Car + house – love – parents = marriage

Scores of young men besieged the premises of Freedom Radio in Kano on Wednesday last week in response to a promise by a young lady on the station’s airwaves that she would give a car and a house to anybody who agrees to marry her.The 22-year-old girl, Zainab Abdulmalik made the offer on Freedom Radio’s […]

Scores of young men besieged the premises of Freedom Radio in Kano on Wednesday last week in response to a promise by a young lady on the station’s airwaves that she would give a car and a house to anybody who agrees to marry her.
The 22-year-old girl, Zainab Abdulmalik made the offer on Freedom Radio’s popular programme ‘Inda Ranka’. She said anyone who is interested in the offer should go to the radio station at Sharada Industrial Estate the following day for screening. Up to 100 young men turned up, wearing their best attires.  They jostled among themselves and with the station’s security guards. One eager young man even held aloft a large photo of himself in order to enhance his chances. Daily Trust’s reporter at the scene said the boys ran after every woman they saw approaching the radio station and asked her if she was Zainab. When Zainab finally arrived at 1pm the young men mobbed her, each one saying at the top of his voice how much he loved her. Security operatives had to ferry her away from the mob.
Let us assume for a moment that all that there is to marriage is the promise of a car and a house. I forgive these youths for their inexperience in life but the promise of a car and a house deserve what academics call “further interrogation.” This is because a car is a collection of names. It ranges all the way from Lincoln Continental to Rolls Royce Delta to Mercedes 600 [which Readers Digest once described as the best car in the world] all the way to the Volkswagen Beetle. Zainab helpfully specified that the car she was offering is a Honda Hennessey.  That answers one question but there are many others. Is the car on offer a brand new one or tokunbo? If it is tokunbo, is it grade, fairly used, heavily used or is it an unserviceable car that is standing at a mechanic’s workshop?
I am not asking these questions frivolously. Some years ago Aminiya newspaper interviewed the Hausa musician Hassan Wayam who said a man once stood up during his performance and gave him a car. Wayam was told to go to Adamawa State to get the car. When he eventually arrived at the man’s house, he was shown the carcass of a car that had been standing on four stones for years. I am not saying Zainab’s car is like that but for the risk of marriage it is a question worth asking.
Now, a young lad who is so eager to get a car because he believes that “you have arrived” in this society once you are “mobile,” has he spared a thought about maintaining a car? If the car that Zainab gives out is tokunbo, he must change the tyres right away. A tokunbo car must have stood in a Belgian mechanic’s workshop for many weeks before it was shipped to Cotonou. During the trip the tyres suffered corrosion from sea spray, followed by more corrosion as it stood at a Cotonou warehouse. Most likely, it was driven into Nigeria through forests and bush paths in order to evade Customs. So apart from the tyres, Zainab’s groom must get a mechanic to check the shafts, lower arms, centre camber and steering rods. By the time the mechanic shows you the bill you could get angry with your bride, and that is before you get to the fuel black market.
Just like the car, the offer of “a house” also needs to be interrogated. An eager young man who rushed to Freedom Radio may have in his mind’s eye the picture of a mansion at Nasarawa GRA complete with boys’ quarters, guest wing and standby generator. What is on offer could turn out to be a mud-walled house with a cement plaster and wrought iron roofs. Since Zainab is from Osun State, her idea of a house could be one with roof reddened by rust and corrosive rainfall as we see from aerial pictures of Ibadan. By the time the bridegroom receives quotations from the bricklayer, mason, carpenter, glazier, plumber and electrician to get the house ready for a bridal party, he may begin to see his wife in a new light.
I was just thinking; where did these young lads get the idea that an ill-defined offer of a car and a house is all that there is to marriage? In my lifetime I have seen the progressive evolution of material accompaniments to marriage. In my early years I accompanied many brides to their homes with only carved calabashes, clay and brass pots. Vono beds soon followed, as did television sets and video recorders. In recent years I have seen a bride’s family furnishing a groom’s entire house.  This is something of a risk. Young brides’ mouths are often unrestrained; she could shove you off the bed in the middle of the night and say her father bought it, not you. Parents sometimes shower gifts on their son-in-law in order to stabilise their daughter’s marriage but Zainab’s case is the first pre-paid gift I have ever heard for a marital network service
Zainab is 22 years old. She has not even reached the age where girls grab any man they can find for a husband under the dubious maxim that “man na man.” At what stage during her short life on earth did she get the idea that the way to get a good husband is through a car and house offer? She could get a husband alright through this method but how about the small matter of sustainability? A man who agrees to marry in this way could be no better than a street blackmailer; he could come around next year and demand another car and another house as a condition for sustaining the marriage. One aspect of the story said when Zainab arrived at the radio station she chose one of the boys. So fast? I fear for her that one of the disappointed suitors could go to court, plead that he was not given a fair hearing and seek an ex-parte injunction to restrain Zainab from marrying her chosen suitor.
As for the young men who thronged to Freedom Radio, at least we have evidence that the combined propaganda tools of Kannywood, Kano’s famed soyayya literature, romantic Western novels and Indian films have all failed to impart on them the idea that love is the vehicle of choice to marriage. Actually, parents in Hausaland have struggled for ages to guide their children in marriage and to tell them that “love” is not as important as parental background, temperament, cultural compatibility and promise of financial stability. Young lads always reject these criteria in favour of love, an ill-defined passion that chemists one likened to drug addiction because they involve the same biochemical pathways. Now the youths have thrown overboard both love and parental guidance in favour of a car and a house.
Some of the young boys I saw in the picture in front of Freedom Radio are so young that they have no idea what marriage is all about beyond the cutting of a cake. It was Zainab’s fault that she placed the cut off point at 17. I once heard the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster saying on BBC Television that he would not advocate the abolishing of priestly celibacy because if people know what marriage really entails, they will agree that celibacy is easier.
Last week’s commotion in Kano is likely to have an unhappy ending. I read a follow-up story that said Zainab has been found to be a bread vendor at Singer Market. It is unlikely that her business capital will add up to a hundred thousand naira, hardly enough to buy a Honda’s tokunbo engine. There is this local praise singer who used to say that “when a man promises to give you a horse, go to his house and see if there is a tether.”