1991?
I am a husband of 35 and have searched ten working years
(since returning to Nigeria) for the kind of love we used to
know, the kind of love, which alone should lead to marriage. I
am near-concluding that it is nowhere to be found, at least, not
in this so-called oil city.
The girls here like flashy cars, correct apartments (that is, with
executive chairs, rug carpets, videos, air-conditioners) and
choppers (squander maniacs). As soon as they turn sixteen
they start clawing their way into the dating lists of men of
means, married or unmarried. As a rule, they avoid trying to
snatch men of modest income.
No bachelor (whether rich or modest, serially polygamous or
temperamentally monogamous) can hurry into marriage in this
kind of environment. It is a nightmare scenario in which a
thousand and one used rags scream Me! Me! while the few
clean ones there are weave evasively through a thousand
clutching fingers until they find properly greased hands, used
to handling napkins. And so the soiling continues ad infinitum.
Materialism. That’s the bane.
Where have husbands gone? Into themselves! At least, that’s
where I’ve gone. And others? Into the streets, money for hand.
And the sweet-sixteens, all smiles. No complaints about
scarcity of husbands here. But the not-too-sweet twenty-fives,
fussing, reading ‘Total Woman’. Good luck.
