High Bride-price in Africa: Blame our Elders in the Villages

Several of our authors including Prof Buchi Emecheta have centered their works on the Bride-price in Africa but only few have been in fervent advocacy for considerations literarily intervening to bring down costly requests usually put up by our elders in demand for bride-price and dowries. African writers and all friends of the continent who wish us well should openly speak against incessant and unreasonable demand for money which we term bride-price. We often neglect this aspect of our social life, which has become terribly demanding on us, and continues to waste the lives of our daughters who should be living happily with their heartthrobs.

The time has come when we shall all rise up against our elders in the village, who sit down and expect news of marriage of daughters they contributed nothing in rearing. No news excites our elders in the village more than that of someone is asking for the hand of our daughter, I think the war has begun already, with traditional marriages now taking place outside our hometowns, in current places of abode, the stronghold of our elders who sit down in villages and expect “settlements” (Money) is increasingly under threat.

Families who oppose traditional marriages taking place outside one’s hometown have no valid reasons to do so, after all, tradition in this sense simply means fulfilling the traditional aspect of the marriage not particularly with regards to where it should take place. People should made to get this clear, we should condemn the situation, our elders, vehemently reject the fulfillment of traditional marriages except it holds in the village for personal gains.

We also have a situation whereby people who know nothing about how a girl-child was reared would simply because he understands the child to have been educated up to tertiary level would demand for so much as a result of educational background. In the first place, educational background should not form a yardstick for determining how much bride-price should be paid for the head of a child. In first place, it baffles me on how the child nothing is known of by our elders now suddenly becomes a child of the entire village just because the issue of bride-price is at hand.

No matter how hard a single parent has worked to raise her daughter, when an issue concerns marriage she goes searching and begging elders who must not only preside over such a marriage but must also dictate how much should be involved for the workability of the marriage. Unhappy elders use the opportunity to make unrealistic demands insidiously to stall the marriage and tear the whole plan apart. High bride-price can be used to achieve this plan.

Our ladies are left with no option than to succumb to African insidious stall plans called bride-price. If the demand of bride-price must be made, our African elders must be thought to be reasonable after all, the era of slave trade is past, that is all we make them understand. Demand for non traditional items like umbrella, shoes, etc must become things of the past if our daughters are to become happily married to men of their choice.

Elders who want to live on bride-price, dowries, food and drinks from funeral should be taken care of by their own children, and must not be let lose to sit down to dictate how tradition demanded it in the past or series of precedents set in other communities. It particularly grieves me to listen to our elders ask questions on how it was when their sons went to that very village to marry a daughter of theirs. How much was demanded from them as dowries, why should there even be bargaining and haggling over a human being.

These things are increasing the number of able men in our society who are denied of marriage because they are expected to throw a very big party. We also hear there is this community in Nigeria where DJs are never allowed to play at marriages except live bands. You are there advised to include live band in plan for marriage. My advice to the elders of this village is that they should be put a stop to it immediately, music is music, no matter where the sound blares from, it still makes sense and danceable too.

Unimaginable contents in what has come to be known as marriage list should also be reasonable; a situation whereby such list contains unnecessary items and unconceivable amount of alcohols and expensive wines should be given re-consideration if our children must become some of the married couples in our society. Remember that if you unnecessary make certain unattainable demands today because you are giving out your girl-child to another family tomorrow, your male child will require you to accompany him to another family from another background entirely where you will haggle over unattainable demands to get your son married, and if you have no male child, your cousin may become a victim tomorrow, so stop the high demand of this bride-price today and you will have discouraged prostitution, HIV/AIDS spread and irresponsible life-style in our African society.