By Funke Egbemode
What is going on here?
Am I the only one seeing it?
Why are our brilliant young women not finding husbands or is it the husbands that cannot find them?
Single women who are doctors, engineers, senior bank executives, pilots, business owners (those ones are many), hardworking, beautiful, ready-to-mingle, mingling and coming up with nothing. Some of these successful women are not just financially stable, they are humble, well-mannered ladies. Why are the men looking away?
There is trouble in the marriage sector. Okay, that is not new. There will always be trouble in the place but we are able to do a Nigerian version of Jackie Collins’ The World Is Full Of Married Men. The single young men are there, just not ready. It is like being thirsty when you are surrounded with water. There are more men than women, or isn’t that what the statistics says?
These young men and their fine cars and fine shoes, well-manicured nails and smooth ways, why are they not getting married? Is it just the ‘work of the devil’ they want to do or what? Why are they just doing touch-and-go or at best graduating themselves into Baby Daddy class?
I broached the subject while with my close circle of friends at an evening hangout during the week and Uyi’s response stopped me in my tracks.
‘It is all the fault of all these Sunday School teachers, really.’
Ah, how? How did Sunday School teachers get into this mix?
‘Don’t pretend you do not know that it is the churches that are teaching these poor girls that polygamy is ungodly. That is why the whole place is filled with girls looking for miracle husbands. What is wrong with them saying ‘I do’ to the married men who are toasting them? If each willing married man is allowed to take second and third wives, the single girls’ market will be depopulated. Polygamy is a form of marriage. It is a solution, not a problem.’
Uyi is a strange deacon, trust me. His teachings and lines of thoughts always manage to throw me. So, churches should now teach polygamy? A pastor’s daughter should go and become a second wife?
‘A pastor’s daughter should stop complaining she is not married when she has received three marriage proposals this year alone. The pastor himself should stop frightening the single girls with ‘spiritual husband’ teachings. I do not know why we are all pretending that this polygamy-is-evil and second wives-are-demons teaching will find husbands for every single woman. It is not working. It will not work.’
Uyi’s ‘heresy’ is not one I am willing to follow but it is gaining grounds, sadly. A few single successful women who are tired of waiting have succumbed to temptation. A screaming biology clock can make you do things you never thought you could do. Who would have thought church girl, Anne would settle for a married man?
‘I had been dated and dumped. I had hoped and been disappointed. I had invested and lost. Then I had a fibroid surgery that scared me into action at 38. I was not being opened up to be delivered of a baby but to take out reproductive trash? Laid out in that hospital bed, recovering, not with a baby cot beside me jolted me.
I told myself I had had enough. I deserved to be happy. I could have died on that surgery table and it would not be because I was giving life to a baby! I decided that next toaster who fitted my paternity shopping list would just have to do. Unfortunately, when he showed up, he was married, but fortunately he was willing to take a new wife. I got pregnant. We opted for traditional marriage, of course and today we have two boys. He bought a flat for me eventually and we are doing well. Sure, it is not what I planned for myself but I am no longer alone or lonely. I am a mother with a man who cares for me.’
The problem with settling for less than what you want is, there is a tendency to miss happiness and fulfilment. But then even those who married young and single men have many tales of woe. A desperate single woman attempting or hoping to marry a married man just might end up a permanent side chic with no recognition or status.
A mean man, single or married, is a mean man. An opportunist and predator won’t change his spots just because he is now older and married. If he was using women at 25 when he had no money or influence, he probably will do worse now that he is 55 and rich. A single and tired woman should and must have her wits around her if she decides to take this route. A married man looking for a distraction, easily accessible sex, even sex that he doesn’t have to pay for is not a partner with potential.
She must not see him as anything more than a distraction too. He is a gist partner, scrabble game partner and tension relief. Sperm donor, yes. Just take his sperm, make a baby and ask for nothing more, then there would be no problem in Paradise. Where does that leave the poor woman? Still desperate, lonely, feeling diminished and reduced.
Then there is the economic factor. A man who graduated eight years ago at 23 is today 31 years old. He just finally moved out of his parents’ place to a mini flat, near Lagos far from where he works. He is struggling to feed and transport himself to and from work.
He is living from hand to mouth, hoping for a better paying job so he could move into a bigger apartment, buy a second-hand car and start living a life close to what he had planned for himself. Considering how long it took him to achieve a mini flat, you can imagine how long it would take him to get to that promised land, unless he gets an uncommon miracle.
My late husband and I paid just N4,800 per annum for our first home, a two-bedroom, spacious apartment in Olowora all those years ago. I did a quick check and that same size of apartment in that same location is now N3m per annum, with a smaller kitchen too!
How is a ‘casual’ graduate banker on N80,000 supposed to fund a decent apartment he can bring a wife into? The bank won’t give him a permanent employment. He has not found a better job. A king-sized mattress is N350, 000. A 55-inch television set of ‘unknown brand’ costs as much as N500,000. Even when they ‘japa’, they are living on credit and so much borrowed robes they can’t visit their parents for years.
The lives of today’s young men are hard and they are hardening the path of the single women. For instance, the female classmate of the guy who graduated eight years ago at 23 is also 31 with an uncooperative biological clock. If for instance, they are in a relationship, maybe since undergraduate days, how long is she supposed to wait for her struggling boyfriend to make an honest woman of her?
In addition to having to deal with the hard choice of becoming a second wife or choosing to ignore her body racing towards menopause and waiting for her 80k-per-month boyfriend, there is still the hurdle of sailing through a sea of men who think women are too money-conscious, and are determined that they will not give any woman ‘shishi’. Nonsense, badly brought-up boys, those ones. These overgrown babies think it is women they hurt with this attitude, even.
According to Adedayo Oderinu, the Chief Executive Officer of Redio Afinju, a man who sees nothing wrong with sitting at the feet of another man to learn ‘how and if to give the women in his life money’ must admit that a lot had already started going wrong with his life.
‘If by the age that you can be addressed as a man, anywhere past 18, your world view is still so narrow that you need other people to help you define mundane things like caring for the people in your life, your parents failed.
‘If you are in any active relationship and your active contributions (especially financial), as leader of that relationship, ever becomes something you are legislating with your partner, you should not have a partner. You desire leadership of your relationship, but you want to debate whether or not you should care for them? Women should run very far from you!
If at the age where you are ripe enough to have a relationship, you still are worried about getting returns from the care that you show your female partner, your life is not really working. Care for your partner is not a financial investment that you expect interest from. It is a duty, the duty of care. If the woman ever acts undeserving of it, say by poor character, which is open to definitions, you simply break up and move on. A man’s duty of care to his partner is a precondition for his passage into true manhood, not the maturation of his ‘preek’.’
Now, caught in the flood of predatory married men, irresponsible stingy ones and strugglers with low incomes, how exactly are we going to get the single girls married?
To be continued.
*Egbemode ([email protected])
