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Cisi Eze: Women Should Start Paying Groom Price

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“Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.”

Have you ever seen a Nigerian man leave his father and mother go to his wife’s house? Heu, Chi’m! We have been disobeying God. Imagine!

A religious country as Nigeria has gone against the word of God. Maybe that is the reason Yahweh/Allah has refused to answer our prayers for good roads and constant electricity supply. We have to retrace our steps, and I think the best way to go about this is by admitting we are still holding on to the pagan practices of our ancestors where women went to their husband’s house.

My country people, it is time to start paying groom prices, not even dowries.

A dowry is “an amount of money or property brought by a bride to her husband”. Unlike dowry, we, women, would go to the groom’s family, his people, to drop something. Hia! It is not easy to raise a man, o. O dighi mfe!  We have to appreciate these men and make them understand we value their worth.

Here are reasons why we should pay groom price:

Men are beautiful creatures
Women, have you ever taken five minutes to look at a man? God took time to carve their bodies! All that beauty and grace! They ooze sex whenever they wear agbadas, suits, or anything. And when they take it off? You get to see how gorgeous they are with broad shoulders that narrow down to sexy waists. Then their derrières are so ample… if you are not careful, you would want to do inappropriate things to them, especially when they visit. (Some of us rape them, you know? Have non-consensual sex with them, through different means – could be by drugging them, emotional gymnastics – but that is not the issue for today.)  The wonderful thing is that we make babies with these gorgeous creatures. (Wipes single teardrop threatening to fall on black T-Shirt.) Do we even deserve men?

Men “biologically” contribute to the union.
How do we get our children? Men have to contribute their sperms. Men are so powerful that they could decide to end humanity. All they have to do is decide to always use birth-control techniques, especially the withdrawal method, aka pull-out.

They are strong
“Vibrators couldn’t move heavy stuff around the house and so God decided to make men.”
I can’t recall where I came across that quote.

Men are very strong and we should be grateful for their strength. All the strength they have can be channelled to scrubbing bathrooms, washing cars, sweeping the house, name any chore -asides cooking, because obviously, culinary skills come from the vagina. Or why is there a strong emphasis on women to cook?

They financially contribute to the marriage
Society has stated men are the ones to provide for their families; ergo, they work so hard! We fail to realise that all the money they get from working hard could be channelled to their parents. It is imperative we compensate the groom’s family before the marriage.

Because
Yeah, we should pay groom price because. Just because.

They give us their names
Like, before marriage, our names are really dumb and irrelevant; this is why society believes we have to change our names, get the Mrs. Status,  before it respects us. Or is there a logical reason to change your name after marriage? Well, some people say women in Africa should change names because it helps to keep the lineage. Why should a child take only one parent’s name if he/she belongs to two people? There you have it; a woman’s surname is dumb. The least we can do is pay groom price.

I could give more reasons why we need to make some payment before acquiring grooms. Why are men even paying bride price? Why should they pay bride price when they are the ones that determine the sex of a child? They are the ones that hustle everyday in order to provide for their wives and kids. Let’s be fair and start showing we respect their worth. Who knows? They might be lowkey angry with us, women, for not paying groom price and misogyny is their cry of anger.

P.S. Do you find this ridiculous? Then, you should find paying bride price ridiculous. What is the justification behind paying bride price in the 21st century? We say we do it to express we value a woman’s worth. What worth? Doesn’t the man have worth, too? This absurd practice of paying bride price was tenable at a time when women were reduced to objects, when there was so much emphasis placed on virginity. It is the 21st century; women are more than objects

If society wants to appreciate a woman’s worth, it should let go of misogyny by updating, not erasing, all social institutions that enforce patriarchy, to ones that enable women to be seen as humans, not just two breasts and a vagina. It should stop restricting our minds based on our bodies.

When we act like human beings, society should not insult us by saying we are trying to be men. We are not trying to be men; women only seek to achieve the best things in life. Men are not a basis of comparison or competition. In fact, no one should be seen as competition because we all are different. Stay on your lane and flourish there.

We are women; we are priceless! Paying bride price, buying brides, does not make sense anymore.

Photo Credit: Dreamstime| Adou Innocent Kouadio

Cisi Eze is a Lagos-based freelance journalist, writer, comic artist, and graphics designer. She feels strongly about LGBT+ rights, feminism, gender issues, and mental health, and this is expressed through her works on Bella Naija and her blog – Shades of Cisi. Aside these, she has works on Western Post NG, Kalahari Review, Holaafrica, Mounting the Moon, Gender IT, Outcast Magazine, Rustin Times, 14: An Anthology of Queer Art Volume 1 and 2, and Sweet Deluge (Issue 2). Her first book, published by Tamarind Hill Press, UK, is titled “Of Women, Edges, and Parks”. Cisi’s art challenges existing societal norms.

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