Nigeria's slave descendants prevented from marrying who they want

In a tragedy reminiscent of Romeo and Juliet, a couple in Nigeria killed themselves earlier this month after their parents had forbidden them from marrying because one of them was a descendant of slaves.
"They're saying we can't get married... all because of an ancient belief," the note they left behind said.
The lovers, who were in their early thirties, hailed from Okija in south-eastern Anambra state, where slavery was officially abolished in the early 1900s, as in the rest of the country, by the UK, Nigeria's colonial ruler at the time.
But descendants of freed slaves among the Igbo ethnic group still inherit the status of their ancestors and they are forbidden by local culture from marrying those Igbos seen as "freeborn".
"God created everyone equally so why would human beings discriminate just because of the ignorance of our forefathers," the couple said.