Nigeria: Some Truths About The Bride Price App

Love abroad

A good friend of mine started a long-distance relationship between Europe and Africa where they for over a year communicated over the phone, via email and many other means professing love for each other.

I was wary, simply because my friend had spent more than half his life in Europe; fundamentally there was no cultural affinity between them apart from a geographical space. Outlooks had changed due to his integration into another culture, community and society, but who knows?

When it appeared things might not work out, I thought he had invested too much in that relationship that the least he could do was go and meet with the family of his love interest and make up his mind after that.

Checking in

We went shopping for gifts and all sorts of arrangements for an introduction and he travelled over to meet the family. When he met the father, they appreciated his interest, took the gifts without as much as a thank you and then gave his companion a printed wedding list that read like greed of the world in objects and payments that baffled the mind.

There was nothing I could do but seek the wisdom of my mother, she sounded a very cautionary tone, to the effect that there was nothing in that relationship than an opportunity to milk and bilk my friend, in the end he cut his losses and ran – the event was scripted in 6 blogs that I titled, “Opening the mouth of the Father.”

Breaking the bank

The wedding list had that one item that caught my eye amongst that many other ridiculous things that I distributed in a narrative of derision and incredulity. My friend at the wedding ceremony would only be able to get the father of the bride to speak by shelling out 50,000 Naira, whilst the whole list came to over half a million Naira and that did not include the cost of the wedding ceremony and the bride price.

Blog - Opening the mouth of the father – Part 1

Blog - Opening the mouth of the father – Part 2

Blog - Opening the mouth of the father – Part 3

Blog - Opening the mouth of the father – Part 4

Blog - Opening the mouth of the father – Part 5

Blog - Opening the mouth of the father – Part 6

The Bride Price App

Which brings me to the topic of the Bride Price, because yesterday I came upon a web-based application that claimed to calculate the Bride Price of a prospective wife based on a number of attributes, achievements, looks, diction and status of the lady.

Bride Price Calculator

When I first clicked through the application, I commented on Twitter that it spoke to the ridiculousness of the things we place value on.

However, as people discussed the issue, it got to a point where there was a broad spectrum from views from the misogynist, sexist and objectification of women through to risible levity maintaining no seriousness to it apart from jocularity and laughter.

A friend then engaged me in private conversation on Twitter about the Bride Price Calculator and then persuaded me to consider putting my thoughts in a blog. Which started as the following Direct Messages on Twitter.

My views

Asking about my views on the Bride Price App, he said, “I've seen it being misrepresented as sexist and objectifying women. Be honest, is this true?”

I answered back as follows:

“There are many angles to this, looking at it with Western eyes it is sexist and objectifying women, however, not in Nigerian eyes.”

The point I am making here is the danger of conflating different cultures and then using an unrefined standard to assess another culture without first accepting there is an issue to be properly reviewed before making comparisons.

“The fact is the bride price is an unscripted reality in Nigeria that borders on greed and the ridiculous.” As evinced by my introduction to this blog.

The Bride Price App simply put online what in many cases people think when giving away their daughters and the cultural construct that feeds into making those demands without second thoughts. To see the bride price so illustrated in almost an atrociously vulgar manner was upsetting but not divorced from Nigerian reality.

“We must have an honest discussion as to how the cost of marriage harms the institution of marriage in the name of tradition.”

The question is what really determines the bride price traditionally and how have things changed to accommodate not only modernity, but the need to keep up with the Joneses and attempt to outdo others?

“However, many of these traditions have no cultural significance they are new fads of hedonism and ostentation.”

This feeds into the previous comment, we have to ask whether paying up for the bride and the wedding is of greater significance or giving the newly married a firmer foundation on which to build their marriage

“The Bride Price App is a mirror on ridiculous female statuses we use to place value on women is as marketplace objects bought for marriage.”

If we are to be honest with ourselves, a number of the options in that App have informed how the bride price is determined and what kind of wedding is planned for.

Unintended consequences

The dilemma of the bride price is summed up in Part 2 of Opening the mouth of the father, “It appeared I was to be sold a woman for a slave rather than being given a lady for a bride.”

The unintended consequence of a high bride price makes the pain of cost dampen the required utility of love in a marriage, a certain threshold can be breached where cost begins to determine ownership when love should mature partnership – I would not even delve into what might result from the former.

Critically, we must have an open honest discussion on the issue of the bride price, the wedding and most importantly the marriage, the first two are easy, usually a question of means; marriage requires work, patience, love, perseverance and with it would come joy, pain, happiness, sadness, togetherness, distance and whilst many would be at the wedding, only two can really be in a marriage.

You make it work or make it fail, hopefully not because of the cost of the bride price or the ostentation of the wedding, if you want the marriage, you probably can make it work against all odds. The Queen celebrated her diamond wedding anniversary on the 20^th of November 2007.

Opening the mouth of the father - Part 5

The fourth part of this series Opening the mouth of the Father – Part 4

This was a hard knock

Yes, we were Knocking on the door, at the gates of Nineveh of Nebuchadnezzar the Great, the doors as imposing as if impossible to open, needing 40 horses to turn the hinges, the entrance to a fortress where if we had the wrong password we would be bone meal to Cerberus the “friendly” 3-headed dog whose snarls made you quake in your boots.

With ears like that of cat burglar safe breaker we heard each tumbler drop as we deciphered to code to enter the safe, to retrieve from safe-keeping our bride. As if we were soaring to the mile high club, at 25,000 feet we got a canary but not ours, time was fast ticking away as we reached 30,000 feet and were presented with a cuckoo, not very funny, not amused, let’s play on.

An eagle flew by with its prey in its claws at 35,000 feet, if we were to go any higher, we might well reach for the stars; our bright and radiant star, the beauty came out of the highest clouds into glory at 39,000 feet at which point the quip was asking the pilot if we had enough fuel to reach our destination – there was still more to do in this ceremony, but I already had my bride beside me, if only I could now elope.

My clothes or rags on parade

Indeed, bale out we must in parachutes made from all the material purchased to make my in-laws look good for their daughter’s marriage, they even had change-ins to boot.

This list was making me listless as the MC was making a mockery of the whole proceedings and people cooed, wowed, singing the praises of the in-laws all bedecked in colours and instructions that almost drove us to distraction just weeks before – Just it was two traditional dresses for the parents designed to their tastes – that had to be right or nothing will be bright.

Do fish drink at all?

Lest I forgot the father’s mouth opened more to the tipple of fine whisky and gin than to the letting go of his prized goose. Whisky and gin can do much to a man and even I was about to be featured in a drunken orgy of negotiating the bride price as head rocked from side to side with the hat I wrought and the cane landing with thuds on the ground, even that I bought – the list, remember, it was in the list too.

Ah! The bride price, no sale price said the quip as he noted I had no cows nor yams as tradition would have dictated, the cows had been slaughtered for meat and stew, the yams pounded to a pulp – drinks would suffice, and drinks it would be.

Before I could drown away my sorrows, that small business of drinks had to be sorted and this ephemeral source of oral pleasure that had me bedwetting as a kid, discomfited the incontinent, heaped disgrace on the inebriated and had you visit the lavatory in hours for disposal was part of the bidding price.

Pour it all out

I will drink to that said the quip at which point pouring a mug of lager over his head would have been the most pleasurable thing to do, I could not get disillusioned, but someone is taking the piss.

Presentations started, the drinks were like I had conducted a smuggler’s day trip to Calais with a lorry, I was afraid we were going to leave behind us alcoholics and worse.

Whiskies and gins we presented by the carton and 3 in all, single malt scotch but not too expensive, then 6 cartons of wine, the preferred lager was Star so we had 4 cartons of those and Guinness of the large bottled variety came in 5 cartons.

The malt drink of choice was Maltina in 10 crates of 24 bottles each and soft drinks which we call minerals were offered in 15 crates, other fruit drinks in 9 cartons.

Now that we had gotten thus far in the programme and that was just part of the bride price.

To be continued...