Time to subsidise marriage

As the Nigerian Labour Congress’s (NLC) protest against the removal of fuel subsidy suffers low patronage from Nigerians, I wonder if advocating for the introduction of marriage subsidy in northern Nigeria will suffer such fate from parents and daughters outrageously hiking the cost. Marriage been the oldest institution known to man have gone through so […]

As the Nigerian Labour Congress’s (NLC) protest against the removal of fuel subsidy suffers low patronage from Nigerians, I wonder if advocating for the introduction of marriage subsidy in northern Nigeria will suffer such fate from parents and daughters outrageously hiking the cost.
Marriage been the oldest institution known to man have gone through so many changes over time to include so many requirements that keep getting smuggled through it borders day in day out. Depending on societal norms, neglecting any of the requisites may disqualify prospective spouses from getting married.
In places such the highly conservative north, where so many religious and cultural prohibitions exist, where morality with respect to sexual relationship is as precious as a pearls, where the unchaste out of greed prefer only the chaste as wives, where unfortunately, when it comes to picking a wife, the graduate ladies are still been stigmatized and looked with suspicion even by the educated, where it’s now becoming rare to see friends, family members and neighbours getting married, where the number of unmarried and divorcees keeps soaring, there is need for a rethink about the whole new ideologies and requirements we’ve smuggled into this institution.
It’s really sad how most Northerners now see marriage as a profit and lost venture instead of a mutual institution. Parents and daughters prefer the number of digits succeeding a suitor’s salary and account to his possible achievement in the near future. In return, suitors are now on a retaliation spree. Seeking only daughters of rich and influential figures. It seems a defeat of the idea of marriage for love. A whole new ideology about marriage for money at the expense of mutuality has now evolve. An ideology built on the foundations of fantasies, unachievable and unrealistic dreams.
In times like this, only a person disconnected from reality on ground denies the Alarming number of unmarried youth craving to marry, the unprecedented number of marriages that now last only weeks or months. The pressure on parents with daughters approaching 30’s or in there early or late 30’s still searching for soul mates. The truth we’ve been vehemently denying is, if something is not done about this trend, something will definitely happen. What will that be? I guess our sons and daughters will resort to finding other illegal means to enjoy the incentives marriage comes with. This of course is already rampant or they may resort to things like lesbianism and homosexuality.
In reality, it’s time we face the expenses attached to getting married and the high expectations from our parents and sisters head on. It’s about time we subsidies the cost of getting married in northern Nigeria and realize that even as marriage minus money is a mess, money minus mutualism, makes no marriage marvelous.

Yahaya Idris, Abuja, [email protected]