. I agreed with him. And I am happy he was able to understand that I could decide to change my nativity to that of my maternal home based on my personal circumstances.
Culturalists may argue for order. But in an advanced world, these things work perfectly with digitalized administrative documentations. When my kids become adults, they should be able to denounce Ụmụeri and identify Akọkwa or Ihiala or Mbaise or wherever their mother hails from as their native town. The district commissioners will file their registration. And that’s it. In fact, as long as one is an Igbo and could prove it through their birth certificate, this shouldn’t be a big deal in an ideal Igbo nation.
I do not think it is by having my kids bear my name that will make my name live forever. In fact, I don’t intend to change my surname from Chukwuemeka (my grandfather) to Nnaemeka (my father). Yet, who knows Chukwuemeka!”
If my kids decide to bear Chukwuebuka as their surname, that’s their business, I won’t stop them. I only hope that by the time they start reading and writing, my book would have been ready, so that they’d read about their father’s ideas, and realise that their individual choice is more important than whatever culture or religion prescribes”.

UTAZI CHUDI

My kids can take their mum’s hometown as theirs, I really don’t have a problem with that.
But you see this ‘Utazi’ that I’m bearing, they must bear it too o. People should also ask them if it’s the vegetable they mean or something else. They must bear it o…we die here!

Things are not always as simple as they appear, if we choose to look at them more critically. I once had a conversation with a girl who had decided to be a single mother. Quiet cool. Her right. But in the course of our conversation, we were able to arrive at another dimension: the child. How would the child feel to grow up without the presence of a father? What is the child’s own right? What would s/he feel like in a society where s/he would be called “a bastard?” 
You see, my parents gave me the name of Kizito. They didn’t know the meaning. It was enough that Kizito is a saint. You won’t blame them. That’s what they know. But I grew up at a time when Kito was a popular footwear. My peers started calling me Kito. It didn’t help that my name didn’t have “meaning”. I never came to be proud of that name. In secondary school, and even University and now, people never believed that it is my “real name”. A lecturer almost gave me A slap for daring to give him my nickname when he wanted to assign me to assign me to a seminar group. But university days were worse. Lecturers and colleagues would mock a history student that doesn’t know the meaning of his name. It was only last 6 months that I found out the meaning. 
My question is simple: to what extent are parents really free to make choices to their children? To what extent aren’t they?
You decide to allow their mum register them with her surname. To what extent would they be proud of that before they grow up enough to register their dis/satisfaction and take action? They will grow up in a society where a teacher would ask them: which is your father’s name? They would have to explain that they don’t have, at such a tender age. They would be laughed at. They would rather become “victims” of your “free thinking.” Would they equally prefer their mother’s hometown and history? Before you talk about how they would be mocked heavily for denouncing their paternal home by peers (I am a victim). And if we really want to take freedom to its apex: would they even like the name you would give to them? And how easy is it to declare a new name at 17, and get the whole world and the close people that matter when the world is silent to call you what you really want?