DEAR NIGERIANS, MARRIAGE ISNT AN ACHIEVEMENT. By; Blessing Oyinkansola Ajagbe

  DEAR NIGERIANS, MARRIAGE ISNT AN ACHIEVEMENT. 

By; Blessing Oyinkansola Ajagbe


Welcome to Nigeria where marriage is the ultimate lifetime achievement. If you are of a marriageable age and don’t have a wedding band on your finger, what are you even doing with your life? If you want to send your Nigerian parents to their early grave, just tell them you have no interest in getting married. If they are strong enough to withstand the “heartbreak”, know that a serious deliverance session is going to be conducted on you.

Over the years, I have come to realize that the one thing Nigerians take so much pride in, is the eight letter word - MARRIAGE. Any other achievement is second place to it as it keeps getting the number one spot on the charts. This means, you could as well find the cure to cancer or build your own empire and people will still give small talks if you’ve not gotten that title of MARRIED. It is no wonder parents put pressure on their children to get married and put double loads of pressure if their child is of the female gender. There is nothing a woman does that is as good and celebrated as her becoming a MRS and then graduating to the title of MOTHER. This is not a feminism article and so will not bother you with the men and women are equal speech. 

I get that a woman’s body ages faster than a man. I understand the concept called MENOPAUSE.  But, these isnt enough reason for the pressure? It is so obvious that the pressure does more harm than good except if you want to turn a blind eye. The pressure forces two people who don’t love each other to come together as one only to please the family and society which most of the time results to a broken marriage. The painful part is if a child is involved. That child’s perspective of marriage would be on the negative side as against the child growing up in a home where true love would have existed.

Family and societal pressure has led to self pressure that when people don’t get married at the age the society has set as the right time, they begin to wonder if they have a problem. It is situations like this that breed low self esteem and even depression. It is situations like this that make people desperate enough to result to internet dating. Though some did claim to have found their true love through dating sites and apps but, that is like ten percent of the hundred percent. Why would anyone want to take that risk?

Marriage is not an achievement and the society needs to stop making it look like it is. Parents need to stop comparing their children to the married children’s of friends thereby causing psychological trauma and anxiety. So, your child’s best friend just got married and your child doesn’t even have someone he or she is in a relationship with, so what? Getting married is not the remedy for death or the solution to getting rich so, why the unnecessary headache?

I am of the opinion that the word late shouldn’t be used in the case of marriage. I believe that any age a person gets married is their right time. Just because someone is twenty-five doesn’t make them fit to get married. What is the point of getting married at the age of twenty-five and having the marriage annulled before the age of thirty? What is the point of getting married without being financially stable, therefore bringing innocent kids into this already difficult world to suffer? At the end of the day marriage is between the man and the woman and not external bodies. Marriage is not for the family or the society, marriage is for YOU.


Oyinkansola is an avid writer who blogs at Oyinkansolaplus.com