Tuesday, November 2, 2010
[size=14pt]Strike'll cost us marriage - Female students cry out[/size]

Emmanuel Obe, Awka


Some female students of the Anambra State University have said the continued closure of the university can deny them the opportunity to marry.








The students, who spoke to our correspondent in Awka, said age and time of graduation from the university were serious factors that determine marriage for women in Igboland.

They, therefore, urged the Anambra State Government and the striking workers of the university to urgently resolve their differences and call off the strike to save their future.

One of the female students, Uchenna, who is a social sciences student of the institution, said that these days men wait for girls to graduate from the university or any other higher institution before they approach them for marriage.

"Now if the university is closed down for too long, it may affect my age of graduation, which is another problem because men would not want to marry ladies who have gone past certain age," she said.

The Secretary of the Students' Union Government of the university, Mr. Callistus Ifeanyi, confirmed to our correspondent that the SUG leadership had come under pressure from female students, who wanted them to do something urgent to end the strike.

"It has been four months now and nothing is happening. Students are worried. Our ladies are not at peace with what is happening. Their time is counting. Somebody waiting for you to graduate before he will marry you will just move on to another person," Ifeanyi said.

Our correspondent further gathered from respondents that these days, men do not want to train girls in school before marrying them or even after marrying them.

They want the girls' parents to take full responsibility of training their daughters before they can approach them for marriage.

Nnamdi Okoye, a civil servant in Awka, said men had learnt their lessons. "Time was in the past when some men trained girls in school only for such men to be jilted by the same girls who would feel they had risen above the social class of their benevolent fiancé," he said.

The Head of Department of Sociology and Anthropology of the Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Dr. Peter Ezeah, confirmed that age and education have become serious preconditions for marriage in the Igbo society.

He said the Igbo society still valued marriage and children. And so because younger women were more likely to have more and healthy children, parents still give out their children in marriage at an early age.

He said though the advent of western education had led to delay in the marriage age of girls, there were fears that older women might not be able to give birth.

He said, "By the time a lady enters the university at 17, she should leave at 22, which is the peak of fertility. If she does not finish before 30, she will be considered too old."

On the economic level, Ezeah said bachelors would like to marry women that would assist them with the family income, "so they go for graduates and women who would not constitute economic liabilities to them."

http://odili.net/news/source/2010/nov/2/802.html

oludashmi:

Why are they so concerned about them alone . . .will it not affect students (men and ladies) from all over the nation?

If they will not be married by their pple, they shouldnt worry, men from other tribes will rescue their spinsterhood. . . but by then I dont want to hear anyone asking why so so and so tribe is rescuing marrying their girls.lol

Why do you have so much hatred for igbos?. Did an Igbo man dump your behind?. It's either that or inferiority complex that is worrying you. Your behavior is not a typical Yoruba behavior.

Totally rubbish! Do other tribes expose themselves like that? Or are you the only one who can type in nigeria? Every A and B that happens in the next 3 mins u see it on nairaland. Shame on the op