High cost of marriage in Igbo land creating more spinsters, bachelors
It is believed in some quarters that the cost of marriage is on the high side in Igbo land. This, they claim is the reason many eligible men and women could not marry due to the huge amount of money involved.
The issue of marriage is purely a traditional matter in Igbo land and it differs from community to community. While in some communities, the traditional requirement differ if the suitor is from outside the community, in some others, it is the same for both indigenes and non-indigenes. But one vital matter is that marriage in Igbo tradition is only a communal (Umunna) affair, such that the father of the bride usually does not have much role to play but to adhere to the rules stipulated in the convention of the community.
However, it is clear that in the communities where marriage cost is high, some of them have realized the disadvantages and hence, pruned down the requirements.
Most communities in Igbo land have seen the need to reduce the cost of marriages, having observed that it was becoming an impediment to young people who had reached the age of marriage from getting married. Time was, when getting married was a burden to the youths as there was astronomical requirements to be met. That was why it was common to see men approaching 40 years of age not yet married because they did not have the resources to meet the high demands. Girls also suffered the same fate, especially the educated ones as some families expected the prospective husbands to offset a substantial part of what was spent in training her in school.
In fact, there used to be a time when communities demanded such things as bags of rice, hundreds of tubers of yam, a motorcycle for the mother of the bride, boxes filled with assorted wrappers among other things. But some of these have changed.
It is common these days to see parents just take a paltry amount from the bride price paid by their in-laws as a mark of support to the new union. But because bride price is an official recognition that a woman is married in Igbo culture for everyone to attest, it has to be accepted no matter how little. While some families collect as low as 100, others collect as high as N200,000, depending on the understanding of both parties. What indeed costs so much in marriage in Igbo land is the feeding of guests, which is outside the official requirement of the community’s list of items, as well as souvenirs shared during the ceremony.