Some traditional structures in our society are designed to feed unreasonable quest for money.
There is a normalised environment of extortion and fraudulent obtainment.
Look at the umunna system, for instance. When was the last time we heard that an umunna is seeing their son or daughter through school or doing something really remarkable to strengthen the chances of a better life, for their younger generation?
But, when a daughter of a member of the umunna is getting married, they will begin to place all kinds of demands in the name of umunna list, umuada list, youth list or all those other extortionist groups created to drain people’s resources, while positioning these groups to reap where they didn’t sow. This is someone whom many of them don’t even know nor have contributed anything towards her upbringing.
If you say that the demands are too much, they will claim that they aren’t supposed to give out their daughter free of charge. But are they supposed to bankrupt a new family that requires every support they can get?
I confronted a member of my wife’s umunna 8 years ago and asked him if he allowed his son inlaw to provide all the things he is asking that I provide without exception. The man told me that he honestly didn’t and that his inlaw brought just one goat. I had confronted my supposed umunna to intervene for my two sisters. On one occasion, I undertook to offset some of those demands. On the other one, I asked if any of them contributed anything to my sister. In fact, it was my father’s timely intervention that calmed the situation.
In a way, it’s obvious that these outrageous demands are suffered more by husbands whose wives have lost their fathers before they get married. My friend, whose father inlaw is no more, is currently dealing with these irksome demands as he is subjected to ridiculous exploitation because of the crime of getting married.
Yet, we say that Igbo men don’t marry on time. How will they?
Yet we say Igbo men can do anything for money, but we create and mainstream fraudulent systems that normalise gross exploitation in the name of marriage rites.