‘Wives for Sale: 15,000 please!’

By ‘Sola Fagorusi

My phone rang and it’s my colleague and buddy at the other end. ‘Sola, have you seen the bride price app?’, he asked me. My answer was not in the affirmative. ‘Ha, you need to see it’, he pronounced authoritatively. My wife has calculated hers and she owes me’, my friend said amidst imperceptible voice of protest by his wife at the background. I have since seen the app and of course used the web-based application and if fun was measured in distance, then the app is a marathon.

Africans and Asians are familiar with the demand for bride price and it differs based on locations. The bride price typically is money and gift given to the bride’s family before her hand can be released in marriage. In Nigeria, despite stereotypes of the high bride price from Igbo land, there are reportedly places in Onitsha with bride price lesser than N100. About two weeks ago, a premium web-based application triggered discussion about the bride price again in cyberspace. Accessible via www.brideprice.com.ng and designed by Anakle, a Nigerian based digital agency, the app according to its creators has managed to generate 5 million conversations in 5 hours and of course several reviews; this inclusive!

The app draws it peculiarity from the contextualisation of the bride price phenomenon in Nigeria. A foreigner not familiar with the Nigerian culture and street lingos may not get the joke but it is properly seated there. I guess the lawyer of Anakle must have been clairvoyant enough to sneak in a disclaimer for the app stating that “This app is a joke, and all there is to it.” It is question-based and places a premium on all the 15 questions asked with some answers resulting to zero naira sum and some offering negative sums.

For instance, the first question is that of height and one of the answers is ‘Aki & Paw Paw’, a clear allusion to the height of two of Nollywood’s famous actors who are apparently vertically challenged! Facial feature is also a consideration for the eventual bride price calculation as is skin colour. In one fell swoop, the apt subtly rebukes bleaching while promoting the black skin, as the ultimate colour here is called ‘Lupita’, after Hollywood’s newest sensation. It also goes traditional as it requires what facial quality the bride possesses and the next question has Ronaldinho as one of the options for teeth type. Nationality is also a major mark accumulator as dual citizenship attracts more sum while being an Americana offers the ultimate reward in sum. The highest education obtained question is perhaps at the heart of the controversies the app has generated. The highest mark of N100,000 is awarded to any Masters degree holder while anyone with a Ph.D gets a subtraction of N50,000 from her hitherto garnered marks. It triggered for me memory of a colleague of mine at the university who then swore never to marry a graduate. His reason bothered on ensuring he has the final say in his home. He has since fulfilled that wish; one I am sure he would get knocks for by any pro-feminism mind.

Body art and accent are also a consideration in the valuation exercise while the final bonus question sought to know if the prospective bride was any of the following – ‘club girl’, ‘Ada ada’, ‘prayer warrior’, or ‘Ada in the morning and Caro in the night’. And it is perhaps this bonus inquisition that finally sends ribs cracking. Upon submission, the app displays a blinking gourd with the message – Please wait. The elders are consulting!

Bride price issues have from the time of contemporary civilisation been a subject of nasty contention. Eight years ago, I recall reading a piece by Reuben Abati, the incumbent Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity. It is from him that I have borrowed the caption of this piece. His was a reaction to an unpaid advertorial on Page 8 of The Vanguard Newspaper of January 24, 2006. The story was titled ? Community woos suitors for “overripe” spinsters – slashes bride price to N15,000. The announcement was credited to elders of Ekpeye Clan in Ahoada Local Government Area of Rivers State. They had reportedly reached this conclusion upon realisation that there were too many grown-up ladies of marriageable age who were degree holders, beautiful and yet unmarried as prospective suitors held quick dialogue with their legs upon knowledge of what the bride price requirements were. If bride price was the core consideration for men in making the decision of when and who to get married to, then it would be fine to presuppose that all the ladies of Ekpeye Clan are already betrothed or married.

The Bride Price App has received knocks from some quarters as being sexist and objectifying and I understand there is already a litigation to have a competent court of law rule that the app be shut down. It would be interesting to see and read on how the court rules on this. It would be a test on the contemporary disposition of our court of law. The problem is not the app itself but the concept of bride price. It is a tradition that has been passed from the antediluvian age when bride prices were either in the form of labour by the intending groom and his friends on the prospective father-in-law’s farm or the period when a few cowries sufficed. Today there are cultures that have moved in tandem with the time and thus demand foreign currencies as bride price. The gods are perhaps to blame for the silence! On the flip side, are parents who of their own volition refuse to collect bride price from the groom on account that they are not selling their daughter. Those who still do are not selling theirs but are just custodians of a culture that has grown wide and wild and too big to ignore and passionately argue that it is only a symbolic gesture.

In 2004, Uganda-based MIFUMI; a non-profit organisation, had an international conference on the bride price in Kampala. Women activists from eight African countries were at the meeting. Today, MIFUMI is still in court having taken the idea of bride pricing to the constitutional court in Uganda. This is a more decent approach to fight a perceived ill in society. There is however a business lesson in all of these, advertisement is no longer conventional in form. Hitherto, no one knew Anakle despite its impressive resume as an organisation. Now, we do, thanks to this controversial application. Coincidentally, my immediate family would be paying its first bride price few days from now. I’ll keep my ears to the ground! Of course, no app. can measure the priceless value of a woman. She makes the bigger of the sacrifices inevitably. She leaves her home. She changes her name. She carries the baby for months and tends to it when it arrives. These are asides several unfair expectations society demands from her.

To the Bride Price app, I toast to wittiness, the resilience of culture, the liberty of opinions, the court of law which is the last bastion of anyone, the court of public opinion, and of course to the several women who have continued to redefine society’s often warped perception of womanhood. For the grossly offended, it won’t be a bad idea to develop an app that helps capture the marriageability of men! If that happens we would have creatively replied proponents of the bride price app.

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‘Sola Fagorusi

Sola Fagorusi  is a youth development advocate, freelance writer, accomplished debater cum coach. The Obafemi Awolowo University graduate has about 10 years experience in social entrepreneurship which straddles leadership, good governance cum anti-corruption and adolescent reproductive health. The Leap Africa alumnus is also a trained peer educator, a DESPLAY alumnus and co-facilitator. For 2 years now, he has been a technical consultant and lead judge on the Intra-Faith Peace Youth TV Debate Project facilitated by Youngstars Foundation and the British High Commission. To read his full profile, click here.