Five Reasons Most Igbo Men Marry Late

The last five weddings I attended involving Igbo men, the groom was at least 33 years old. You don’t have to take my word for this. Use your mind’s eyes: browse through the last couple of weddings you attended where the groom is Igbo and unearth their ages. If you have more grooms younger than 30 then you have a problem with counting – it is not just possible. Marrying early is no longer cultural for Igbo guys.

Why is that so?

We can’t say for sure. No one can say for sure. But there are answers that come dangerously close to the problem at hand and this is what we would do doing here, dissecting why Igbo men marry late. Grab your bottle, we are about to shatter our collective table.

1. Family responsibilities

An Igbo man is a family gburugburu. The logic is simple. I the father hustle to pay your fees through school. You the son comes out of school and help see the ones behind you through soon. It is a circle. It is also a well – a deep well full of cousins and nieces and nephews and uncles and aunties and aunty’s cousin’s nieces.

The expectation is huge. The average Igbo man thinks of all these. Even if he consciously says he doesn’t care and that he is only out for the best woman, don’t believe him. This is not to say that he is lying; it’s not just his consciousness – it is his subconscious mind that keeps this tab and it has a powerful grip.

The question now is, does an Igbo man not get married in spite of all this? He gets married. With time, he would come to realize the famous pidgin adage, problem no dey finish. By the time he realizes this and finally takes Ujunwa down the aisle, he is just a couple of weeks shy of 37.

2. Monogamy nature of Ndigbo

Christianity is to be blamed here. Igbos are predominately Christians and one Christian tenet they take very seriously is the man that says a man to be a husband to one wife. We do not have the figures, but we are certain you would struggle to find an ethnic group in Nigeria with the least numbers of polygamy.

The Igbo man’s penchant for monogamy has met with a world where divorce has taken more than its fair share on the matrimonial table. Divorce is frowned upon by Christians. Of course, Igbo marriages have ended in divorce but there exists a huge percentage of Ndigbo who view divorce in the cusp of a taboo.

So an Igbo man would want to be very sure before he finally gets married. He knows that he has one shot and he wants to make good use of it.

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An Igbo man in the east is surrounded by a plethora of gorgeous women. An Igbo man in Lago, Abuja, Benin City and other cities is surrounded by beauties. It doesn’t help poor Uche or Emeka that this is the makeup era. Making the choice of a /life partner becomes difficult.

The fact that some Igbo men go looking for their mothers in the women they desire to take as wife adds enough firewood to the pyre of late marriages among Igbo men.

If Igbos are a polygamous people, many Igbo boys would marry their first wife at 23.

3. Economic constraints

The economy has never been great. From Major General Buhari’s regime to Retired Major General Buhari’s regime, people always cry that this economy is the worst. During Buhari’s regime, they cried; during IBB’s regime, they cried; during Abacha’s regime, and Obasanjo’s, and Yar’adua/Jonathan’s and now Buhari’s, they cried, cried, cried, cried.

No government can do any good before our eyes, it is nostalgia that softens the blow, but the currency of the situation kills us.

An Igbo man’s definition of economic constraint is not the same as every other ethnic group’s. An Igbo man can own a car and leave in a three-room apartment and tell you, I need to be comfortable to get married. Someone lower than him on the economic ladder would say, if only I own a car and leave in a multiple-room apartment.

More and more Igbo guys now view the car and house as the minimum tag team for settle down.

Also, an Igbo man might be under pressure to have a big wedding just like the one he is used to attending where drinks are in excess, where food is in countless and rich assortment, and where guests have to wade through naira and foreign notes in other to reach the high table.

The belief that only women want big weddings is a myth. A man who is used to serving in a committee of friends of big weddings wouldn’t want to have a tiny wedding. Also

4. Exposure/liberality

Igbo people are too exposed and we don’t mean this in a civilized way. Of course, no one can take civility or the gains of modernity from the Igbos, but this is not the aspect we refer to. Nay, modernity is not a cause for delayed marriages among Igbo guys. It is the steamy side of modernity.

If someone were to take a poll on the region with the most access to sex, the Southeast won’t come last. No thanks to brothels, hotels, nightclubs, beer parlours, and campuses, an Igbo man has so many access points to sex. No thanks to social media as well.

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Now, according to popular perception, communities with fewer opportunities for premarital sex tend to get married earlier. Look at the core north and the southeast side by side and you would agree that this is more than a perception, it is true.

Access to sex is not good for the pursuit of early marriage. Sex is a big deal in marriage. But if as a bachelor I can get as many sex as I want, with many partners as I can woo, marriage loses some of its shine in my eyes. The wedding night as a ritual (or symbol or both) of the consummation of love loses its essence.

5. Fear

I don’t believe this is particular to Igbo men. Every man has this fear in him, no matter how little but no less nagging, that they could marry wrong. Hell, they say, hath no fury like a woman scorned. But you know who is burning in this hell, a man with a wrong wife.

You can say that a man can always get a divorce, and this is true. But this is no easy path and even if it were, the emotional, physical, fiscal, and other resources poured would never be recovered. And it is never totally over. You would share parenting duties with a woman who probably hates you and you may have to continually prove to your children that you are not a bad father.

So yes, the Igbo man, too, is afraid of marrying. And this contributes to delays in marriage.

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