FocusOnNaija

Son inherits 72 wives & 500 children after his father

10th February 2016

This is the story of a son who has received what might be the weirdest inheritance ever following his father’s passing – his 72 wives.
The extended family of Abumbi II, the 11th fon or king of Bafut, Cameroon, has now close to 100 wives, as he married his own in addition to his father’s.

But his dad also left him more than 500 children in bequest when he passed away in 1968.
According to tradition in the country, where polygamy is legal, when a man dies his successor inherits his wives and then marries his own queens. But although it’s allowed, fewer and fewer men take many wives .
Queen Constance, Abumbi’s third wife, told CNN :

"Behind every successful man must be a very successful, staunch woman. Our tradition has it that when you are king, the elderly wives remain to hand down the tradition to the younger wives, and also to teach he king the tradition because the king had been a prince, not a king".

Educated and well spoken, the queens are often fluent in many languages, and their appearance beside King Abumbi is part of his country’s culture.
The king is traditional ruler of the town of Bafut and its adjoining areas in the Northwest Province, Cameroon.
According to King Abunbi II, a ruler of 47 years standing:

"During colonialism other values came in, of governance, different from the traditional values we had and therefore there is this constant conflict between the traditional values and modern western values,

"My role is to blend them, to find the way forward so my subjects can enjoy the fruits of development and modernity without destroying their culture.
Without a culture, you are not a human being, you are an animal. And therefore the chieftaincy institution is the guarantor of our culture.

The palace of the Fon of Bafut or Ntoh is a major tourist attraction and is listed in the 2006 World Monuments Watch list of the 100 most endangered sites of 2006 by the World Monuments Fund.